Google Pixel 9 Review: With AI Features THIS Fun, You Can Excuse The iPhone-y Design
Google Pixel 9 Review: It does not come cheap but with its new design, funky AI features and as-usual-awesome cameras, it is pretty much the most fun Pixel Google has ever made.
Google Pixel 9 Review: It has the usual clean Android, the usual amazing cameras, and now comes with a new design and a truckload of AI smarts, which will only get better. The Pixel 9 does not come cheap but is perhaps the most fun-to-use Pixel phone ever made by Google.
Google Pixel 9 Review: Quick Pointers
What we love:
- New but still compact (iPhone-y) design
- Great cameras, especially the ultrawide
- Innovative AI tools (which are getting better)
- Clean Android experience
- Smooth performance
- Seven years of assured updates
What we don’t:
- The price
- Not a gaming phone
- Heating issues
- Relatively slow charging
- Battery life
Looks Very Different From Previous Pixels (& A Bit Like iPhone)
The Pixel 9 looks unlike any other Pixel we have seen before. Although slightly larger than the Pixel 8, it is still the most compact Pixel of the series and at 152.9 mm is small by modern smartphone standards, (the OnePlus 12 is a massive 164.3 mm, in comparison), as well as reasonably slim at 8.5 mm. Like its predecessors, it too looks like a shrunk version of its Pro sibling(s).
But gone are the curved sides and back, and in its place come straight-ish sides and a relatively flat back. Gone also is the trademark camera bar on the back, which has been replaced by a horizontal, broad, thick metallic capsule that juts out from the back.
The colours have been made more funky with a lovely pink Peony, and a light green Wintergreen being added to a more routine white Porcelain and a black Obsidian. The front is a 6.3-inch display with narrow and uniform bezels, with the Type-C port and speaker on the base, and metallic buttons on the metallic sides (the power button remains above the volume rocker on the side - a really odd placement, as always).
We got the Porcelain shade, which is actually the plainest of the lot, with metal-coloured sides and a camera unit (the others have sides and camera units in the same shade as the back - a classy touch), but still looks very striking. It is pretty tough too - the front and back are Gorilla Glass Victus 2, the frame is armour aluminium, and the phone comes with IP68 dust and water resistance, which means it can actually survive a drop in the water.
It is rather slippery though, thanks to the polished glass back, so we recommend putting a case on it. At 198 grams, it is a little on the heavy side for its side, but it has a very solid feel to it. The straight sides and flat back give the Pixel 9 a very iPhone-ish feel but the camera unit marks it out as Pixel. This is one of the most distinct phones out there, especially in Peony and Wintergreen, with that jutting-out camera unit actually looking like a pair of funky phone-y sunglasses.
New Tensor Chip, More RAM, Better Cameras
In specs terms, the Pixel 9 is pretty much in the flagship space, although closer to budget than premium flagship (that is handled by the Pro bros). The front features a 6.3-inch OLED display with FHD+ resolution and 120Hz refresh rate, although the refresh rate can only switch between 60 Hz and 120 Hz, and not go all the way for 1-120 Hz as in some other devices.
Like all recent Pixels, the Pixel 9 too is powered by Google's chipset, the Tensor G4, a processor known for its smarts rather than brute power. Allied with it are a massive 12 GB of RAM (a first in the plain Pixel series) and 256 GB of storage.
One of the greatest attractions of a Pixel is its cameras. And the Pixel 9 comes with a pretty impressive array. That camera unit on the back houses a 50-megapixel main camera with OIS and a f/1.68 aperture and a secondary 48-megapixel ultrawide camera with autofocus and a surprisingly large f/1.7 aperture.
The front has a 10.5-megapixel camera with autofocus. A 4700 mAh battery keeps all this running, but charging remains sluggish - the Pixel 9 supports 27W wired charging and 12W wireless charging (15W if you use a Pixel stand).
That is a far cry from the triple-digit charging speeds we see in this price zone.
Plain Software, Spiced Up With AI
Pixels in the past were plain Janes on the software front, known for their clean and uncluttered interface, with assured Android updates.
The Pixel 9 totally turns that on its head, courtesy of the dollops of AI features that it brings to the table. And this hits you straight away when you set up the Pixel 9, when you set up Gemini Live instead of Google Assistant - the Pixel 9 series comes with a year of Gemini Advanced.
This literally takes Search to the next level, making it more conversational and rich in detail. Very sci-fi, although it does need a good Internet connection to really fly. Also on board are Pixel Studio, which can generate images based on your descriptions, and a very handy Screenshots app, that organises your screenshots and lets you search information from them. Note-taking app Keep has been infused with list-making abilities (just type "help me make a list" and specify what you want to make a list about and sit back), and you can get summaries of your phone calls as well.
