- Fantastic cameras
- Much improved battery
- Seven years of software support
- More expensive than last year
- AI features are inconsistent
- Processor isn't as powerful as rivals
If you're an Android fan who cares about photography, the Pixel 9 Pro XL is the phone to buy. The Pixel family has always had a good track record with cameras, and a best-in-class ultra-wide lens a new selfie camera further solidifies this.
What's just as important is Google has addressed some of the shortcomings from previous models, like underwhelming battery life, making the Pixel 9 Pro XL easier to recommend. If you want Android's best camera phone, you don't have to make the same kind of compromises you have had to in previous years.
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Stating the obvious
So as you might have gathered from my headline and the opening paragraphs, the Pixel 9 Pro XL camera setup is great.
The primary camera is pretty much unchanged from last year, but the new chipset means you'll get night mode shots a second or two faster. When it comes to night mode photos, you're getting brighter images than what the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro take, but slightly less detailed. I found low light photos from Samsung's Galaxy S24 Ultra's primary could also have more fine details, but were prone to weird colour distortions and artifacting.
The Pixel 9 Pro XL also has a more reliable 5x zoom lens than the Galaxy S24 Ultra thanks to a faster aperture. It's just that little bit easier to get the shot you actually want on the first try.
Similarly, the new ultra-wide lens is awfully zippy for a secondary camera. It has a faster aperture than last year's model, helping with low-light performance and getting macro images of moving subjects - like flowers swaying in the breeze.
An upgraded selfie camera is the other major change, with Google moving to a much higher resolution 42MP camera. Images are downscaled to 10MP, but the phone consistently takes a good-looking selfie in most environments. Low-light environments can make images a bit soft, however.
All in all, the Pixel 9 Pro XL delivers a reliable photography experience across every camera. No matter which lens you're shooting with, you're more likely to get the shot you want.
Pixel 9 Pro XL camera samples
Check out these camera samples taken on the Pixe 9 Pro XL. Click or tap on any photo to see a larger version.
Obviously there's also AI camera stuff to touch on, and a lot of it is unchanged from previous years. You've got features like Best Take which let you pull different facial expressions from different photos into a single shot and the Magic Editor which is effectively baby's first Photoshop.
There are a few new features too. In addition to being able to resize or erase parts of photos, Magic Editor can now generate entirely new elements via prompts. While Google intends you to use this for whimsy - adding rainbows into your background, for example - it's very easy to misuse. There are some guardrails where the software will refuse to follow through on a prompt, but tweaking your wording can be enough to get around it. It didn't take much to make it look like my dog had a drug problem.
The silver lining is the results look pretty bad. Whether you're removing an element, resizing one, or adding something new, it's normally pretty easy to tell a photo has been manipulated. But if someone isn't paying attention, you might be able to trick them. While you can say Photoshop has allowed this for decades, Google has made this kind of tech more accessible than ever.
The other new key feature is Add Me, which is designed for faking group shots when there's no one else to snap the photo. One person takes the photo, then swaps with another person who takes a second. The Pixel combines these into a single image, making it look like everyone was in the photo. Results can be pretty inconsistent, and more importantly, the act feels unnatural. It's weird being in a photo pretending to stand next to your friends. But hey, maybe the awkward feeling in the moment won't matter five years down the line when you're looking at the pic.
A battery that finally lasts
The Pixel 9 Pro XL's most meaningful upgrade is an improved battery life. While the physical battery capacity hasn't changed, a more efficient chipset means you'll get a bit more longevity out of the phone.
In my testing, I was able to get around five hours of screen time per charge while solely using 5G for connectivity. That's a full day of moderate usage with a healthy buffer. Last year, I was maxing out at four-and-a-half with the Pixel 8 Pro.
That might not seem like a huge improvement, but it should be enough to keep most from getting into the sub-20% danger zone. If you're regularly using WiFI, expect a longer battery life of around six hours of screen time per charge instead.
While the improved battery is welcome, the Pixel 8 Pro XL still lags behind the competition. The iPhone 15 is easily able to get six hours of screen time per charge, while the iPhone 15 Pro Max takes this to seven hours. The Galaxy S24 Ultra can also comfortably do six hours of screen time per charge when testing on 5G networks.
