I hit the button and then it said Daniel started recording and I was like, wow, it's like he must have hit it by like half a second faster. Okay, my gigabit is actually faster than your gigabit. It's the Canadian aspect of it. It's just like, it's kilometers per second. Hello and welcome to the Android Police podcast. My name is Daniel Bader. I'm Will Sattleberg. And this week on the show, it's all about Pixel. We have the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro, XL, and we are eagerly, impatiently, awaiting for the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, which none of us have yet, but I can see it. It's right there through the internet. I feel like sometimes we're coy, but like, no, for real, we don't have it. For real, we don't have it. For real, we really want it. But what we do have this week, which is even better than a foldable phone from Google, a second generation foldable from Google, is Android Police's editor-in-chief, James Packham. Welcome back to the show. How are you doing? Hello. I'm good, thank you. Second time in three weeks is, as well. It wasn't on the bus. It's a terrible trend that I do not like to be clear to all of our listeners. I feel encroached upon. I feel teamed up on. You're going to start talking about loss, and I'm not going to be able to follow you. I had made a pact with myself that I was going to not bring up loss. I was like, it's not fair to Daniel. It's two on one. If we get Michael Fisher on this show, it would be three against one. I mean, it really does prove that Daniel's opinion is bad. I like those odds only because I host the show, so I could just cut off your microphones if that happens. Oh, that's true. Yeah, I'm drunk with power. What's going on here? No, James, I'm so glad to have you back. This is a better show with you on it. So we're going to make an absolute effort to... I mean, it's really just about us getting up early is what it is. So maybe in that week between daylight savings when you're only four hours behind us or ahead of us, then we can have you on every week. It'll just be a beautiful time. A little two-week period. It's weird. That's a weird two-week period every year. I don't understand it. Okay, this week. So you, James, reviewed the Pixel 9. Well, you reviewed the Pixel 9 Pro. I am reviewing the Pixel 9 Pro XL. Let's talk about them. Yeah. I think James, we'll start with you mainly because this is the biggest surprise from all of our perspectives. I think every review I've read has been like, "Okay." Yeah, Google really did get it right this year. You gave it a nine out of 10. You said it's one of the best kind of... I don't know, it's not a budget flagship. It's $800, but it feels like you're just getting your money's worth more this year than you ever have before, even though it's $100 more, which you did mention in the review. So give us sort of your summary of your thoughts on the phone. Yeah, I love it. I really, really love it. It's $100 more. That is probably the one reason it only got a nine out of 10. It could have been higher there. The big three line of my review is, I just don't know if I need a pro phone anymore from this. This is pretty much the entire package. There are a couple of small things that I would probably miss. If I were buying one of these phones, I don't know if I would spend the extra $200 to go into the pro territory there. The design is just so much nicer than previous generations. I think the design tweaks are relatively minimal, but they all amount to a much nicer, more premium feeling product. Generally, there are still a couple of irksome elements that we will jump into. I know Will's going to talk about some of them, and that seems to be the case on the actual nine as well. But they've really got the design down now. The display is way better than the Pixel 8 display. I would say you obviously aren't getting the LTPO. I would let you do on the nine pro or the nine pro XL. I'm honestly not sure if that would matter enough to me for that extra $200. Obviously, all three phones have the same problem with the Android 14 element. The fact we're not getting Android 15 straight off the bat with these is a genuine shame, and I'm really sad about that. Okay, I have a hot take on this. Yeah. I have a hot take on this, but I won't interrupt you. I'll wait until I have a free few minutes to talk about it, but go ahead, continue. Yeah, Tensor is much better than previously. Still behind Snapdragon. Generally, I think all three of us are agreed on that. Just a huge improvement this year across all three phones from our testing. And the camera is just fantastic. The only thing I'm really missing is telephoto, but obviously it comes with super zoom elements. So those are making up a lot of the difference there. Couple of small elements that I'm really, really a bit disappointed in. I still think 128 gigabytes of storage on these basic phones. For these sort of prices, I think is a bit of a letdown. I wanted Google to step up a gear there, but the RAM did get an upgrade this year. You can't buy an 8 gigabyte version of any of the Pixel 9s. Yeah, those are my main takeaways. The $100, as I say, if it was, if it weren't for the extra $100 there, I would have potentially even got a bit higher in my review scoring, if I'm honest. So yeah, I agree with you on everything except the 128. I don't think the 128 is a bad thing on the $800 phone. I think that's fair, right? I wouldn't expect Google to put 256. What I think is more egregious, or is egregious, is that they don't do that for the $1,000 phones, right? Yeah, very true. Well, it's a real problem when, and let me just check here, I'm seeing that AI Core is taking up 4.5 gigabytes on main pixel 9 Pro. So that's like a big chunk of what is not actually 120 gigabytes, right? Because like Android takes up like 15 of that. If we're going to dive headfirst into on-device AI, like, yeah, I agree that in the same way that Google is addressing the memory issue, they also need to be like here. We're going to make up for the fact that we're, you're going to take up a bunch of space for