Love it or hate it, AI features on a smartphone will only grow in number with time. And if it’s any indicator of how times are changing, even Apple, which has avoided taking any big strides for years (be it foldables, super high-resolution cameras, faster charging), has jumped aboard the AI (Apple Intelligence) train this year with iOS 18. I have been using Google’s newest member of the Pixel family, the Pixel 9 Pro XL, for a few weeks, and I must admit that its take on AI is impressive and starting to make some sense. Google’s push for running AI models also results in some much-needed hardware upgrades that we have been asking for years. Thanks to this, it turns out to be a very capable smartphone, even without its AI bits.

Google 9 Pro XL Review Design: Finally feels, just right

• Dimensions – 162.8mm x 76.6mm x 8.5mm
• Weight – 221g
• Durability – IP68 (dust and water)

“This feels like an iPhone,” said a non-techy friend of mine. While such a comment from an iPhone user does not validate the Pixel 9 Pro XL’s design, I do understand that some bits of this year’s Pro models do resemble an Apple iPhone.

The Google Pixel 9 Pro XL finally looks and feels like a high-end flagship should

From the flat sides of its aluminium frame to its bevelled edges to its flat back, the design is very iPhone-like and familiar. This is solely because Apple has used these design elements since the iPhone 12 (2020). If you look at it from the front, the only giveaway that it’s not an iPhone is that tiny selfie camera module embedded in its display (instead of a large, omnipresent capsule).

The rear camera module, which now appears like a flattened capsule, still protrudes quite a bit. And unlike the Pixel 9 Pro, which is a lot shorter, you cannot use it to support the phone (when you hold it up) as it’s too far up at the back.

While the mix of glass and metal lends it a very premium appearance, the overall finish of the edges of the frame, camera module and ports is the best I’ve seen on a Pixel smartphone to date and is way better than the iPhone 15 Pro Max, which had misaligned panels, sharp buttons and edges.

Fit and finish are top-notch, with no sharp edges around the ports, camera module and buttons

Despite adding a vapour chamber (VC) cooling system and maintaining the phone’s wireless charging capabilities, the Pixel manages to be as light as the titanium-clad iPhone 15 Pro Max and slimmer than the Pixel 8 Pro it replaces. It also comes with the usual IP68 rating, making it good for submersion in fresh water and sand. But it’s wise to keep in mind that damage due to submersion in water will not be covered under warranty.

Google 9 Pro XL Review Display: All about those rounded corners

• Display – 6.8-inch, 1,344 x 2,992 pixel, 1Hz – 120Hz
• Display Type – Flat, LTPO, OLED
• Display protection – Gorilla Glass Victus 2 (front and rear panels)

The new ‘Pro XL’ tag is basically a ‘Pro’ from previous years, so we have a slightly bigger display (on paper) compared to the older ‘Pro’ models to justify the ‘XL’ tag. It’s very bright (3,000 nits peak) under direct sunlight and can showcase natural-looking colours (with the Natural colour preset enabled in Settings).

While not as sharp as the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s display, it still does the job nicely. The under-display fingerprint reader finally gets upgraded to an ultrasonic one, which is very reliable compared to previous models. The selfie camera can also be used to securely unlock the device using (banking-grade) AI-based facial recognition, provided there is enough light.

The Pixel 9 Pro XL’s display is a huge upgrade in terms of brightness

The excessive curvature of the rounded corners, along with its skinny bezel, does lead to some wasted screen space, just like on iPhones. Google has pushed the status bar higher up towards the top edge of the selfie camera, and even then, there’s plenty of wasted space above it. This reduces the usable area of the 6.8-inch display to the 6.7-inch display which we have on the Pixel 8 Pro. In fact, even the Pixel 7 Pro’s display feels larger because it’s wider than the 8 Pro and the 9 Pro XL in terms of aspect ratio because of its sharper corners. Regardless, the well-spaced-out content does look nice in terms of aesthetics.

