So the box is supposedly on a truck somewhere right now. I preordered the Pixel 9 Pro the day Google announced it, August 13th, sitting in the parking lot during my kid's dentist appointment, thumb-typing through the checkout flow because I didn't want to wait until I got home and lose my nerve. $999 plus tax, on a phone that mostly does the same stuff my current phone does. It's supposed to land on my porch tomorrow and I keep checking the tracking number like its going to tell me something new.
I dont really need it. My Pixel 7 Pro still works fine - battery life has gotten worse, sure, and the camera app crashes maybe once a week for no reason I can find, but it makes calls, it takes photos, it runs the three apps I actually use daily. The honest reason I bought the new one is that Googles trade-in credit expires if you wait, and also I have a weird compulsion around new hardware that I dont fully understand about myself. My wife pointed out, not unkindly, that I do this every August like its a seasonal allergy.
The event itself was fine. Gemini this, Gemini that, a folding phone that costs $1,799 which is genuinely a wild number to say out loud, a new watch. I actually liked the Pixel Watch 3 in the 45mm size, the display gets noticeably brighter than the old one, but then I looked up replacement bands and they want $49 for a piece of woven nylon, and I closed the tab. I have a drawer at home with maybe eleven watch bands in it from three different watches and I could not tell you which one fits what.
Anyway the bigger thing sitting in my head this week isnt really the phone. A friend of mine works at Cisco, on the networking hardware side, and Cisco announced last week theyre cutting about 5,900 jobs, roughly 7 percent of the company, on top of the layoffs they already did back in February. Hes fine, his team wasnt touched, but he described the vibe in the office as "everyone doing math in their head during meetings," which is a phrase Ive been turning over since he said it. Its strange to be spending a thousand dollars on a phone in the same week a company that size is cutting that many people. Not because the two things are actually connected. Theyre not. But theyre both just sitting in the news at the same time and my brain wont stop noticing.
I dont have a tidy point to make about layoffs and phone upgrades sharing a news cycle. Its just what August looks like right now, apparently - a bunch of companies trimming down while the rest of the industry keeps shipping shinier boxes for the rest of us to buy. Ciscos framing was the usual reinvesting-in-AI-and-security language, which is the exact same phrase every company uses right now regardless of what theyre actually doing. Ive started treating "reinvesting in AI" in a layoff announcement the way I treat "with a heavy heart" - filler you skip past to get to the actual number.
The phone will probably be great. Pixel phones usually are, for about fourteen months, until the next one comes out and I feel that same itch again. Ill do a real writeup once its actually in my hands instead of theoretically on a truck somewhere between here and a warehouse - camera comparisons, whether the Gemini stuff is actually useful day to day or just a demo trick, all of it. For now Im mostly annoyed at myself for how predictable I am about this, and a little distracted by a friends dry joke about meeting-math that I cant stop thinking about.