these AI features. Is that connected to the Pixel Studio stuff that you have? It's had to download when you first see it as well. Definitely connected to Pixel Studio, and it's definitely connected to what else do I have to download? Do I have to download something for screenshots? Maybe? I don't remember. Yeah, I mean, there's two models. You have to download one for screenshots. Well, I think it's a variation of the same thing, right? You're downloading nano, but what I wasn't sure about is, if I, when I opened Studio for the first time and I downloaded the model, I still had to download a model separately when I opened screenshots. And I wasn't clear about like, is it a different element of nano? Is it just re-downloading the same thing? Yeah. Because ostensibly, Gemini Nano is multimodal. It's a single model that encompasses everything. But I mean, that's the other part too, is you have no choice. These are system apps. You cannot install them. And if you want to use them, you have to download the model, which is locally stored on your phone. So you get much less than 128 gigs of storage to begin with anyway, if you want to partake in Google's little AI experiment. So not a great experience. I agree with you. It's just like, I wouldn't expect Google to put 256 gigs of memory on a $799 phone. But I also think you're right. Like, phones 10 years ago came with 120 gigs of storage. It's not that expensive. Storage is cheap. You should be starting at 256. I think I'm like done making that. I do think like we should just move up to it. The 8a should be 128 gigabytes. That makes sense to me. I think the second you hit $800, it's like, all right, like you need to give me a little more storage than what you're offering me. Because it's, I don't know, I guess their answer would be like, well, you get a year's worth of two terabytes of last storage with the pros. But yeah, it doesn't. Do you though with the with the with the pros with the pros? Yeah, with the pros. Yeah, but no, James is still James is that a lot. Yeah, I don't get any of those any of those benefits. Yeah, especially with all of the AI stuff. It just it was just something that was a little bit of some to me in that way. But the I am very much near picking it. This is this is pretty much, as I say, I think it is generally the full package. There are obviously a few things that have really highlights on the nine pro and the nine pro excel. But if I were sitting down to buy a new phone today, I genuinely don't know if I would go for the top 10 package. I think I would probably sit in this sort of area. I took my Pixel seven out of storage yesterday and like held it next to the nine. And it's great. Like the leap in two years and like quality and just fit and finish in general is like astounding. Like the Pixel seven feel like a rough draft at this point. Like you brush your finger over the side of it. You forget that like the metal rail around the Pixel seven was like lifted when you would drag your finger for like the back gesture. It hit that rail every time and it feels so unrefined compared to what we have now. Yeah, and conversely, and I wrote this in my review, I feel like the Pixel eight was underappreciated for just how much of a leap between seven and eight. Not by me. Google made. I appreciated it. You appreciated it. You were a lone voice. I was in the night. Yeah, exactly. It was the one person who was shouting into the void. Manuel did. Manuel did as well. Manuel, he's just all pixelated. He doesn't work here anymore. So he doesn't count. But if he's listening, Manuel, we miss you. Yeah, we miss you. And we are still active and fun. We should upload Manuel's Slack chatbot programming into chat GPT and like actually build an AI Manuel. That would be a nice. All right, all right. Little project. Daniel, are you, are you just angling to replace all of us with AI? Not, not for like who's writing on the site, but in Slack or in podcast forums. In consciousness. Well, I'm not, I don't want you to write copy. That will, that will always be bad. Yes. But I want to talk to an AI. You want like, I've been, I've been talking to Gemini live a lot this week. I have so many feelings about this future that we are like stumbling into. This is a real thing. Like I was doing the recycling. I was breaking down boxes last night in my backyard, just like getting, getting everything ready. So that often takes me 15, 20 minutes, because we have a lot of boxes. And I spoke to Gemini the entire time. I made an effort to have a conversation with Gemini live. And it was kind of amazing. Like actually incredible. I had a conversation where, I mean, it could have been lying to me. It's possible, but it felt like a conversation with a human. Yeah. And it was one of those moments, kind of like what I wrote with the, the Pixel screenshots app, where I was like, I don't love this for what it is today, but I can see where this is going. And this is like the first inkling of, okay, I get it. I'm in. And it's weird to be optimistic about AI. That's just a weird place to be for me. I didn't think I would get here, nor did I think I would get here so quickly. But I'm here. And I genuinely think this is a good tool. I've been using Gemini way more than I thought I would be. Anyway, that's later in the show. But Pixel 9 Pro, this was like your baby Will. This is the thing that you wanted to review from day one. I think both of you tried to be like in Will's reviewing the XL. And I both times was like, I really don't want to. Please don't make me. You were so excited about this phone. Yeah, I was still am. I still am excited about it. I'm excited that it is sitting next to me and is my daily driver. And I'm dreading the day. I have to switch to a different phone to review, to be honest. Okay, so walk us through it. $9.99 is a $200 more. Is it worth it? Yeah, it's as Google will be quick to tell you, it's the same price as the Pixel 8 Pro, which is a dumb way to explain that they gave the XL a price hike and try to hide that. But whatever, it's just like every review I feel like has made the iPhone comparison