Outside of better battery efficiency, the new Tensor G4 chipset that powers the Pixel 9 family doesn't bring too many changes. Google's headline figures for it were "20% faster web browsing" and "17% faster app launching". This is par for the course for Google; it has often talked about how its chipsets are optimised for AI features rather than "speeds and feeds".
And look, I can't fault performance on the Pixel 9 Pro XL. It's as snappy as you'd expect a phone in this price bracket to be, and is more than capable of handling demanding video games. At the same time, Google's approach to its chipsets means there's a growing delta between what the best phones from Apple and Samsung are capable of and what Pixel is capable of. You're not getting advanced features like ray tracing here, for example, which both Apple and Samsung have made a big deal about in their most releases.
Sure, the way a phone renders light in games is only going to matter to a small subset of users, but it's an example of how Google simply isn't pushing its mobile hardware in the way the competition is. This would be easier to forgive if the Pixel 9 Pro XL wasn't priced in line with its rivals. The new $1,849 asking price means it's impossible to not see it as competing with the best of the best.
As with last year's Pixel 8 family, Google is promising seven years of operating system upgrades, security updates, and feature drops. That's a best-in-class promise, but Samsung recently matched it with the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 6.
High-end hardware
I feel like I say this every year, but the Pixel 9 Pro XL is once again that little bit nicer, finish-wise, when compared to last year's model. Google has been doing a job when it comes to making its phones feel increasingly premium.
This time around, the Pixel 9 Pro XL represents the biggest redesign to Google's phones since the Pixel 6. Google has abandoned curved edges for a squared-off aesthetic, and while the camera bar is no less subtle, it feels a little cleaner now that it's contained in its own little island. In a way, the Pixel 9 Pro XL feels like a bizarro iPhone 15 Pro Max. They look almost the same from the front, it's just the cameras on the back that are different.
While the Pixel 9 Pro XL has a matte back that's pretty good at masking fingerprints, Google has opted for a polished frame for some reason. If you're not using a case, it gets very smudgy very quickly.
Aesthetics aside, the Pixel 9 Pro XL is a little bit larger thanks to a new 6.8-inch screen. The screen is also brighter, and easily Google's best to date. It almost goes toe-to-toe with the Galaxy S24 Ultra, which is a big step up from where Google was a few years ago.
If you're not a fan of the larger size, there's a new smaller Pixel 9 Pro with a 6.3-inch screen. It's the same size as the standard Pixel 9, but with the camera configuration, RAM, and design elements found on the Pixel 9 Pro XL.
One small change worth calling out is the Pixel 9 Pro XL doesn't have mmWave connectivity in Australia. Previous Pro Pixel models had been the only phones to launch in Australia supporting the superfast 5G frequency. While mmWave coverage is scant, it is worth noting if you're upgrading from a previous Pro and it's something you've come to expect. If you really want mmWave support on your phone for whatever reason, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is the only phone in this year's family to have it in Australia.
AI overpromises
AI has been central to the Pixel pitch over the last few years, and Google has really doubled down with the Pixel 9. Out of the box, Google Assistant has been replaced with Gemini, and this is being touted as A Big Deal.
Gemini is Google's answer to ChatGPT, and it’s a key marketing bullet point for the Pixel 9 family. On Google's store, every model is branded as "Pixel 9 Pro XL with Gemini", for example. Google really wants you to know these phones have AI.
Google's naturally made some pretty lofty promises alongside this, but these rarely live up to the reality. In a briefing, it suggested you could show Gemini a concert poster and ask if you're free that night. When I attempted that, it told me there was simply no way to tell if I was free, because there were no dates in the poster.
To be fair, I inputted the same poster a few days later and it worked it out, but Gemini wasn't able to fulfil the second part of the equation. Gemini refuses to tell me anything about my calendars.
I've got calendars from a work Gmail and a personal Exchange account on my Pixel 9 Pro XL, and Gemini can't tell me anything about either. Gemini specifically requires you to give it extra permissions to access accounts, and my organisation doesn't seem to allow this for my work account (fair!) and I'm not surprised that it won't work with my Exchange account.
