Google Pixel 9 Review
Finally The Pixel For EveryoneThe Google Pixel 9 is as close to the ideal Android iPhone experience as one can fathom right now. If Apple phones are the gold standard on how to harmonize hardware and software for a satisfying user experience, then the Pixel 9 is now nearly at that level.
I don’t say that lightly, but the base Pixel 9 provides what I feel is immense immersive value for Android users that is hard to find anywhere else including from Samsung. Sure we can find holes to pick at like everyone else when it comes to Google phones, yet after 9 generations of refining, I might just be content to say that the Pixel 9 is close to my perfect Android phone.
In recent years, the #TeamPixel program had sent us Pixel Pro models to review. It’s been a few years since we reviewed the smaller Pixel. You may have heard about all the drama regarding that program (which we did not receive or were contacted regarding the Pixel 9 terms and condition agreement), but this year I decided to jump back into my roots as a small Android phone reviewer and purchased the Pixel 9 for our publication to review.
Purchase Price: $799
Team Pixel Controversy
While we’re on the Team Pixel subject, I just wanted to clear the air as lots of other publications and YouTubers were also called out unfairly by the program amidst the backlash. When the program first started (in which Sypnotix was one of the first batch of producers asked to join), we were explicitly told that the program was also viewed as an expanded review platform for publications and YouTubers alike.
Our writers and staff at the Sypnotix have never considered ourselves as content creators. Who are we fooling, we stink at making engaging content for Gen Z’ers to binge. We’ve always made straight forward opinionated review content for our audience to use as a means to decide whether a product is right for them to spend their hard earned money. We’ve participated in activities like the Google NBA video challenges, but those were by no means sponsored content.
Fast forward to 2024 when the program publicly changed the narrative and claimed that all of the Team Pixel members were content creators and should not be considered unbiased reviewers like their “A-Tier” program who were the real reviewers, we weren’t too happy with that statement. We have not been in contact or received any further statements from Team Pixel after the debacle, although we will not rule out partaking in the program again in the future if there happens to be structural change. Our publication has always reserved the right to full editorial control and has never let any OEM dictate our content prior or after publishing and that will never change.
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6.3 inch 1080 × 2424p
OLED display
120 Hz Refresh Rate
Android 15/ 7 Updates
Tensor G4 CPU
12 GB ram
128 GB of storage
4,700 mAh battery
In-Display fingerprint sensor
Terrific Battery Life
Anyway, I purchased the Pixel 9 mainly due to my weariness of running with a large honking phone for a majority of the year in the form of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6. Yearning for a one handed experience again, the Pixel 9 graced my life at a surprisingly optimal time. Through the last few months, my life has been completely flipped upside down with Lida’s hospitalization and the birth of our son. Most of the hours in my days were spent away from the studio and instead spent at the hospital. My companion in this trying time was none other than the Pixel 9. Let me tell you just how satisfied I am at the job this phone did to get me by each day.
Pixel 9 provides terrific battery life
Since I spent more time away from home everyday while reviewing the Pixel 9, I got a chance to really test out the battery life. Color me extremely impressed with what I was able to get out of the 4700 mAh battery. There were days where I was able to get 5 to 6 hours of screen on time and still have the phone off one charge until I returned home 15 to 17 hours later.
27W wired charging was also quite handy in getting juice back into the phone when I needed to get on the move in short intervals. There were times where I got home and plugged the Pixel in while I took a shower. The phone can get 55% back in less than 30 minutes. In the early days of the Pixel line, I wouldn’t ever claim that a Pixel had good battery life. In fact, they barely eked out a full workday for me. Clearly there has been a substantial improvement as my workflow on phones has not decreased. If anything it's gotten more substantial in power consumption with my growing list of modern applications. I’m very happy with the battery life of the base Pixel.
Added Benefits
Pixel owners get free access to VPN by Google
Performance
Now for the rest of the smartphone experience, I’m not going to exaggerate and say that anything else is superb. Everything else is at least slightly above average though which still makes for a terrific experience. Let’s talk about the performance behind the Google Tensor G4 SoC as it seems every year, Google’s proprietary chip is always highly contested for whether it's actually competent. My model has 12 GB of ram and 128 GB of storage for the base configuration. 12 GB of ram is a nice pillar to support the G4 as all models have 12 GB by default.