for all of these phones really. But it is very the iPhone of Android. I guess Pixel has always kind of tried to be that. And it is very much that now. I feel like this is the first time where the Pixel's design has been as premium as its main competitors in Apple and Samsung. I actually think that this feels more premium than the hardware Samsung has put out. This year, which I have found a little unrefined. Like both of my main Samsung review units have had weird issues with the SIM tray. And this just feels like a lot of care was put into designing it, even down to the fact that it has these flat edges that bleed into the front and back glass. So it's not a single sharp corner on this phone, right? Like it is both modern and comfortable to hold even without a case. I feel like this has been divisive among like people on the internet. I really like the camera bump redesign. I think that it is identifiable, but also looks a lot more modern than what was on previous phones. The display is like, I don't know what else I would ask for in a display. It is very bright, it is fast, it is LTPO. So it ratchets down to one Hertz when it needs to. It doesn't have the 37 want charging that the XL has. I think that's a little frustrating and Tensor is like very much not a chip made for gaming. And you can feel that. And Daniel, you can rant about Android gaming maybe later if you want to. But it kind of fixed the problems I had with like the 8 Pro, which is one that phone was really big. And like I wanted what it offers, the power and the telephoto camera, right? Like the premium experience in a smaller package fixes that. Although it's not like a tiny phone. Like it is big. It just feels right. So that's fixed. It's, oh god, I'm losing my train of thought. This is how you know I wrote a 6,000 murder view of what I'm trying to say. And you're not even finished. Oh god, don't remind me. Oh, it's Tensor is like fixed. This phone gets like normal warm, not what is happening warm. And the battery is like great and seems to only be getting better. The longer I use it, like it was good out of the box. And like in typical pixel fashion is like a week into using it is like adapting, right? Like that's what they want to call it. So I don't know. Like I just it ends up with a phone that doesn't feel compromised. Which like even I would say the Pixel 8, you had to make a couple of compromises to get what I thought was like the best way to experience Android. And on this one, it's like they fixed pretty much every hardware issue I would have had in the past to be like, no, like this is the way to experience Android. I'm sorry to one plus. I'm sorry to Samsung. I'm sorry to every other OEM. But like this feels like a complete package in a way that like previous. In a year where you didn't get the software. Well, like it's. I don't know. It's coming. I know it's coming. It's just odd that you're. So I wrote and we're saying that you can jump in as well. But like with whatever his hot take is, but like, yes, I am my only real concern about the fact that this is launching with Android 14 is that like they're going to wiesel out of delivering a full seven OS updates that like like over the seven years, right? They'll be like, oh, it's two months short in 2031, which is a problem that like most people who buy this phone will not run into the update to the Pixel 13 or whatever before that, right? But like that is really my only concern with it in terms of like, you know, if you're an early adopter, the nine prone particular is still a couple of weeks away. The nine and the pro excel are available today as we're recording this. But certainly as you're listening to this early adopters buying the phone. If the thing that you're excited about is opening a new phone and seeing new software features, like those are here like you do get that experience. It's just a matter of the new OS version is not here. Let's hear the hot take down here. I'll get to the hot take in a second, but I want to talk about Tensor because TensorG4 is not the thing that's going to save Google's performance deficit, right? Like I think we all know this. It's not considerably faster. And it's like basically the same chip in terms of performance. It's just more efficient. Right. So it's 11% faster than the TensorG3 in single core, six and a half percent in multi core, which is not that's not a lot. No, it's kind of a difference here. And the reason it's lower in multi core, because it actually loses a core compared to the G3. The difference is that the improvements to arms cores. So the cortex X4 in the TensorG4 is more efficient than the cortex X3 in the TensorG3. There are newer cortex A cores in the mid and kind of budget range for workload. Google just inherited those improvements from arm. They did absolutely no other improvement to efficiency. And that is basically okay, because it's enough to get over the hump of this phone overheating, particularly when it comes to GPU, because the GPU is considerably improved compared to the G3. So GPU performance is better. CPU performance is not really, but the cores are more efficient. You're not going to overheat as easily. There's better sustained graphics performance across the chip. So even though, well, you didn't get incredible graphics performance, it's still like the GPU still half the speed of the adreno inside the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3. It doesn't matter really unless you are really giving it. It's like a very taxing work. No, I mean, that was my takeaway, unless you were like a die hard dedicated Android gamer. Like, that is what you do on your phone most days in like the top task. Like, I don't think it's something anyone has to worry about. Like, I saw not great performance from like Pokemon Go, which was not even the game I was going to test it with. It's just a game I've been playing this summer. And like, it was like, well, if it's not performing well here, I can kind of predict how Genshin's going to run. I'm still going to install it over the weekend and play through the same tutorial I've played through