The fact Gemini needs to hook into your email directly is a pretty steep restriction. Without specifically enabling the interaction on a per-account basis, Gemini can't even tell you if you've got meetings coming up. That's a big step backward. Siri on my iPhone can tell me anything about any calendar I've got on my phone, no extra steps needed.
Gemini also can't do many of the things you'd expect from an assistant, like setting a timer, playing a song on Spotify, or checking the weather. You can flick on a setting that allows Gemini to fall back to Google Assistant for features like timers and weather, but Spotify won't work at all. In fact, Gemini I even suggested I get YouTube Music instead.
There's also the big issue with generative AI and its tendency to straight-up lie. In my time playing with Gemini, I've encountered silly things like it telling me pizza has one "z" to more egregious issues like making up discounts that don't exist on mobile plans. Gemini does consistently display a warning that information may be wrong, but it's insane to me that Google considers this to be a good enough measure.
If for whatever reason you're really into Gemini, spending an extra $32.99 per month for Google One AI Premium (which also includes 2TB of Google Drive storage) gets you a more conversational version of Google's chatbot. Dubbed Gemini Live, this take on Gemini lets you chat to the AI without retriggering it. It's certainly a novel experience, but it's not the kind of thing I'd pay for. If you pick up a Pixel 9 Pro XL, you will get one year of Google One AI Premium for free, however, so you're still able to try it out.
If you couldn't tell, I'm a generative AI sceptic. It doesn't do enough to be valuable right now, it undermines creatives, and the way models have been trained is sketchy at best. But even when you put aside these concerns, Gemini isn't ready to be centre stage in the Pixel family. The decision to ship the Pixel 9 family with Gemini as the default assistant feels more about shareholder value than it does about users.
There are a few other new AI features worth calling out. The first is Pixel Studio, which is an AI image generator on your phone. It's certainly there, and it consistently generates average-looking images. Outside of the initial novelty, I don't know why this exists.
Screenshots, the second, is a little more interesting. As the name might suggest, Screenshots is an app for keeping track of all of the screenshots you take. The idea is that if you take a screenshot of something important - say the access code to an Airbnb or a particularly good deal on a phone - the Screenshots app makes it easy to find.
What's a little weirder is that it's entirely siloed. Gemini can't currently access it, and you won't have the same searchability if you're looking at your screenshots in the Photos app. And as an AI feature, Screenshots can miscategorise things. I wanted to find a screenshot of a deal I saved, and while the app surfaced that, it also included several unrelated memes in the results. It's a much lower-stakes area for AI to get things wrong in however.
Google Pixel 9 Pro XL - Final Thoughts
As it stands, you've got two options if you're considering a flagship Android phone in Australia: Samsung and Google. Samsung has Google beat on processing power and an edge in display quality and battery life, but Google is the clear winner for camera.
This isn't to say that the Pixel 9 Pro XL has bad performance or a subpar display, but the main reason to pick it as your phone of choice is the calibre of images the phone can take. Given our phones are often our primary cameras, I'd always pick the device with the better camera, even if it means making other trade-offs.
That might not be the case for everyone, but at the very least, those trade-offs are mostly smaller than ever with the Pixel 9 Pro XL. The battery life might not be as good as the competition, but it's now at the point where it's a lot more reliable. The industrial design might not quite be Samsung level, but you can't say the Pixel 9 Pro XL isn't a slick phone. The processor isn't as powerful as what Apple and Samsung are doing, but that won't make a practical difference for most.
Given the marketing, it is worth touching on the AI features again. I haven't found them meaningful, but this is the same trend we're seeing everywhere right now. This isn't just a Google problem. But no matter what the device, I wouldn't buy it because of AI promises. If you do, disappointment is inevitable when hype meets reality. And for what it's worth, Google's had some of the more useful AI features like transcription and translation long before the current generative AI boom.
It would definitely be more exciting to say that the Pixel 9 Pro XL was a massive leap forward in battery, or that Gemini was life-changing, or that the latest Tensor chipset schooled the competition. That's not the case, but at the very least, the Pixel 9 Pro XL is a solid phone with excellent cameras, and honestly, that's more than enough.
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