With everyday usage, I really can’t tell much of a performance drop off from Qualcomm’s flagship chipset competition. I’ve seen the occasional hiccup where an app closes by itself, or the freeze frame stutter that resolves itself after a couple of seconds. I’ve also had that happen on Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 phones I’ve reviewed so I don’t necessarily correlate that to a Tensor issue more so than an Android 15 blip. If you put the Pixel 9 next to a competitor with Qualcomm’s flagship, you likely will see a slight difference in speed, but like I mentioned earlier, in everyday use where you don’t have a comparison next to you, it's absolutely negligible.
I’ve spent a lot of hours with Pokemon TCG Pocket, streamed the video feed of my child’s Cradlewise crib camera in the background, and even used my phone to stream Netflix for once. The Pixel 9 has sustained everything I’ve thrown at it in an effective and satisfying manner. So while on paper this phone isn’t close to being the most powerful output of performance on the benchmark sheets, I find it plenty capable on the real life marker.
The smaller Pixel features a 6.3 inch, 1080 x 2424p display. At a 20:9 aspect ratio, this OLED screen packs in 422 ppi. That’s pretty respectable as the display gets decently bright and is sharp to look at for media and entertainment purposes. At a 120 hz refresh rate, the Pixel 9’s screen is just about what you’d expect from a phone on the market nowadays. I thought the size of the display is comfortable for one handed usage while maintaining enough of a wide canvas to view videos and articles in a natural format. It’s not too narrow of a viewing experience and I think it gets the job done.
Pixel Camera
It wouldn’t be a Pixel experience without some native Google experiments thrown onto their flagship phones. This year, the company is really pushing this Add Me photo taking feature in their marketing material. It essentially uses the camera to take two simultaneous pictures with different people in each shot to piece them together into one photo using AI. Factor this in with other instant quick fix photo editing features that allow you to remove people from the background, swap faces between pictures, and un-blurring blurry messes, and on paper a Pixel phone makes photography feel easy.
All of these features function relatively successfully. Whether the results are convincing will depend on the user and how picky they are with what they see. All I can say is that I’ve been around for many of these implementations as they’ve come out from Google and I am amazed at just how quickly they are refined year to year. They’re still far from perfect and often times will not give you what you want to see, but they’re quickly gaining ground so that I can actually fathom that someone with absolutely no skill set in photography can eventually take a photo and post it on Instagram that people might think was taken on a DSLR using an expensive lens. I really believe that with the way AI is evolving, that won’t be a crazy statement to hear before the end of this decade.
Shot on the Google Pixel 9
As far as camera quality goes, the Pixel 9 is pretty much what we’ve come to expect out of a Google phone. The 50 MP f/1.7 wide camera and the 48 MP f/1.7 ultrawide sensor share a spot together on the phone’s rear camera bar. They both do a good job of picking up exposure no matter what scenario the user finds themself taking a picture under.
The Pixel 9’s AI algorithm does a good job of feigning a bokeh focal result, but as with previous generations, there are frames where the phone struggles to determine what to focus on and what to artificially defocus. What I’ve come to see is that by taking multiple pictures of the same frame, I was able to at least hit one or two photos that were nearly perfect with its determination of how to implement bokeh.
It’s consistently fair to say year to year that no matter which Pixel phone in the lineup you buy, the camera results rank pretty highly for smartphones on the market. I don’t know if I would say they produce the best pictures on the market as there still is a bit of subjectiveness in personal taste especially for the processing of the images, but they do rank in the top tier for sure.
Build Material
I purchased the Peony color which is as pink as it gets for a smartphone. I like phones that stand out so I do appreciate Google’s color palette expansion over the years. There definitely is a premium touch and feel to the Pixel 9 that makes the phone feel like a flagship device. An aluminum frame holds two sheets of Gorilla Glass Victus 2. The phone is comfy to hold in the hand thanks to the solid frame contributing to the grip. I haven’t been a fan of the enlarged camera bar hump that the Google designers have zeroed in on since the Pixel 6. The bar has gotten thicker and more protruding every single year since. I will say that the rounded chamfered structure does look better than the visor appearance of previous generations, but this is a phone that definitely requires a case at all times.
Final Thoughts
The Pixel 9 is a refined product that gets an unfair reputation with enthusiasts of the genre. It’s not a phone that is meant to compete on the benchmarks. It’s a phone that you can drop into anyone’s hands regardless of identity and experience. Even if you remove all of the hashtag marketing terms like Gemini AI and Pixel Drops, the phone itself is absolutely a solid offering from a hardware and software perspective that belongs in the mass consumer market.
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