a hundred times, but like generally speaking, like, yeah, it'll do fine, but it's just not a gaming phone. And like, it's weird to say that because like the complaint about gaming phones has always been that like every smartphone is a gaming phone to a certain extent, but like, except for this one. This one's kind of not going back a second. There are sustained rumors that the Tensor G5 will be manufactured by TSMC with its new three nanometer process that Apple is taking advantage of with the A series chips. That's going to happen next year, massive performance and efficiency improvements, et cetera, et cetera, right. They apparently Google wanted to bring some of that over to the Tensor G4, but they couldn't get it. Android Authority said that this is a Tensor G3 plus, right? I think that's fair, but what's unclear is whether Google took advantage of Samsung's improved four nanometer fabrication process, which would yield additional efficiency benefits just on top of the core improvements. So we're not sure it does seem like that because I haven't seen the phone over heat once since I've used it. And I've used it in the, you know, playing games out in the sun kind of thing. And benchmarked it very heavily. Like this is not going to melt your hands away that the first couple Tensor phones did. That said, the A, whatever 19 bionic, what are they at now? A 16 bionic that's coming soon with the iPhone. Like that will be a much more efficient, faster chip than this. The Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 or whatever they end up calling it will be a much faster, more efficient chip than this. Google's debuting its new chip right before Apple and Qualcomm do the same thing for the following year. So as good as this is, it's nowhere close to what those chips are going to offer, particularly because Qualcomm is expected to move its, its mobile chips over to the Orion. They said that that's happening. That's, that's, they announced that I want to say last year. Like, yeah, yeah, they announced something like we're not sure what exactly that will look like in terms of cores. But think about how successful the Windows on ARM transition has been so far and bring that down to mobile where Qualcomm has been basically a market leader for over a decade. And I think this is going to embarrass Google. Like it won't because Google doesn't give a shit, but it will also, like if you're actually comparing apples to apples, it will embarrass Google more than it already has. So keeping that in mind, you don't buy this phone for the performance. And I'll, I'll read you what I wrote in my review because I think like it's important for people who are buying this phone to really consider this. In day to day usage, this phone runs cool and long, affably handing any and all tasks get thrown it from browsing to media consumption to gaming. Google has to find the, design the phone to do all of these things admirably well, but it's no gaming phone. And we know that Qualcomm will add substantial performance improvements to the Snapdragon agent for. But I think the most important thing here is that with the way I use my phone is for straightforward things, right? I open Slack, I open Chrome, open YouTube, I use Kindle, I use Google Photos, I use Libby. I play a few games that are not taxing on my phone. You open Slack again and then again and then again and then again until I die a little bit inside. But I said here, I've always enjoyed using Pixel phones more than any other Android phone for these quotidian delights, the little things. The fact that the phone launches apps really fast, that it does not glitch in places where other phones glitch, except for when it does, but that's a separate conversation. And like this phone has not diminished that feeling. In fact, it's enhanced this feeling for me and like that's enough. Yeah. And I don't think Google needs to apologize for that decision, even if a lot of reviewers and critics are going to point to the fact that this is objectively a much slower device than a lot of the competition. So, okay, here's my hot take. My hot take is that Google was right to launch Android 14 on this thing because it's a mature OS that is bug free. Okay. Like, yes, they could have pushed it and launched Android 15 with it. I think that what they're doing is seeing all the shit that they got up to with the Tensor based phones in previous years and they're like, nope. Android 14 is a year old. It is completely mature. It is almost bug free. It's been through almost every single software and performance improvement you can think of. We want a stable platform on which to launch these new phones so that no reviewers can complain that this thing is buggy. Right. We'll complain in October. Exactly. But then by then it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. People have already bought the phones. Exactly. But in reality, I actually think that's why they did it. And I think that was the right decision. Probably. Because Android 14 is stable. It's stable now in the way that it wasn't 10 months ago. Yeah. So you're saying I should not update my phone. Ever for the 70s. No. I mean, that's that's yeah. I it is. I guess a hot take. I haven't I haven't seen it elsewhere. I'm sure it's I'm just probably somewhere. But yeah, no, that's a that's a really good point. I did I wrote this thing on Monday before I sat down to write my review, mostly so I wouldn't have to write it in the review because it's long enough as it is to be like, I still feel the same way. I felt six months ago when I was frustrated with the state of pixels constantly having bugs. I brought that piece six months ago about how inconsistent the experience is and how it's difficult to recommend when I don't know if you are going to get the same. You the person listening to this is going to get the same experience. I saw or vice versa. I'm going to have a bad time and you might have a perfectly fine phone out of the box. Launching Android 14 if the reasoning you have Daniel is correct is like a good way to at least try to improve that. I still think they