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Google Pixel 9 Pro XL: Can a smartphone become your AI companion?
Summary
The Pixel 9 Pro XL is a big example of Google’s AI prowess, with features across photo-editing and transcription. Not all of them are useful, though
By the time you’re reading this, and if you’re interested in technology, chances are you’ve already caught wind of Google’s new phones going overboard on the keyword of this decade—artificial intelligence (AI). Launched earlier this month, the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL is the ultimate showcase of everything AI that Google has been working on, at least through its own apps and services.
While AI is no longer new, there’s no denying that much of humankind’s progress with AI is still at a very early stage. The Google Pixel 9 Pro XL betrays and befits this very hypothesis in nearly everything that you can do with the phone—it’s got AI in phone calls, cameras, overall performance and gaming, voice recordings, screenshots, wallpapers, and even in the nondescript ‘Weather’ app. But just like most first-generation technologies, the smorgasbord of AI coming at you on Google’s latest line of smartphones isn’t always necessary.
The question marks
One of the first question marks on the Google Pixel 9 series of phones is if AI is necessary in everything. For instance, the Weather app on the Pixel phones now has an AI overview that summarises and tells you what today’s weather will be like. This, to be sure, is a clear example of AI overreach, for the feature comes across as a forced addition without adding much value.
This feeling persists with many AI features on the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL. For instance, Google’s ‘Pixel Studio’ app, which makes an entry this year, feels like a playground that’s fun, but one that you’ll soon forget about. Sure, I can create various images with this app, but do I really need it? Not at all.
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Then, there are the more philosophical questions. Across forums and social media threads, conversations have risen about the ‘Reimagine’ feature in the Google Pixel 9 series’ photo editor. The latter appears in the Pixel 9 Pro XL’s ‘Magic Editor’ found within the Google Photos app. This time, Google’s AI prowess has improved enough for it to offer you a way to completely alter the scenery around you.
To use this, I tried editing a photo with individuals sitting on a sofa in a room amid considerable clutter, and with some clever use of the ‘Erase’ and ‘Reimagine’ features, turned it into the subjects sitting amid an edgy art exhibition with a naturally lit garden behind them. The result was uncanny and excellent, and made me question whether such features would be ‘healthy’, societally.
As it stands, we’re already teetering on the brink of tech-laden social pressures—in such a world, do we really need a photo editor to put ourselves in places we’ve never been to? Wouldn’t such features eventually end up being used by creators to put themselves in various locations to address fears of missing out? Or could it be a valuable tool for brand collabs? Could such features be misused?
The joys of innovation
While such double-edged questions have persisted with the progress of technology, there’s no denying that using the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL feels like actual progress. It’s a smartphone that you eventually start relying on heavily, especially for professions such as journalism.
There are many reasons for this. For instance, ‘Call notes’ on the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL is an excellent way to summarise phone calls (as long as they’re in English). The Pixel 9 series gets keywords and the crux of conversations right nearly seven out of 10 times—decent for a work-in-progress technology. This is true even for Indian accents of English. The feature also lets you quickly look up a phone call from the past and go through the subject.
The importance of such a feature cannot be stressed enough. For professionals, this can prove to be a lifesaver. Google’s live transcription feature in the ‘Recorder’ app has also improved drastically. It now recognises intricate words spoken with thick Indian accents accurately almost eight out of 10 times, and upon parallel comparison, the Gemini Nano model aboard the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL performs objectively better than the Google-powered transcription on Samsung’s latest Galaxy S and Z smartphones.
The ‘Add me’ feature in the Pixel camera app is nifty, too. Here, if there are only two of you, and you want a properly shot photo instead of a selfie, one of you can take a photo, and hand it over to the other by swapping places as the photographer. The result is the Pixel 9 Pro XL juxtaposing the two photos into one—as if someone else shot it for you. While many may speak about the social dissonance of such a feature, I personally found it to be super nifty—for introverts, this is a great way to take photos together without needing to request a stranger.
The camera benefits the most from all of Google’s AI—thanks to features such as video boost that improves overall video fidelity. ‘Auto frame’ in the Magic Editor feature helps correct photos to auto-centre already-shot photographs—yet another handy feature if your framing was askew.
Gemini, Google’s chatbot, now has memory and recall features. This lets you have a more natural conversation on any topic. If you subscribe to Google’s top-tier Google One plan, you get access to Gemini Advanced, which offers a smoother experience with longer memory. However, the limitations show up quickly enough—showcasing that Google’s Gemini experience is still an early-stage one.
There are, of course, concerns such as how much data would be shared with Google, and what that would mean for your digital footprint. But it’s important to note that if you’d want all the perks of modern-day generative AI, privacy would be at least a partial compromise. To be sure, almost none of the Pixel 9 Pro XL’s AI features work natively.
A reliable shift?
The Pixel 9 Pro XL is one of the first phones where it’s the AI, and not the overall specs, that define the phone and set it apart. As for conventional factors, the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL looks and feels sturdier and more premium thanks to a new, flat-edged design, more metal on the sides, and a new camera module that I found to be better-looking while being distinctly Pixel.
The new Tensor G4 processor, coupled with 33% more memory (at 16GB now), makes the Pixel 9 Pro XL feel super-fast at least in the first two weeks—one that’s good enough for occasional gaming at the top-most graphic settings. The cameras are as good as ever, and the easy-to-access ‘Pro’ mode is great for photography enthusiasts. It is, however, inconsistent in low-lit scenes, and betrays flickers in low-contrast scenes. The Pixel also produces below-par steady objects when shooting action, which is underwhelming.
But once you get used to the Pixel 9’s key AI features, it’s hard to see why you’d want any phone that doesn’t offer you at least this. Google, with its direct investments in AI, has an edge over most other smartphone brands. At present, it easily outperforms Samsung’s AI features, and Apple’s ‘Intelligence’ is not here yet.
The question, however, is if you’d want to spend ₹1,24,999 (nearly $1,500) on a smartphone lineup riddled with reliability issues in the past. While this is hard to answer with just two weeks of usage, the straight-up verdict is that the onslaught of AI is hard to ignore—and once you get used to living with it, it’s hard to live without the Pixel 9 Pro XL, too.