Google 9 Pro XL Review Software: AI or nothing

• Software – Pixel UI
• Version – Android 14
• Software commitment – 7 years of OS, security and Pixel Drop updates

Google’s commonly known Pixel UI remains the same as before visually but gets a very heavy dose of artificial intelligence (AI) features. The ‘Pro’-branded models, in particular, get more features over the standard Pixel 9 smartphone.

Add Me is a fun new feature that may seem gimmicky at first but is actually very useful. It’s one of the many features that may get you thinking about what’s fake and what’s real and whether you want to cross that line. It lets you add your humble self to that wedding photo even though you were not physically there with your friends in the said frame (or moment). Technically, it’s not cheating (even though it is fake) because you were present at the said moment (just behind the camera), but it will trigger that hidden guilt whenever you check the photo.

Pixel Screenshots are a nice way to organise and keep track of all your screenshots. If you have a habit of taking tons of screenshots, whether that’s to remember something, to use as evidence, or just to set the facts straight, this is going to be an excellent way to let you find details inside your screenshots and even pull out information from them at a later date.

Google’s Pixel Studio works quite well for an app that’s in beta

Another new feature circling this fake versus real debate is this fun tool called Pixel Studio. It’s still in beta, but it lets you be an artist and type or bring your artistic visions to life with zero effort. Need an edible dog that looks like cake? Done! A pizza made out of Oreo cookies? Done! A bridge on fire? Well… that’s where you begin to cross this tool’s limits. While initially accessible (when I received this review unit), Google has been actively placing and lifting limits on what you can or cannot generate.

Pixel Studio has some limitations which constantly keep on changing from time to time

Even something that’s borderline harmful to a human/animal will just not fly… for now. But at times, I do get a message saying that “the ability to edit human images is coming in the future”. At the same time, you can set the Gateway of India (Mumbai) on fire using the right words that don’t sound destructive. Google is also adding smart workarounds to reduce the gore, and at times, it will ignore some of the keywords in your request to make for a palatable image (like the puppies in the KFC carton above). Apple’s version of the same tool offers the same functionality but will only produce cartoon-like images and not realistic ones, and that somehow feels like a good safeguard to have in place.

However, there are two outcomes for this tool. Google handing out this free tool to the masses is going to result in a lot of internet junk, and it will, in some ways, make people rethink the need for a creative professional (at basic levels) in general.

The original image was captured by another smartphone

Auto Frame in the Photos app can use generative AI to imagine and expand on the original image

I changed the setting of the phone in the original image to a forest using the Reimagine tool in the Photos app

Reimagine is a new tool Google pushed out in the Photos app. It’s a powerful image editing tool that lets you reframe or completely change the background in a given photo while retaining the subjects. While the results may be a hit or a miss (because of output quality), you can end up with some convincing results. In fact, it’s hard to tell whether an image has been edited, as you can see from the above examples.

Zoom Enhance is yet another photo tool which uses the power of AI to “magically” enhance photos captured at 15-30X digital zoom by adding pixels and then sharpening an image. However, in my testing, I found that these results were slightly better than the original.

Gemini Live is indeed one of the biggest highlights of the new Pixel Pro models. Sadly, even as I write this review, Gemini Live is already available on other Samsung devices like our Galaxy Z Fold 6 review unit and will be coming to more with time. In short, it’s not exclusive to Pixel devices.

While it’s still not as smart as Open AI’s GPT-4o and cannot view (or take inputs from the camera app yet), it is supremely responsive while giving out answers. Not all of these results are necessarily accurate. In one conversation, it contradicted its own earlier answer in the second go and laughed about being incorrect as well in the first go.