need to like the next six months of this phone needs to be bug free like major bug free. It's it's fine if you know, like, oh, like there's an app crashing. We patched it after a few days or whatever like it can't be. Sorry that your display is glitching leaving the phone unusable. Here's a list of adb commands you can push while we work on the next monthly patch. Like it can't be that. Yeah, that's what's so unacceptable is that it's it's almost like the opposite, right? It's like we have to review the phones we have today rather than the phones that may glitch out in six months and the phone in front of me. Like that's what's always been frustrating to me about Pixel is that more than other phones is that the phone in front of me is working great. How do I know you're not going to open it and it's going to yours is going to either have like a bad data transfer from your phone? Like some app gets bugged up in the background and is now like draining 80% of your battery at per hour or whatever. Like I don't know what's going to happen in a way that like I've never had that issue with like a Samsung phone moving from a Samsung phone to another one and it's frustrating. Like that's it needs to be flawless. And I think they're working on it because like these phones have like improved data transfer tools, not that that's the only issue, but like that has been a thing in the past. Like I think they're aware of it. It's just a matter of them pulling it off successfully. Yeah. And Android 15 is like such a slim update this time. I really, really hope that we're not we're going to get a bug free update. Who knows? But like it is small. Like really what are the main takeaways from that? The private space stuff is probably like the most consumer facing feature. I will say the listeners who don't really know about that. It's a place where you can hide secret apps on your phone. So if anyone's using your handset, they're not able to find it unless you enter like a specific thing code. That's probably the most consumer friendly feature. Everything else is quite small. It's a couple of changes to pass keys, some side by side stuff for the Pixel tablet. But it is going to be a slim update when it does eventually land as well. Yeah. And I think most Android versions change more behind the scenes than and client side these days. Yeah. And there are a lot of new APIs, satellite support is required. The satellite support that is coming to the Pixel 9 will not launch until Android 15 because it's not baked into Android 14. It's there for me. I woke up to a notification saying it was live. Oh, okay. Interesting. I guess Android 15. Everyone live this morning? Yeah, we're live this morning. That was, uh, that was. Oh, weird. Okay. Yeah. Android 15 definitely like makes changes and improvements to it. Yes. But I wasn't sure it was in there. At least on the nine series, it's ready to go as of today. The reviewer's guide, this is like inside baseball, I guess. But the reviewer's guide had a section for it. And it was like, it's not launching until the 22nd. Okay. Cool. Yeah. And I think James, to your point, the fact that they've had 4.2 betas. There've been a lot of betas where they've been testing this since February. It's now the end of August. I don't think they're in any rush to release this. And I am increasingly seeing Rick Osterlo putting features ahead of platform. Yeah. Yeah. You know, that's his big thing. He wants the pixels to benefit from Google rather than Android. And Android just happens to be the foundation on which all of these run. But I think he thinks of Android as a fairly stable platform that does not need platform updates in order to push major changes in a way that we see it on iOS. And that's been happening for a long time now as Google's moved some things to the play services. And has back ported libraries like Jetpack that allows you to bring newer features to older devices without platform updates. Google has largely solved a lot of this fragmentation. But I think we as longtime Android users still get hung up on, does my phone run the latest version of Android? And like, I did this yesterday. I have a motor eraser plus and I checked for an update. It's still on the June 2024 patch and I'm like, oh, Moto's at it again, hasn't updated its phones. And I'm like, but it's running relatively recent software and it's running stably. Should I really care? Yeah. I mean, the issue with that comes when it's like the razor launched a year ago. And now it's getting Android 14. And especially because like Motorola changed a bunch of stuff from their Android 13 to Android 14 build. So like, there were differences between those platforms and like things that were missing that were on the new razor that were not on the old razor. It's purely because it had not gotten an Android 14 update. But like, no, it's interesting to talk about Google. Like, I think you're right. I think we need to realize that the Pixel team is thinking of Android the way that Samsung thinks of Android, which is not. Yes, that's exactly right. Like, and it has to. Yeah, no, it does. And it's a smart way to think about it because minus tech tips put out this video this week that I did not watch, but did see the like reaction to of people being mad that he was like, it's stuck Android is unusable while using a GSI build. But there's no money importing all of their pixel exclusive visions back into AOSP. But like, the true answer is that there is no stock Android anymore. Like no phone runs stock Android at all. Like the pixel. I'm sorry. I just want to cut in here. I don't trust blonde Linus. I was like, Hmm, I don't know if I can watch this guy. It is weird. It's weird. I do. It's like, I'm a bald guy. I should be jealous of anybody with hair. But I don't know. I just I can't. I can't get in. He's just he's just entering a new era. It's just like how pop stars do that. That's that's what this is. It's a new album cycle. I guess. Okay. This is a this is a completely side note in James. I'm sure if you've listened to this, you've heard many times us going off the rails. We are