So the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro actually went on sale yesterday, which means I've now had about eighteen hours with one sitting in my pocket instead of just reading spec sheets. I preordered the Pro the day after the Made by Google event a couple weeks back, mostly because my Pixel 7 has started randomly rebooting when it gets warm, and I didn't want to be shopping for a phone in a panic the day it finally dies for good.
First thing: the price. $999 for the Pixel 9 Pro, and the base Pixel 9 starts at $799 now instead of $699. That's a hundred bucks more than last year for the base model, and nobody at the store could give me a straight answer about why beyond "it's a better phone." Maybe it is! But I remember when the whole pitch of the Pixel line was "flagship camera, not flagship price," and that pitch is getting harder to make every year.
The hardware itself is fine, honestly kind of boring in a good way. Flat sides now instead of the curvy Pixel 6/7/8 shape, which I actually prefer, it sits flatter on a desk and doesn't rock when you tap the screen. Tensor G4 feels noticeably snappier than the G3 in day to day stuff, apps open faster, the camera app doesn't have that half-second hang before it's ready to shoot. Small thing, but I take a lot of pictures of my dog mid-jump and missing the shot because the camera app was still loading has been a genuine, if minor, source of household frustration.
About the AI stuff
Every single feature at the announcement got a Gemini label slapped on it, and I get why from a marketing standpoint, but it's starting to feel like the word "Gemini" has replaced the word "Google" in about half the settings menu. There's Gemini Live, Gemini in Messages, Gemini this, Gemini that. I don't hate the underlying tech, I just think there's a point where rebranding everything under one AI umbrella stops feeling like coherence and starts feeling like the marketing team ran out of restraint.
The one feature that actually got a genuine laugh out of me was "Add Me." You take a group photo, then the person who was holding the camera swaps in and the phone shoots a second photo and blends the two together so everyone's in the shot, including whoever was taking it. I tried it last night with my sister and her kids at dinner, and it worked better than I expected honestly, the seam where it stitches the two exposures together is basically invisible unless you're really hunting for it on a 12 inch monitor. Is it something I'll use every week? Probably not. But as a party trick it earned its keep for one evening.
Pixel Screenshots, the thing that automatically organizes and lets you search through every screenshot you take, is the feature I think I'll actually keep using. I have something like 4,000 screenshots on my old phone that are essentially unsearchable garbage at this point, a graveyard of receipts and memes and half-remembered recipe photos. Having something index that mess automatically is more useful to me day to day than most of the flashier demo stuff.
Battery life so far seems okay, not great, not bad. Made it from 7am to about 11pm yesterday with maybe 25% left, moderate use, a couple of phone calls, a lot of Slack. I'll know more in a week once the "everything is fresh and I'm poking at every new feature" phase wears off and it settles into normal use.
One complaint that has nothing to do with the phone itself: the Google Store checkout process still asks me to confirm my shipping address about four separate times during a single order, and I don't know why that hasn't been fixed in the, what, six phone launches I've now bought through them. Small thing. Sticks with me anyway.
Anyway. Seven years of OS and security updates promised on this one, up from the previous commitment, which if Google actually holds to it is a genuinely bigger deal long term than any single camera feature. Ask me again in 2031 whether they kept their word.