Introduction:
So I really like these new pixel phones new designs this year obviously but also new specs new features also new issues but of course new price tags so we really got to jump into the nitty-gritty of what's actually good about them so we've been hoping for a real complete.
Flagship quality competitor from Google for a while now and on one hand it feels like we finally got him but on the other hand did you guys watch the Google event announcing these things like I feel like you can learn a lot about how a company really feels about the products that they're presenting by just watching the announcement event and these felt like a software.
Showcase that just also happened to have some phones to go with it which I guess is not insane when you know the history of Nexus and pixel, but it did the opposite of giving me confidence in these phones, but now I've been using these phones for two weeks straight, and I actually feel like I can tell you what's good or bad about them.
So Hardware is mostly what I'm talking about when I say these phones feel like flagships in a good way like it would be easy to dismiss them as almost the same as last year just squared up, but there are a lot of other little things too like the screens are brighter at their Max brightness 2700 nits for the pixel 9 and 3,000 nits for the 9 pros and then the even bezels all the way around that requires some extra consideration.
Wrapping the edges of the OLED panels under those corners and there's a new ultrasonic fingerprint reader under here on all of them finally it's way faster and more reliable than the disappointing Optical ones from before the only thing I wish it's such a small thing, but I wish I could just unlock at any time when the display is completely off like currently you have to have the always on display on or hit the power button or be getting a notification.
And then you can unlock with a quick touch but like on Samsung phones that spot on the display is always a hot spot no matter what you can just unlock by touching there so I kind of wish the pixel would let me do that from a blank screen to the haptics are really nice again, and the buttons are really click.
Basic:
This year but then of course the hardware is what's on the inside too so that is the new tensor G4 chip and a bunch of extra Ram now the tensor G4 isn't actually that much more powerful than last year's chip in fact you probably won't notice the difference for 99% of the stuff you do on the phone.
But what's actually significant is a new CPU that's way more powerful and dedicated to AI tasks and the way more RAM is also dedicated to AI tasks I'm told a big portion of the ram is literally reserved for AI stuff, so I will get to all that AI stuff in a minute don't worry but just in the world that we're living in where the meta for a lot of these major new smartphones is.
Okay minor new improvements here and there but mainly just a bunch of new AI features and capabilities I'm glad that the pixel also got a bunch of meaningful feeling Hardware stuff too and then obviously yes you do have the squared off sides that I just know are supposed to fit in with the iPhones and Samsung's of the world I've said it before I like the look and feel and that also applies to this new camera visor Which is less of a visor and I guess more of like a shelf Island now kind of looks a bit.
Weird in some renders but you just kind of have to trust me seeing it in person it's fire I like it even if it will totally collect dust in just the same way as last year in the corners it's the nice oh, and I forgot there is a new size so you can have a pro phone but without it being an XL love the choice I am a little worried that that one probably won't sell as well as the two extremes.
But I'm just I'm glad we have the choice this year be happy about it before it gets discontinued so anyway it all sounds pretty good, but I do have a few gripes which I'm allowed to it's $1,000, so the size of the batteries is about the same as last year 4700 My hours and the smaller size ones 5,000 My hours in the big phone.
And I've had pretty good battery life like a minus battery life with the XL consistently five plus hours of screen on time lots of heavy High brightness use, but they still don't charge that fast like the XL is maxing out at like 37 watts, and it's actually slightly slower on the smaller phones now I'm not saying you got to go Thereon nuclear level real me 320 W fast charging light your phone on fire charging or anything like that.
I'm just saying fast charging would be nice 50 60 watts that's it I feel like that's just not that insane but would be significantly better for using the phone now I also need to say pixel 9 has matte sides with glossy back but the pixel 9 pro has glossy sides with the matte back we've seen the strategy.
Before I just think the matte sides look and feel so much better than the glossy, so I kind of wish you could get like a matte on matte look, but that's just me and then one more thing of course these phones start at higher prices or at least the base one starts at $7.99, but this is a $1,000 phone that starts at 128 gigs of storage thanks Apple I guess that's the standard now too, but it's 2024 I would have liked you know 256 to.