Gemini Live is a very conversational AI-powered assistant but is not necessarily accurate

But the interesting bit here is the fact that you are conversing with an AI assistant in a very human-like manner. One of the biggest limitations of Gemini Live is that unlike Google Assistant or Gemini, it is indeed all about conversation and not actions. So, if you need to set an alarm, you need to use Gemini and not Gemini Live. I loved interacting with Gemini Live. However, I did not find it useful enough to warrant the Rs. 1,920 per month price tag for accessing it along with other Gemini Advanced add-ons once the 1-year free trial ends. Again, some of Gemini Live’s replies are based on US/EU data for some reason, especially when I asked for suggestions on buying products “in Mumbai” (or even “in India”).

AI also makes its way into other unexpected places. Like the weather app (AI weather report), Keep (generating all types of lists), and even for the new Car Crash Detection feature, which is available for Pixel 9 and 9 Pro series users in India. Satellite SOS, which was announced at launch, is only available to users located in the US for now.

Google 9 Pro XL Review Performance: Meh

• Processor – Google Tensor G4
• RAM – 16GB
• Storage – 256/512GB

Google Pixel 9 Pro XL may be big on AI, but it is nowhere close to the competition when it comes to raw performance. Premium flagships and even foldables like the Vivo X Fold 3 Pro are far ahead with Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC. Thankfully, the Pixel 9 Pro XL shows no signs of stuttering when browsing through the software interface or multitasking. The 16GB of RAM ensures that apps remain in memory and also helps greatly with the speed of accomplishing AI tasks or workloads.

The Pixel 9 Pro XL (right) looks very different compared to the Pixel 8 Pro (left) it replaces

While the VC cooling system ensures peak performance is not affected by factors like heat, gaming performance is still not up there with other premium flagships. This is because of the display’s slow touch sampling rate, which lags despite the new Adaptive Touch feature that automatically calibrates touch sensitivity depending on the environment activity. Usual touch interactions when browsing through the UI seem to work just fine.

With a new chip, more RAM and a VC system in place, I expected no hiccups when using the camera. Sadly, this is not the case, as the phone still chokes up after shooting 5 portrait photos back to back, which was also the case with the Pixel 8 Pro.

The device offers two speakers, which provide rich sound quality, but a lot of the heavy lifting is handled by the bottom speaker, which gets covered and muffled easily when playing games or when watching a video because of its placement.

Google 9 Pro XL Review Cameras: “Pixel” perfect?

• Main camera – 50-megapixel (OIS), f/1.6 aperture, AF
• Ultra-wide camera – 48-megapixel, 0.5X, f/1.7 aperture, AF
• Telephoto camera – 48-megapixel (OIS), 5X optical, f/2.8 aperture, AF
• Selfie camera – 42-megapixel, f/2.2 aperture, AF

The Pixel 9 Pro XL offers the slightly improved primary camera performance that arrived with the Pixel 8 Pro last year (tap image to expand)

The primary camera on the Pixel 9 Pro XL does a fine job of capturing detailed images with excellent dynamic range and sharpness. The colours appear balanced and very close to the real scene. Like in the past, the 2X magnification level is a digital crop of the primary sensor. But unlike the past, these photographs are very impressive.

2X (digital) zoom performance (shown here in dim light) has improved drastically and was a major pain point with the older Pixel Pro models (tap image to expand)

The Portrait mode even works well in low light or with strong backlighting, capturing images at 1.5X, 2X or 3X. What is a hit or a miss is the edge detection. As you can see in the images above and below, the edge detection may appear perfectly fine if you are lucky or an absolute mess if you aren’t.

Despite packing a 42-megapixel camera, the results from the Pixel 9 Pro XL don’t appear any different when compared to last year’s Pixel 8 Pro (tap image to expand)

When capturing selfies, edge detection suffers quite a bit, even when compared to the Pixel 8 Pro (which does a better job). Despite having a high-resolution sensor, the quality of images is quite similar, with minor gains in daylight and low light.

Google’s 5X telephoto camera captures sharp photos with good detail in all lighting conditions. But its zoom capabilities are decent till the next magnification level (10X), beyond which image quality isn’t impressive. You can use the new Zoom Enhance AI sharpening tool in the Photos app to enhance these blurry images captured at 15X or 30X, but despite improving the overall quality, these aren’t game-changing.

