Pixel 9 Pro XL - Initial Thoughts

[Starbuck79]

My 18 month old Pixel 7 woke up this morning and decided to have the screen pixels gradually die and bleed purple. I was able to get a return credit from Best Buy and they had had received a single black 9 Pro XL early.

I couldn't decide between the normal 9 and the 9 Pro XL but preferred the size of the XL.

Setup was the best I've ever experienced. I started up the 9 XL and it asked what kind of Phone I was transferring from. I said Pixel and a QR code popped up.

I scanned the QC code with my old phone and it initiated the setup process over Bluetooth. It copied over all of my accounts and settings. Process took about 15 minutes total as I had already removed my pictures and video. It is also smart enough to Skip anything you already have saved to the Google Cloud like pictures.

The best part is that it recognized my Old Verizon SIM and simply converted that over an an eSIM without needing anything assistance.

The phone come in a small box of what looked like recycled cardboard. In the box was a USB Cord and no charger. That's a bummer at this price point but I have plenty of chargers arounds.

Overall it has a great feel. It's a little thicker than my Pixel 7 but has a premium feel.

The new finger print sense is great and MUCH faster and more reliable.

I don't really care about Gemini yet, but will give it a shot. The picture editing AI is pretty gimmicky but my daughter love being able to add backgrounds to pictures.

IF you have a working 7 or 8, I'm not sure where would be a reason to switch now BUT if you need a new phone it's great.

 

[continuum]

Be curious how battery life is after a few days or even a week or two of use?

I'm not looking at the 9 Pro XL but am interested in experiences with all the models so far given we're so early in it's release cycle.

 

[Starbuck79]

Be curious how battery life is after a few days or even a week or two of use?

I'm not looking at the 9 Pro XL but am interested in experiences with all the models so far given we're so early in it's release cycle.

I'll keep updating. I've turned on Adaptive Battery and charging but will try to track battery levels at the end of the day.

This may not be new, but there is a AI generator for Wallpapers. To provides some suggestions but you can customize what you want it to create and it sets your Wallpaper and Lock screen. It uses a series of keyword to guide your options. You choose a "Theme" like Painting, Bloom, Mineral, Painting, and then 2-2 subcategories and it creates "Art" for you to choose.

For example, "A Painting of a Canyon and Unicorns in the Avant-Guarde Style.

The Italics represent selectable options. It's actually amazingly addicting. I need to see if there is a way to Generate Random each morning.

Looks like this was released with the 8 Pro. Still pretty crazy to use.

 

[BigLan]

I've been eyeing the base 9 and passing my pixel 7 down to my son (who's currently on an ancient pixel 2 after taking his phone kayaking )

Curious to see if there's any performance difference between the base and the Pro/XL - the benchmarks in Ars's review look like the base one is gimped, even though it's the same Tensor chip and 4gb less ram which shouldn't matter. I really don't care about Gemini Pro or whatever it's called, so an extra $300 for the Pro seems like a lot.

Enjoy your new toy!

 

[Megabat]

Curious to see if there's any performance difference between the base and the Pro/XL - the benchmarks in Ars's review look like the base one is gimped, even though it's the same Tensor chip and 4gb less ram which shouldn't matter. I really don't care about Gemini Pro or whatever it's called, so an extra $300 for the Pro seems like a lot.

A few tests from my base Pixel 9:

Geekbench 6 CPU (single/multi): 1698/4397 (second run: 1636/3540)
Geekbench 6 Vulkan GPU: 6919
browserbench Speedometer 3.0 (Chrome): 14.7
browserbench Motionmark 1.2 (Chrome): 1668.75

Geekbench multicore speed slows down considerably on consecutive runs. The chassis is just warm to the touch (I've never felt it get hot under any circumstances). The G4 is definitely not an outstanding SoC. The memory bump is anecdotally kind of nice, it seems like apps and chrome tabs stay in memory longer vs. the 7.

I was curious about the build quality; it's quite good. The power and volume buttons don't wobble and the gaps between the metal and glass surfaces are much tighter. The SIM tray is properly flush with the body. The display bezel is even on all sides. On paper it looks a little heavy (10g more than an iPhone 15 Pro), but it's quite well balanced and feels similar to 6.1" iPhones.

Despite liking Pixel phones and preferring Android, I've stuck to iPhones in part because they feel so solid. The 9 is a massive improvement on previous Pixels, though there are still a few minor deficiencies:

• The corners now have a continuous curvature, but the pentile display's pixel density isn't high enough for perfectly smooth edges
• No sapphire coating on the camera cover glass
• The speakers aren't as clear
• The fingerprint sensor is an improvement but still not nearly as effortless/reliable as faceID

It feels nice to have Pixel Android on an iPhone-caliber device. I've been able to completely ignore the AI stuff. You can decline to set up Gemini, so I just get an inoffensive startup screen when long pressing the power button.

 

[BigLan]

Thanks - the 4,397 geekbench score is a lot better than the Ars testing which was closer to your second run score of 3,540 - I wonder if they were there throttling and didn't realize

 

[Tom the Melaniephile]

Any updates since you've had it awhile? How do you like the camera?

Looking at an upgrade to the 9 Pro XL.

 

[Starbuck79]

Any updates since you've had it awhile? How do you like the camera?

Looking at an upgrade to the 9 Pro XL.