Features:
So cameras have always been a big part of the Google Phone experience or at least they have for a while now and on Pixel 99's that's still true but not in exactly the same way so all across the board the pixel 9 and 9 Pro actually share the same primary camera and the same Ultra wide the pros just get that extra telephoto the 5x zoom and the primary camera that they all share is basically the same as last year the ultra wide is new it's 48 megapixels.
instead of 12 but it bends down to 12 so look shooting with these new cameras it's great it's a quick smartphone camera app there's a bunch of easy to use modes it's responsive focus is quick it's easy to get consistent good pictures that process pretty quickly what I mostly notice about these photos is they still look very processed to me like this is the pixel look now these days with the last few Generations.
just lots of HDR lots of contrast lots of dynamic range also lots of sharpening it's just not as natural of a look as we've seen in some others it's just more it's more on The Punchy side which is honestly great for just sharing a photo on social media but some may prefer a more neutral photo the new selfie camera on the pro actually feels like the biggest Improvement as far as detail and color over the regular pixel 9 which doesn't get this but I'd say this is a pretty nice selfie camera just so much dynamic range.
but if you want to see and hear what video footage from the pixel sounds like I shot an entire video on the autofocus channel on the pixel 9 Pro XL in 4k 30 with actually no external hardware I didn't even plug in a mic this is just the built-in mics so yeah just me holding a phone if you don't zoom in at all the videos look great they're sharp but obviously still very processed and you can see it like prioritizing.
segmentation and like Lighting on my face and shifting colors around so I'll leave a link below if you want to watch that whole esprinter review when it goes live and you might as well subscribe over there while you're at it for other car videos but this is all part of the pixel experience just like they're they're still tuning these cameras they may end up looking a little more natural in the future even though.
it's been a generation like that's one of the things that you can get out of this phone but also when they present these things it's all about the features the smarts the crazy AI magic editor and all this AI stuff on these phones that's there's a lot to the pixel experience so Google makes Android Google makes their own Android phone therefore the Google Android phone should be the vessel for showing off the latest and great latest from Android right.
it's I mean Android 15 preview just got shown off in February it's coming out by the end of the year these phones launch with Android 14 that's not a joke all these pixel 9s are running the second latest version of Android out the box obviously they should be first in line for 15 and then the seven years of promised software updates but that's still hilarious but every time I go back to using a pixel you know I'm reminded of all this stuff that I I miss when I use other phones like call screening so good I mean I know Samsung kind of has like a janky Bixby version of it but it doesn't work as well I've tried uh the now playing feature also that just kind of ambiently tells you what song is playing in the background wherever you're at love it.
and now there's all this new stuff that they're adding that also may or may not hook people to the pixel so call notes is a new one pretty useful summarizes phone calls that you're on with a recording and the new pixel weather app originally I I wasn't gonna give that much of a chance to it but honestly it's turned out to be just as good as basically any other Android weather app.
I've tried so you can get to it by tapping the weather widget on the home screen and it's got this really pretty UI where you can rearrange the big tiles and put the ones you care most about closer to the top it doesn't let you change your weather Source but I mean I'm already nitpicking at a level that only weather nerds will really care about and they also threw in an updated Panorama UI and the camera and I don't know if anybody cares about this but the temperature sensor in the pros works on people.
now I don't know if you caught that and it gives these live temperature readings now as you move around an object none of which is medical advice by the way I'm actually impressed by Google's commitment to this particularly useless app like Google I know you get a lot of heat for killing things typically but I give you permission to stop working on the thermometer app I think I think you've done it but there's one thing that again if you watch watch Google's event that is really supposed to stand the pixel out from the rest of the world of smartphones and that is because this is where Gemini lives this is this deep deep integration with Google's newest assistant here literally the bootup animation on this phone is the Google logo and then it turns into the Gemini logo before it starts up like the these are basically Gemini phones.
Conclusion:
For a pixel, it's the smartest smartphone in the room and it's now also in a piece of kind of nice hardware that's a pleasure to hold and use and then there's a bunch of AI stuff on top that you can try and either take it or leave it it's kind of just up to you if you want to get a bunch of use out of that stuff or literally never touch it at all I'm curious.
if you leave a comment down below what sort of stuff you think you would use or buy the phone to use or which stuff you don't think's that useful at all at the end of the day we'll have to see how it ages but I'm thinking Pixel 9 and 9 Pro is some of their finest work yet also shout out to Anker for sponsoring this video their new Anker Prime lineup is their most advanced multi-device fast charger.
they've made yet that includes three charging stations one docking station one wall charger one power bank and one new cable so the two that stand out to me the most are the Anker Prime charging station and the Anker Prime power bank the charging station is this desktop accessory that can kick out 250 watts in total among its four USB-C and two USB-A ports and then it has a display that can show you.
How much power each port is drawing actively and then it lets you customize charging priority on each port so you can let it just sort of auto adjust and make the highest demanding items get the max charge that they can take and then the power bank has a 9,600 mAh capacity and there's two USB-C ports on it and up to 65 watts output from this thing but it can also be a wall charger too so that 1.3-inch display is going to show you how much battery you have left and how much power each of those ports is outputting so you can check them out and the rest of the Anker Prime lineup in the comment but either way that's been it I got this in before the pouring rain started so I'm pretty proud of that but let me know what you think in the comments below talk to you guys in the next one peace.
