Google Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL: Enhanced AI, Improved Design, and Advanced Camera Features

Most people had a complicated relationship with the Google Pixel phones over the years. But they always admit at their very core that these phones are special.

Google Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL phones have this beautifully animated, friendly, customizable software that’s always capable of doing a few things so intelligent that they’re practically indistinguishable from magic.

The New Google Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL

However, these phones make most people rage because so far, there’s always been a blocker. Significant enough issues that distract you from being able to focus on that delightful software. Most people had build quality issues, they had overheating issues, signal issues, inconsistent camera issues, and just generally the phones being quite a bit slower than the competition issues.

So that puts this new Pixel 9 Pro and the 9 Pro XL in a very interesting position. They have a lot to prove, but if they can prove it, then these could basically become most people’s favorite phones ever.

So let’s take a look at the Pixel 9 Pro and the Pro XL. The phone is in a pretty box, but sadly, it’s also a pretty empty box. You get the phone, you get a cable, and there’s a SIM ejector.

Build Quality and Design

This is the best built Pixel ever. It feels almost exactly like an iPhone 15 Pro Max when you pick it up. Very similar dimensions, very similar flat sides with a slight curve, and it’s the same weight down to the gram. Most people believe that more of the people who buy Pixels are actually ex-iPhone users as opposed to ex-Samsung.

The sides are grippier than their past phones. It looks and feels just really classy, especially with the thinner, completely even screen bezels. And this is also easily the most solidly constructed phone Google has ever made. It doesn’t flex one bit. And if you haven’t already seen it, the phone very much passed the jerry-rigged durability test.

The Pixel would end up as yet another one of those canned Google projects. You know the classic downward spiral where things aren’t quite there with a tech product, so then it doesn’t sell well. So then it makes less money, so then it gets less invent and never improves because of that.

Besides, Google is specifically famous for canceling projects. But getting a significant redesign like this feels like a reassurance that Google is still very much kicking around. Google is still determined to keep trying to become a definitive part of this smartphone world. And the more that you use this phone, the more you realize why that’s so important to them. The phone shows up no fingerprints, no light scratches. It gently swoops around the camera module, giving you this soft lip to rest your fingers against.

There’s nice felt on the inside, a metal logo and metal buttons, which actually match the remaining visible part of the phone. And the sprinkle on top is that the fit is perfect. Every single cutout is exactly centralized, which, you’d be surprised how often that doesn’t happen.

Design is not the only thing, this new Pixel switches out for an ultrasonic scanner. It’s basically firing out sound waves instead of light to map out the ridges of your fingers. But the upside of that is that it gives the phone basically a three-dimensional understanding of your prints.

Google Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL Performance

Every year, performance has been a classic Pixel weakness that every year Google seems to keep addressing by just slapping the AI bandaid on top. This new phone isn’t completely free of that curse either. The new Tensor G4 chip that you find inside of the Pixel 9 Pros, it is still noticeably less fast than the chip inside the best from Samsung, Apple, OnePlus.

All of those companies’ top end phones make basically every action instant, whereas the Pixel still feels like it enjoys its thinking time. Little things like it taking just a split second for the full resolution image to load when you zoom into it. And the phone’s storage speed might have something to do with that too.

Priced at $1,100 versus the previous $900, Google’s Pixel Pro comes standard with 16GB of RAM. This significantly bumps up AI performance, with tasks running roughly 50% faster than before and addressing performance concerns for those who wanted more power. For example, last year’s Pixel 8s showed how the seamless AI photo editing from launch events often became a slower and more fiddly experience in real life, with long loading times. That lag has been shaved off this year.

Google Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL Ai Features

However, with improvements, some new AI features seem incomplete. Key among them is the AdMe feature that allows users to join separate individual shots together into one group photo. While it’s really impressive technically, it might not be exciting to users who take photos of special moments assisted by real people, not photos of composite pictures aided by AI.

Besides this, the Pixel Studio happens to be a new image creation application that can easily create images from prompts but does little more than what is already out. The functionality of the app for editing photos that already exist is very limited in nature, while basic options to edit images, add captions, and add stickers seem outdated.

Where the introduction of the AI-powered Gemini assistant offers more intelligent capabilities, it is devoid of some very basic functionalities of the older Google Assistant. Now, it’s having this really awkward transition phase wherein users have to flip between the two assistants, depending on the need. This may make many inconsistent users feel like beta testers.

