Google Pixel 9 First Impressions

The new Pixel’s design language is in a word - flat. And that’s not a bad thing. The Pixel 9 along with its other siblings sports a new matte flat edge with rounded corners and knurled edges. It feels lovely to hold in the hand and even the weight is well distributed making it feel like a flagship rather than just a half baked attempt at one. The difference between the base Pixel 9 and the others is that the Pro and the Pro XL get a glossy flat edge and a soft touch glass back.

Apart from the heft and the premium feel, the camera module at the back is also very well done and feels premium and the coating on it isn’t going to chip off with extended use, which seemed to be the case for the previous phones. Our review unit sports the ‘Wintergreen’ colour which is sort of this cool minty green that looks beautiful. Other colours available are white, black and pink.

The Pixel 9 features an upgraded Actua Display that Google claims is 35% brighter than the Pixel 8 and it shows. The 1080 x 2424 OLED at 422 PPI goes up to 1800 nits (HDR) and up to 2700 nits (peak brightness) which is plenty bright and for a 6.3in size, the 422 PPI density looks great. The smaller display size has been a big appeal for those who don’t like large phones and the Pixel 9 plugs that gap wonderfully.

The Pixel 9 shares the same cameras as its elder siblings - a 50 MP Octa PD wide camera and a 48 MP Quad PD ultrawide camera with auto-focus. You don’t get the additional telephoto unit on this one. Our initial opinion about the pictures the Pixel snaps is that it is just okay. Nothing out of the ordinary going on here. We did a few portraits as well as some regular point and shoot photography and the Pixel 9 performed as expected.

Straight out of the camera shots are neutral and well balanced with enough details but to truly bring out a picture’s potential you need to tinker around and edit it which you can do aplomb.In fact it almost feels intentional.

The new ‘Reimagine’ feature in the Magic Editor lets you select a part of your image or the subject and allows you to change it via prompts or erase it all together. This means you can turn Lamington Road to a street in Japan, send your cat to Mars or take a trip to Ladakh in your car straight from inside your studio. It’s pretty insane stuff especially if you get your prompts right. It even creates a reflection of the car as you can see in the sample images! Another great feature is the Auto Frame which as the name suggests edits and makes slight changes to the photo to get the best possible result of the subject in a set frame.

While the Reimagine feature blew our minds off, we wish the actual camera images were a bit better. We had the chance to compare a few shots with some taken via the Vivo X100 Pro and you can clearly see the difference in the details and the manner in which the Pixel handles the highlights versus the Vivo in our camera samples above. This also comes down to hardware and certain coating used on the Vivo lenses but it’s important to note that the Vivo costs the same. These are extremely early impressions and we are yet to test out the full range of the camera so stay tuned for the full review.

The new Tensor 4 chip on the Pixel 9 feels quick and seamlessly handles regular day to day tasks. It’s fast, handles browsing well, handles switching between apps well, the basics are all covered and is a much better experience than the outgoing Pixel 8 models. The Pixel 9 comes with only 12GB RAM while the others have a solid 16GBs to boot. The additional RAM helps in some heavier tasks such as editing reels and such but the Pixel 9 gets the job done without a hitch too.

The new Gemini AI is just okay and while way better than the previous assistant, I find myself using it more for everyday tasks like setting alarms and such. You also get Gemini Live which is available for Gemini Advanced subscribers. It  lets you have a free-flowing conversation with Gemini — right from your phone or Pixel Buds. So whether you’re trying to plan a fun tailgate, need help thinking through household repairs, or want help brainstorming gift ideas, Gemini Live will offer a new level of help in a more intuitive, natural way for a subscription fee of Rs. 1950 a month of course.

Pixel Studio is another app in focus currently and generates images based on prompts. It’s powered by combining an on-device diffusion model running on Tensor G4 and Google’s Imagen 3 text-to-image model in the cloud.  It isn’t as sophisticated as the Reimagine tool but something to look forward to.

The Screenshot app is another fancy addition that allows you to search particular keywords from the screenshots you have saved. It’s a quick way to pull up essential info if you’re one to save a million screenshots and quite useful. It works as advertised and is extremely easy to use. We would have liked to see it integrated in the Photos app itself though.

The Pixel 9 has a mixed bag of software gimmicks and apps to offer and most of them feel like you will use them in day-to-day scenarios and as time progresses these will only keep getting better, but some of them we don’t see the real value of just yet. The Pixel Studio for example is a bit limited to use and can’t generate human-centric images yet. Also exactly how much does Google expect us to ‘express’ our creativity? You get bored of it pretty soon. The Gemini AI is handy for people extremely lazy to do stuff on their own but we see the potential for ease of use when it comes to elderly users of the phone. The new Reimagine feature is the real star here! That is something I would wholeheartedly use and even pay for. But at Rs. 79,999 it’s a tough ask especially when you get better hardware for the money from the competition. However we still need to run the Pixel 9 through its paces and explore more, so wait for the full updated review.