always on topic. I don't know what you're talking about. So my YouTube feed yesterday was all pixel, right? And randomly unbox therapy was in my feed. And I was like, Oh, I haven't watched unbox therapy in in years. So I opened his profile and his most popular video ever is from nine years ago when he bent the iPhone six plus remember this. And I was like, Oh, I haven't watched this in forever. And I watched it. And it's just so fascinating thinking how far we've come since 2014 when Apple released a what was it like a six point one inch or six point three inch phone. And it was enormous. And also so poorly engineered that you could bend it at the point right below the buttons. In three, two, one. Now, am I the incredible Hulk? Am I a body builder, guys? Am I a regular dude? And that it had this whole cycle of people trying to like get their phones replaced because it was breaking in their pockets. You have been so broken by us calling the six point three inch display on the pixel nine pro small that you're forgetting that the six and six plus were four point seven and five point five inches. Are you kidding me? You're you're joking me right now. I was like, Oh, no, no, I'm wrong. There's six point seven inches. Nope. I'm on the Wikipedia. I had to go make sure I'm on the Wikipedia page. That is insane to me. You're right. Yes. It's true. Although to be fair, back then they were 16 by nine panels. So they were slightly wider. The phones were bigger. Yes. And it was coming from four inch displays on the iPhone five and five S and five C. So like it felt significantly larger, especially the five point five one, which, but I mean, that was my that was one of the things I said. And it's where the title of my review came from. But I was like, after a day of switching from like six point seven or six point eight inch phones to the six point three inch phone, which is like fairly significantly larger than the pixel eight last year, like this phone doesn't feel small. It just feels right. Like I don't feel like there's any task on this display size on the six point three inch model that I cannot do that I could do on the six point eight inch phone, right? Like there's no, it's just a device that fits better in my pocket. Like maybe maybe we went a little too extreme. And I understand that like the market has spoken. They love six point seven and six point eight and six point nine inch phone displays, but like, I don't feel like. Okay, but I go ahead. I actually have like a check for you here. Okay. Because yes, it was a five and a half inch phone, but I just looked it up. The iPhone six plus was a taller and wider phone than the Pixel nine pro. I believe that because of the bezels on top. No, I totally believe that, but my point is that like, I'm thinking more about like modern phones, right? Like I have the S 24 ultra, which is a huge screen. And it's like, yes. Am I really that much better at managing a spreadsheet on that versus the pixel nine pro? Does the additional like half an inch or so make that big of a difference? There is a space here for foldables, right? Like I think going up from this to the nine pro fold, right, which offers the same screen size on the front, but then a much larger interior screen like that makes sense to me. But in terms of like watching a video or doing productivity work, like I do not I at no point using going back to a quote unquote small pixel that I feel like I'm really missing out on this big screen experience. Like and I have like fairly large hands and like I have always like since I got a smartphone have pushed forward. I'm like, I want to use whatever is like the biggest screen I can get my hands on. Like we're talking about 2014, right? The iPhone six, like the Nexus six launched a month after these phones. Remember how big that was the boat. I had it. It was huge. Although I bet if you looked up the dimensions of that, I bet it's like pretty similar. I bet it's smaller than the pixel nine pro excel. Oh, I'm sure it is. Yeah, it is. Yeah, I don't know. Like I just think maybe it's time with considering that we are down to like zero bezel that we just dial it back a little bit, just a little bit on like the vast majority of phones. Well, I'm going to say I'm going to talk about the pixel nine XL pro excel here because you know, I've been using an iPhone 15 pro max for the, you know, vast majority of the year. Yeah, send your hate to folks. Bring it on guys. I've gone back and forth right. I have used the pixel a pro a little bit. Yeah. I use the one plus open like I've used most of the Android phones that have been released this year, including the S 24 ultra, which I've said many times on the show. Like I just straight up did not like it's too big. I agree that it's a big phone, but I still get more out of these bigger screens than I do. Like I get more out of out of it compared to the downsides of having to wrangle a giant phone in my pocket, if that makes sense. Yeah. I don't want to open spreadsheets on a phone, but when I do, I prefer it on a bigger screen. That's why you get the foldable. Yeah, we should get you a phoneable. Well, I will. I mean, once I get the nine pro fold, I think I'll just stick that one in my pocket and keep it if I can. Going back to what I was saying about like reviewing the phone that I have in front of me. I've never had major software issues with a pixel, except for maybe like the pixel three, those early days with the pixel three Excel when it was just like self-destructing and like nobody could get it to work properly. This phone, I think is the best Android phone I've ever used straight up. It's so far a delightful experience. It's worked. Everything has worked. Like there's nothing that I can point to in my seven days with it so far that I can be like, this is a worse experience than any other phone that I've used recently. I've loved the camera. I don't like the camera on the iPhone 15 Pro Max, especially when taking photos of people. It's just like, I don't like the way it looks. They always look too processed to me. The pixel takes incredible photos of people. Captures