There’s some good news, though. The Magic Editor has gotten a lot better. The features that let you zoom out of an existing photo and intelligently fill in missing details based on the surrounding image are impressive. That tech makes it possible to reimagine and enhance photos in a way that feels authentic and powerful. It cannot be used, however, on photos of people.

The new Pixel Screenshots app is one neat way to better organize and search for screenshots more intelligently. Unlike standard gallery apps, it lets users search for screenshots by actually understanding-aided by artificial intelligence in-depth-what’s in the screenshot, so the user finds exactly what they are looking for with ease. While this can be similarly done with most phones, the Pixel app is different in that it offers intelligent context in the screenshot to enhance precision in searches significantly.

One of the interesting features of the app is a Gemini Live system, AI-enabled to let it be more conversational and sound natural. Unlike other, perhaps more common voice assistants, Gemini Live supports continuous dialogue without the use of trigger phrases or buttons. It also listens in real-time, automatically turning down when a user speaks and popping up with intelligent suggestions for a slicker, more interactive process.

Google Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL Camera

The Pixel camera hardware largely remains the same as last year’s model. The phone has a 50MP main camera, a 48MP ultrawide lens, and another 48MP lens for 5x optical zoom. Image quality is similarly on par with the last year’s device with great color accuracy and good control over dynamic range.

There are, however, still some niggling problems: lag when zooming, grainy previews, and limitations on which lenses can be used with which modes, like Portrait or slow-motion photography. The selfie camera now sports a 42-megapixel sensor, enabling more field of view and-importantly-more detailed group shots, plus better 4K video.

Video Boost Features

Besides, the Video Boost feature applies AI to further enhance the quality of the video captured by the rear cameras, thereby enriching the multimedia experience even more. While some functionalities still need fine-tuning, these AI-enabled boosts place the Pixel as a strong competitor in the smartphone market.

If you select the option, then your phone will keep the footage largely unprocessed so that the next time you’re on wifi, it can upload it to the cloud and get Google’s superpower data centers to process it even better than your phone itself could. It improves the colors, the dynamic range, the stabilization. It can completely rescue grainy footage taken in low light, which was one of the biggest weaknesses of past Pixel phones.

It can even upgrade the resolution to 8K. And it’s one of those features that you feel like it shouldn’t work. It almost sounds like some kind of elaborate scam, but it does.

If you want 8K video boosted content, you’re going to need a heck of a lot of cloud storage, specifically Google Cloud Storage. You’ll need about 800 megabytes per minute of it. And also you need to be very careful with this phone about joining other people’s data hotspots because your phone will pick them up as wifi networks. And before you know it, you could have burnt through 10 gigabytes of their data, obliviously boosting your videos in the background without you even realizing.

Camera Zoom

The Pixels long range zoom shots are already 95% as good as those on Samsung’s S24 Ultra. And that’s one of that phone’s key selling points. But then add in the new zoom enhanced AI feature on top of that, and Samsung gets absolutely murdered.

This is the best phone for taking panoramas. It makes them really easy to take. They’re super detailed and each photo is stitched together extremely seamlessly. The Pixel 9 Pro either improves upon or completely fixes about 70% of my issues with past Pixels. Everything from cameras to performance to AI.

Conclusion

So far, the Pixel phones have always married impressive innovation to frustrating setbacks: beautifully animated, often customizable software, and intelligent features that sometimes feel almost magical are offset by build quality issues, performance lags, and inconsistent camera capability.

With the Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL, Google hopes to fix these problems. These feature a sleek redesign, improved build quality, and powerful AI that further expands the possibilities of what one can do with a smartphone. While the performance still lags behind that of rivals such as Apple and Samsung, this new Tensor G4 chip makes some important improvements in AI-driven tasks. The AI itself-from conversational Gemini Live to the smarter Pixel Screenshots app-drastically elevates user interaction and functionality.

While the camera hardware remains similar to last year’s, AI-enhanced features such as Video Boost and improved zooming make for a very competent shooter. Thus, the Pixel 9 series may finally live up to its promise and overcome the challenges of the past to be the darling of many users. That’s Google continuing to sharpen its vision, with the new devices marking a declaration of the company’s desire to remain a mainstay in the smartphone world.