Very happy so far. It's a significant improvement in everyway compared to my Wife's Pixel 7 Pro. It actually feels somewhat smaller than her but has significantly more batter life. I

The Camera has been great to me but I don't know enough about it to tell if it takes better pictures than the older models or other similarly priced phones. I really don't use much of the AI features as much of them feel like gimmicks.

 

[dferrantino]

My 4a5G is finally giving up the ghost. Is the 9 Pro worth the extra $200 over the base 9? Or am I going to be sufficiently sated by the massive upgrade from the 4a that it doesn't matter?

 

[BigLan]

I have the base 9 and it's been great. The base camera'a good enough for me but if you want the zoom canera or are into the Gemini AI stuff the Pro could be worth it.

 

[Tom the Melaniephile]

My 4a5G is finally giving up the ghost. Is the 9 Pro worth the extra $200 over the base 9? Or am I going to be sufficiently sated by the massive upgrade from the 4a that it doesn't matter?

If you have Fi service, current discount prices are $499/$599/$699 for 9, 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL.

Keep in mind that the size of the 9 Pro XL is basically the same as the prior Pro models (screen is 0.1" bigger than my 6 Pro). Non-XL 9 Pro is smaller, matching the base 9.

 

[Xanrael]

A couple months ago I upgraded from a Pixel 7 Pro to a Pixel 9 Pro, because I wanted to go back to the slightly smaller form factor, and because Google gave me a ridiculously good trade in ($540 for the 128 GB model, plus $200 store credit). As I expected, the camera is basically the same, and most other differences are pretty minor. Battery life is maybe better, but I work from home so I don't really ever worry about that.

Here's some random photos I've taken. Some of them have some digital zoom / cropping on top of the 5x zoom lens; this makes the camera struggle, especially in low light situations, but it's something I can carry on a run.

Spoiler

e: the forum compressed these - they have more detail in the source, especially the first one.

 

[Tom the Melaniephile]

Wow! That is a huge tradein value!

They only offered me $60 for a Pixel 6 Pro 256MB. That little and I decided keep it as a backup. Placed the order yesterday.

/me checks again

Goddammit. With the $400 discount Black Friday sale over, the tradein value is now $450! And they have a new $400 discount. Argh.

 

[Paladin]

Wow! That is a huge tradein value!

They only offered me $60 for a Pixel 6 Pro 256MB. That little and I decided keep it as a backup. Placed the order yesterday.

/me checks again

Goddammit. With the $400 discount Black Friday sale over, the tradein value is now $450! And they have a new $400 discount. Argh.

That sucks... time to cancel the order and place it again? Might as well. I waited on a new tablet until samsung was offering $350 for a tablet trade in that I paid $220 for originally plus a regular discount and an educator discount (wife is a teacher). Brought a $1400 tablet down to $450 or so.

I'm basically holding out for something similar on a new phone but the removal of the SD card feature from almost everything makes the new phones a lot less interesting to me until 256GB at least is the minimum default and 512GB-1TB is a reasonable upgrade. Most of the time it is still a $200-400 upgrade for $20-$40 of flash.

 

[emag]

If you're on T-Mobile (even ancient plans), they're offering the Pixel 9 + Buds (a) for free or the Pro/XL for the difference with trade in of phones dating back to the S9.

I got myself a Pixel 9 (non-Pro) and so far it's nice but not revolutionary compared with either my temporary Moto Edge 2024 (which was quite slow but fine apart from the camera) or my previous Pixel 6a (which was a bit slower and less premium, but got damaged). I haven't bothered to enable 120 Hz mode (off by default) and don't care about the AI features, so really the Pixel camera was the main impetus for my upgrade. I bought an ultrasonic-compatible glass screen protector from Amazon, but the fingerprint detection is quite poor -- thankfully face unlock works well with sufficient lighting (the Edge also had this).

After my Pixel 6a was smashed but before I bought the replacement(s), I had to go back to my iPhone SE1 (iPhone 6S SoC, iPhone 5/5S body) for a bit. And honestly, it still looks and feels like the idealized phone, even if the screen's comparatively tiny by modern standards. There have definitely been camera and SoC improvements since, but I think I'd be content with an iPhone 8 or 11 that had Pixel 6a photo quality (and up-to-date patches/software compatibility). Then again, my desktop is still a Haswell 4770k build from 2014, so what do I know?

 

[dferrantino]

My 4a5G is finally giving up the ghost. Is the 9 Pro worth the extra $200 over the base 9? Or am I going to be sufficiently sated by the massive upgrade from the 4a that it doesn't matter?

Base 9 was delivered yesterday. Super impressed with the transfer process. Popped my SIM in, booted up the phone, and in ~20 minutes had effectively a clone of my old device up and running. Wish I had taken the time to clean out unused apps, but I guess I'll do that "later".

 

[Demento]

There was an accidental deal stack over here where a 30% discount on all Pixel devices was valid at the same time as their enhanced trade-in value. (This was apparently unintentional, as they nuked the stack within 24 hours) So I upgraded a base 7 to a base 9 for £180. The trade-in was already more than I paid for the 7 in the first place.

Over all quite happy, particularly with the better battery life and being able to turn on 5G without it draining every electron. Screen is much, much brighter than the 7 in sunlight. But I hate, hate, hate the rounded corners. I know Android guidelines say to never put anything in the corner, but people ignore that all the time and there've been a few fullscreen ads that only have three pixels of the "close" button on screen.