movement. The macro on this phone is out of control. Like it's as good as the Xiaomi 13 Pro, which I think had the best macro on any phone basically ever. It's easy to forget. Like every time I come back to like a new pixel flagship, I like forget how much I like it, how easy it makes taking photos where I look at it. And I'm like, oh wow, that looks better than I thought I would. Or like I show Maddie and she's like, wow, that turned out really well. It's the processing mostly, I guess, right? Because like, well, I get the ultrawide is like slightly tweaked this year, but like otherwise these are the lenses that were on the eight Pro. But I don't know, like there's something about it. The only complaint is that sometimes I'm like, oh, I wish they hadn't gotten rid of how contrasty that shot was. And like you can bring it back. You just need to go into the edit tab. But yeah, like I genuinely forget sometimes until I'm like back with like a, like a, and I haven't used a pixel, like a Pro pixel as a daily driver in like months because the summer, the summer in particular has been like jumping from one review to another. And so it's like to go back to it and be like, right, like, this makes me look like such a better photographer than I am. I've not taken a single bad shot throughout the entire week with mine. Like everything has turned out. I'm really happy. Everything has turned out good to fantastic. Even just, I know there's no real change to it this year, but playing around with portrait mode a little bit more just made me realize maybe how good portrait is on pixel as well. I was just playing around with it just for five minutes and was like, yeah, this is the best, I think. It's so much better at getting like the individual whiskers or like stray hair on my cats than like the iPhone is like it's night and like it's like the only portrait mode that I would actually want to use because it can actually do what it's supposed to do without you like looking at it and being like, oh, you can see where it got messed up in the corner here, like whatever, right? Like it's really good at what it does. I will criticize the portrait mode a little bit. So James, I'm looking at the photos that you've taken with of your cats. And by the way, your cats are stunning. Like you all have to go to James's review because what's the black cat? What's their name? - Toast. - Host. - Toast like like the-- - Oh, toast. - T-O-A-S-T. - Yeah. - This is how we know it wasn't Daniel doing a British accent two weeks ago. I was like, post? - Post? - Post? - What is post? - That is toasty. Like you can see that the portrait mode is blurring the edges. - The whiskers are on the one side. - Oh, yeah. - Did good. - And like it's not perfect, right? The top whiskers are cut off a little bit, but it's much better than it was. And it's perfectly usable. And the fact that the cat, like the face is so sharp, I think makes up for it. And you can always dial back in post the blur to bring back some of the detail that's been lost if you want to. But that's the thing I find with the Pixel is that you just get such detail, such sharpness. - Yeah. - And like I think the lens that it uses is so good that you can get really nice bokeh without enabling portrait mode and not lose anything really. So like I always find I prefer the Pixel main camera to any other phone. I prefer the telephoto to basically any other phone. I don't really use the ultra wide very much, but I appreciate that Google improved the sensor this year. It's a bigger sensor. It's a wider aperture. And that allows for a much closer and higher quality macro mode as well. The front-facing camera has been improved as well. It's 42 megapixel sensor still does autofocus. It's a wider field of view than before. It's 103 degrees on the Pro series. So without any AI shenanigans, this is just a better camera experience. And Google said that it's redesigned the HDR pipeline from start to finish so that photos are processed more naturally. And I don't know how much credence to give that. I haven't noticed a huge improvement over the 8 Pro. Nor do I know whether this is built on the TensorG4 or whether they can backport those HDR pipeline improvements to the previous generations of pixels. But all I know is that I take genuinely great photos with the 9 series without messing with AI at all. And unfortunately, Google isn't really talking much about that. It's leaning a lot more on the AI features than it probably should given what those features do or don't do. But let's actually talk about that a little bit. Real quick, I just want to say that I did throw you guys. It's not my review, but I threw you guys a portrait image in our Slack group chat that shows the whiskers that I was talking about that I was much more. I know this is what you guys to think I'm crazy. Yeah, this was portrait. That's excellent. Yeah, it did. It really got Linus's not from tech tips and not named after tech tips. Same hair color though. Same hair color. Named after Linus Caldwell and Ocean's 11 and also Ben Linus from Lost. I'm sorry, it's kind of... Yes, it's happening. Depends on if you ask me or Matty, but the story. Anyway, I think it did a great job on the whiskers though, on the shot. I should put it in my updated review next week. Okay, so just like little things, before we move on to software and AI, I just want to just close the loop on hardware. So I found the speakers to be slightly better this year than the Pixel 8 Pro. Haptics are still excellent and stop me if you have opinions. The fingerprint sensor, ultrasonic this year. I never had a problem with the previous optical sensor, but I... I thought they were slower than the competition. Face unlocked last year definitely helped fix that. Like, you really only noticed at night or if you were in sunglasses that the fingerprint sensor was still slow. I know some people don't like ultrasonic sensors. I don't have a problem with them and this one is much faster than last year. So it's good. Like, it's up to par with what's on like Samsung phones. Agreed. The only thing is every case