The ultra-wide camera manages slightly soft images in daylight with some blown-out highlights and purple-fringing. This is not the case with the Pixel 8 Pro. In low light, there’s more detail (especially in the darker areas) visible in the Pixel 9 Pro XL’s photos.

An ultra-wide camera sample from the Pixel 9 Pro XL under artificial light (tap to expand image)

The Google Pixel 9 Pro XL’s primary camera captures an impressive level of detail in low light (tap image to expand)

2X digital zoom has improved compared to previous models (tap image to expand)

The telephoto camera snaps some impressive photos in low light at its native 5X zoom (tap image to expand)

Video quality benefits a lot from the new VC cooling system, so this does not result in automatic downscaling or quality drops because it just does not get as hot as the older Pixels did.

When recording the video, I did find the resolved detail on the Pixel 8 Pro to be better than the softer and brighter visuals of the 9 Pro XL. The noise was present in low light or street-lit conditions, but the overall quality was just fine. It’s still nowhere near the rock-steady frame rates of the iPhone 15 Pro Max, especially when panning or walking. But all of this is tolerable because Video Boost is here to save the day.

Video Boost actually went live with the Pixel 8 Pro post-launch. Having the review unit with me for a while, I did not find all the results useful, and they somehow did not seem very impressive. But all of this changes with the Pixel 9 Pro XL.

With the Pixel 9 Pro series, Google claims to have improved video rendering, making it twice as fast as last year. Moreover, there’s even 8K upscaling support along with HDR+. Video boost improves clarity (removes noise), boosts contrast and colours and stabilises the video overall, making for smoother panning movements. It even does this for footage captured in low light (Night Sight Video), resulting in noise-free footage. 

The whole problem with Video Boost is that one has to wait for the processing to happen, and there is no approximate time duration provided for when the boosted video will be ready either.

Google 9 Pro XL Review Battery: Meets expectations… For a Pixel

• Battery capacity – 5,060mAh
• Charging rate – 45W
• Wireless charging – 23W

I did not expect many changes to the phone’s battery life, given the meagre 10mAh bump over the previous model. Our video loop battery life test also managed just 12 hours and 19 minutes, which is lower than last year’s Pixel 8 Pro. With heavy usage, which involved shooting photos, video, and some calls, the phone just managed to deliver a day of usage that touched 18 percent by the end of the work day. All in all, this is fine for Pixel, but it is still a one-day smartphone and far behind the competition.

The phone took 1 hour and 30 minutes when I plugged it into my 65W GaN charger. Google claims that the 45W charging rate can only be achieved by plugging it into its proprietary charger, which sadly is not on sale in India.

Google 9 Pro XL Verdict

Priced at Rs. 1,24,999 for the base 256GB variant and Rs. 1,39,999 for the 512GB variant, Google’s Pixel 9 Pro XL, in terms of hardware, is basically the top-end Pro model we wanted to see last year. Instead, all we got was a Pixel 8 Pro, which was hard to recommend as it was not a big improvement over the Pixel 7 Pro it attempted to replace.

While this year’s Pixel 9 Pro XL is not as advanced as Samsung or Vivo’s flagships in terms of raw performance and hardware, it’s packed with AI features that can literally change the way you work or even exist socially. Google pitches these AI features as “helpful” or “time-saving” when getting a variety of things done, but it does cross a few lines in its quest to impress users. The Pixel 9 Pro XL surely builds a strong case for why AI features should exist on a smartphone, but owners can choose to use them and live with them or ignore them.

This is because this year’s Pixel Pro also feels far more premium than any of the previous models and takes care of some major hardware pain points that have plagued Google’s devices for years, like heat management, a brighter display, and the list goes on. Battery life is not the best in the business, and Gemini Advanced features come at a premium price. But I can see many Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 7 Pro users and even some curious iPhone owners instantly upgrading to one because there’s finally a Pixel that gets a lot of things right.