A new Gemini-infused weather app serves up summaries and reports in attractive formats. This, of course, is in addition to the transcribing, translation, Search, Magic Eraser, and summarising tools on the Pixel 8 (and now some other Android devices) series. We will be covering the AI side of the new Pixels in detail in a future story (they do need to be used over a longer period to be properly evaluated), but suffice to say there is a lot to explore and use here.
There is a lot of AI in photography too, with the introduction of the Reimagine feature, which lets you literally change photographs and images by adding objects to them. You can transform a noon snap to one taken late in the evening and add buildings and trees if it strikes your fancy. Then there is the Add Me feature which lets the person who has taken a group photograph, add themselves to the snap by passing the phone to another person in the group, who is prompted on how to take the picture.
All this, of course, with the usual clean, clutter-free Android experience, devoid of any distracting bloatware. Rather interestingly, the Pixel 9 comes with Android 14 out of the box (we had expected 15), but it also comes with an assurance of seven years of software updates.
AI Thrills & Frills On Top Of A Camera Powerhouse
We will keep it simple - the Pixel 9 is the most fun Pixel we have ever used. And a lot of that is down to the AI features. We have never spent so much time just exploring the features of preinstalled software on a Pixel.
Some of the AI features do not work quite as smoothly - the Add Me feature, for instance, can be confusing to use for a newcomer and the results are not always as seamless as the demos would like us to believe and generating images and adding objects and backgrounds through the Pixel Studio and Magic Editor gave mixed results. Similarly, those of us used to Google Assistant might find Gemini a little overwhelming and its results can still be inaccurate.
There is, however, no doubting the immense potential of AI and the sheer variety of options it brings to the Pixel experience. This is a phone you want to use just because of all that it can do and will do in the future, as Google is expected to further fine-tune the experience in the coming days.
It can do a lot on its non-AI side too. While the Tensor G4 is not a gaming beast, the very good display and speakers ensure you get a decent gaming and multimedia experience - you can play Genshin Impact and Asphalt relatively smoothly, although the experience is not in the OnePlus 12 or Galaxy S24 class.
Heavy-duty gaming or photography, however, results in the phone heating up a fair bit. This can be a bit of a pain because while the Pixel 9 is certainly not a great gaming phone, it is an awesome camera phone. The Pixel 9 continues the Pixel tradition of having great cameras. The main sensor takes very good photographs in terms of colour and detail and even delivers a very handy 8x zoom without compromising too much on detail.
The improved ultrawide sensor adds a whole new dimension to landscapes and thanks to the presence of autofocus, even doubles up as a very good macro sensor for close-up shots. Even the selfie camera scores in the detail department. We think Google has tweaked the colours of the Pixel to make them slightly warmer and more saturated than in the past, but we do not think too many will complain about this. And with all the AI magic inside, there is a whole lot you can do with what you shoot. Video quality has been improved too, although it is still well behind what the iPhone serves up.
In other regards, the Pixel 9 is a smooth operator. It sails through routine tasks like Web browsing, mail and messaging with no problems whatsoever. That 12 GB RAM means one can easily run a dozen apps next to each other, although lags can creep in sometimes while using AI features (even Gemini pauses at times), although that could be a network issue. The fingerprint scanner works smoothly and call quality is very good.
The only catch is battery life - using the two best features of the Pixel 9 (the AI and the cameras) drains the battery before the day is out, although you can get it up to 50 per cent in about half an hour of charging with a 27W charger.
Google Pixel 9 Review: Final Verdict
The Pixel 9 is available in a single RAM and storage variant of 12GB + 256GB for Rs 79,999. While that is actually lower than the 256GB variant of the Pixel 8, which was priced at Rs 82,999, it nevertheless places the Pixel in a premium price segment.
Going up against it are devices like the OnePlus 12 and the Samsung Galaxy S24, which actually out-spec the Pixel 9 in terms of hardware and run it close even in terms of camera and software (a lot of the Galaxy AI on Samsung's phones comes from Google itself).
Those looking for a compact phone with great cameras will also be attracted to the Xiaomi 14 and its Leica-flavoured snappers, and well, lurking around every premium phone is the iPhone 15, which remains a benchmark in terms of consistency, security and camera performance.
But since when was getting a Pixel all about specs or benchmarks? The Pixel series was always meant to showcase the potential of Android the way Google saw it, and the Pixel 9 does exactly that. It does not come cheap but with its new design, funky AI features and as-usual-awesome cameras, it is pretty much the most fun Pixel Google has ever made.
If you are looking for a compact phone that packs plenty of futuristic features and is pretty future-proof (those seven-year updates), with lots of AI running through its wiry veins, the Pixel 9 is pretty much it. Go for the Peony or Wintergreen and turn heads too.
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