It is official, the Pixel 9 phones are here. Google unveiled the devices on Tuesday at its Made by Google 2024 event. For the first time, the Pro model comes in two sizes, and all three Pixel 9 phones including the Pixel 9 Pro Fold are all powered by Google’s in-house Tensor G4 chipset which brings advanced AI capabilities with Gemini.
The Pixel 9 smartphones have a new look that is distinct from the Pixel 8. The feature updated finishes with silky matte glass back and polished metal sides which is reminiscent of Apple’s iPhone 15 series. According to Google, the Pixel 9 series is twice as much as durable as the Pixel 8 due to the upgraded designs.
Apart from the baseline Pixel 9, we now have the Pixel 9 Pro and the Pixel 9 Pro XL. The Pixel 9 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro XL come in 6.3-inch and 6.8-inch panels respectively and they feature what Google calls its “best and brightest Super Actua displays yet.” The smartphones have an upgraded 42MP front-facing camera for capturing sharper and brighter selfies in low-light conditions. The baseline Pixel 9 has a 6.3-inch Actua display that is 35% brighter than the Pixel 8, according to Google. All three smartphones feature an improved 48MP ultrawide main camera at the back. For the Pixel 9, it’s a big jump from the 12MP on the Pixel 8. Not only is the camera on the Pixel 9 better than the one on the Pixel 8, but battery life is also now around 20 per cent longer on the Pixel 9 during active use.
There are a lot of AI features on the Pixel 9 series, thanks to the new and powerful Tensor G4 chipset. The chipset is designed with Google’s DeepMind and it is optimized to run its most advanced AI model. Tensor G4 is also the first processor from Google to run the Gemini Nano with Multimodality, a feature which helps the Pixel 9 smartphones understand text, images and audio. The Pixel 9 smartphones have upgraded memories – Pixel 9 has 12GB of RAM, while the Pixel 9 Pro and Pixel 9 Pro XL have 16GB of RAM.
At the Google I/O event in May, the company announced Gemini Live. Gemini Live is an AI-powered feature that lets you have a free-flowing conversation with Gemini. Gemini Live will be available to all Gemini Advanced subscribers, including a year of access for owners of the Pixel 9 series and the Pixel 9 Pro Fold.
More on AI, there is now a dedicated Pixel Studio image generator where you can do a bunch of cool stuff with AI. It uses Google’s Imagen 3 text-to-image model to bring your ideas to life. A new dedicated Pixel Screenshots app, exclusive to the Pixel 9, aggregates all your screenshots in one place so you can easily find important information. You can now re-imagine your photos with a variety of AI-enabled editing features. With Add Me, you can add yourself to an existing photo of others taken without you so it looks like you were all together simultaneously.
Google has improved the Pixel Weather app with AI. With Gemini Nano, it can generate a custom AI weather report for each day. When you are off the grid, the Pixel 9 phones now feature a new Satellite SOS that shares your location and lets you contact emergency responders via satellite without cellular service. Satellite SOS will first come to the U.S. before more countries are added.
Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, and Pixel 9 Pro XL are available for pre-orders starting at $799, $999, and $1099 respectively. Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro XL will be available from August 22nd. Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro Fold will be available from September 4th in the U.S. and other markets in the following weeks.
