Google’s Pixel telephone lineup is getting just a little greater this 12 months. The Pixel 9 collection now counts one customary mannequin — the Pixel 9 — and three Professional fashions: the Pixel 9 Professional, Pixel 9 Professional XL, and Pixel 9 Professional Fold. All of them supply up to date designs, new Tensor G4 processors, and AI options up the wazoo.
The Pixel 9’s up to date design language is giving iPhone from the entrance — the curved edges are out and flat sides are in. The again panel, nonetheless, is all Pixel. The digital camera bar is now an elongated, free-floating digital camera oval protruding from the again of the telephone.
The usual Pixel 9 retains the identical fundamental measurement and form with an even bigger 6.3-inch display screen, and the 9 Professional XL is roughly the dimensions of the Pixel 8 Professional with an even bigger 6.8-inch display screen. The Pixel 9 Professional is the brand new providing, touchdown proper within the center: concerning the measurement of the Pixel 9 with a lot of the 9 Professional’s options on board.
The telephone previously referred to as the Pixel Fold, now up to date because the Pixel 9 Professional Fold, options tweaks primarily to its measurement and form. It’s now 5.1mm thick when unfolded, in comparison with 5.8mm. It’s additionally taller than the earlier mannequin, measuring 155.2mm on the lengthy edge with a 6.3-inch outer display screen; the Pixel Fold measured 139.7mm lengthy with a 5.8-inch display screen.
After some exhaustive analysis, together with making a spreadsheet, I can say as soon as and for all that I do know what makes a Professional telephone worthy of the “Professional” moniker: a lot of RAM. Okay, possibly that’s not it precisely, however all three Professional gadgets do include 16GB of RAM. The Pixel 9 comes with 12GB now, too. That issues while you’re making an attempt to run AI on-device, and the Pixel 9 collection comes with an up to date Gemini Nano mannequin that provides multimodality so it could actually analyze pictures and speech in addition to textual content.
New AI options coming to the Pixel 9 collection embrace a brand new Recall-like means to catalog and retrieve info out of your screenshots; in contrast to Microsoft’s strategy, it solely works with screenshots you are taking manually. It occurs on-device and is a Pixel-exclusive function. There’s additionally a brand new app known as Pixel Studio that makes use of generative AI to show your textual content prompts into illustrations, although it doesn’t run on-device.
However a lot of the AI magic is reserved for pictures, as ordinary. And as ordinary, you’ll be left questioning the character of a photograph, given the potential of those instruments. Magic Editor has a brand new choice to “reimagine” a scene. Fairly than simply tweaking lighting, you possibly can choose elements of a picture and use textual content prompts to fully rework them with generative AI. There’s additionally a function known as Add Me, which helps you add somebody to a bunch photograph. The UI guides you thru the method of taking an preliminary photograph, then letting the photographer hand off the telephone and step into the body for a second shot, which AI merges right into a single body with everybody accounted for.
The Pixel 9 collection would be the first Android telephones within the US to return with Satellite tv for pc SOS, which, very similar to Apple’s satellite tv for pc emergency function, will enable you to hook up with emergency companies while you’re outdoors of telephone reception. That’ll come later this 12 months, presumably with Android 15. With Google’s {hardware} occasion sooner than ordinary this 12 months, this crop of Pixel telephones will ship with Android 14 quite than syncing up with the most recent Android OS launch. However just like the earlier technology of Pixel telephones, the Pixel 9 collection will include seven years of OS updates and safety patches.
On the digital camera entrance, the Pixel 9, 9 Professional, and 9 Professional XL all use a 50-megapixel f/1.7 like final 12 months’s fashions, they usually all include up to date ultrawide cameras. The 9 Professional and 9 Professional XL embrace a brand new 42-megapixel selfie digital camera with autofocus. The Pixel 9 nonetheless makes use of a ten.5-megapixel selfie digital camera, but it surely good points autofocus for the primary time.
Google has put in some work below the hood, too. Panorama mode includes a new UI and assist for Evening Sight, and the HDR Plus pipeline has been adjusted to fine-tune sharpening and distinction. Video Increase — an off-device AI-powered processing function solely out there on the 9 Professional and 9 Professional XL — can be utilized to create upscaled 8K footage and works with digitally zoomed video clips so as to add again element and easy out transitions as you zoom out and in between lenses.
The Pixel 9 Professional Fold’s digital camera specs nonetheless lag behind the opposite Professional Pixels. It has a 48-megapixel f/1.7 principal digital camera and lower-res ultrawide and telephoto cameras in comparison with the 9 Professional and Professional XL. Pixel digital camera PM Isaac Reynolds tells me that the Fold’s {hardware} has improved relative to final 12 months, together with new matching selfie cameras on the internal and outer screens. However extra superior digital camera {hardware} would have made for a thicker telephone, so compromises have been made.
However the internal display screen is the principle attraction on a folding telephone, and never solely is it greater this time round — 8 inches versus 7.6 — but it surely additionally will get a lot brighter at as much as 2,700 nits in peak brightness mode, in comparison with 1,450. That ought to make it a lot simpler to make use of outdoors in vibrant mild.
The Google Pixel 9 goes on sale on August twenty second, and it begins at $799, which is a $100 value bump over final 12 months. The Pixel 9 Professional and Professional XL begin at $999 and $1,099, respectively, with the XL delivery on August twenty second and the 9 Professional arriving in September. The Pixel 9 Professional Fold prices $1,799; it ships on September 4th.