manufacturer that I've talked to so far is like, we're not happy with this change because our screen protectors are not going to work well. And the margins on screen protectors are probably even higher than they are on cases for them. So I don't feel bad necessarily, but it's interesting, right? It's just much more challenging to create a screen protector that works with an ultrasonic. Yeah, so microphones are really good. Like, the fundamentals are there, the modem. So I haven't... I don't talk to people on the phone. So maybe you guys have more of a take on this, but like, the modem is better. We know that it's a more efficient, more feature-rich part from Samsung. It's the Exynos 5400 baseband chip. So have you guys had a noticeable improvement? Not really, but like, I've never had like where I live. First of all, I'm on Wi-Fi all the time. And secondly, even when I'm not, I've never really had any issues on T-Mobile in my area. I'm going on a trip this weekend to a more remote location. We'll see how it holds up there. It's just a tricky thing to test unless you bring up 10 phones with you and you're just bouncing your SIM card back and forth. I guess not 10, but you need to at least have like a Snapdragon phone that you're like bouncing back and forth with. Like, my guess would be that like a Qualcomm-made modem is still better because that's just kind of like universe overall. Like, there's a reason Apple never implemented its own modem into the iPhone. Do you enable Wi-Fi calling? Only if it's on out of the box. I never dive in to do it. I also am not making a lot of phone calls, to be perfectly honest. Let's see if it's on, actually. It's off for me, by the way. I normally put it on. I haven't so far for this. I did a few phone calls from an island that I went to for a wedding this weekend. And that was, I don't really know what normal signal I would get there. So it was quite hard to tell, but I didn't have any issues at all to be fair from any of that connection. So I'd say that's positive, but I've also never really visited that place before. So it's hard to tell whether it's an upgrade or not. Oh, so this was the first time you visited your new private island. Yeah, my new private island. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Docking the yacht was quite difficult, but I think I had a process now. Well, only because the super yacht was in the way. Okay, guys, this is too soon, too soon. I'm like, cringing. I did have, I do have Wi-Fi calling on. I didn't turn it on, so it must have either been when I moved over from my pixel 8A, or it was just on by default, I don't know, for me. Okay, we have to talk about AI, because we are running out of time, and that is the story of this phone, and it's such a mixed bag. I feel like the most criticism-heavy reviews I've read have been centered around AI features. Yeah, I think a lot of the conclusions of many of these reviews have been by the phone, in spite of not because of AI. And I fully agree with that, because I mean, I think I said this last week, Daniel, who knows what I said a week ago, frankly, because we were exhausted. It was the day of the event in your hotel room. But I think I said that AI is clearly going to be things that are small, helpful features, not image generation, and the sooner that companies like Google and Apple figure that out, the better we will be. And a week of using Pixel Studio and exchanging examples of some pretty terrible shit with other reviewers has cemented that not only should they not have shipped this, but they should get it off phones. I fully think it was a mistake to launch Pixel Studio and make it a big marquee feature. I think they're excused. Go read Joe Marring's piece of digital trends on some of the truly terrible stuff you can generate with Pixel Studio. But the quote from Google and that piece is, "Oh, well, we're just giving users the freedom to do what they want, and if they generate Elmo in a school shooting scenario, like, who are we to judge?" And it's like, no, you made the tool, though. Like, it's your tool. You should either put guardrails on it, and then at a certain point, they're going to have to put so many guardrails on it that it's going to be useless, effectively useless, or you should not ship it. Right? And I think that's, I just don't see the benefit of having this application be a marquee AI feature when I feel like the tide turned on AI generated imagery two years ago, pretty quickly into it being a concept that everybody knew about. And I don't think the tide is going to turn back. So I think it's kind of a waste of effort, and on top of it, it sucks. Like, I don't know, like, the only thing I've used it for outside of seeing what kind of horrendous stuff it can generate is sharing ironically bad AI generated content. Like, I'm being, like, Google's pitch is like, you can make your own AI event invites, and aren't you excited to stop using 10-year-old memes? And it's like, all I'm doing is looking for like the worst kind of, not like, not like offensively bad. I can do that. But like, how much can I annoy the group chat by instead of responding with like a message dropping like a terrible generated thing from Pixel Studio? And the answer is like, this is going to amuse me for like two or three more days, and that I'm never going to open Pixel Studio again. Yeah. And the same with the reimagined feature, I think as well. So reimagined the same sort of thing, but on top of your own imagery. So if you go to my review, I've got a few silly examples of, I tried to put Godzilla into a picturesque little town. The only good example I've seen, to be honest, is Godzilla's example, and even then. And as you pointed out, they still got the hands wrong, even though it's Godzilla, the hands are still wrong. The Verge did a very similar sort of thing in the last couple of days, but it's quite easy to force this tool to do something that's clearly against terms of service and Google's policies multiple times. I just probably did the prompt about five times, and one of those attempts, it would work. It's not a difficult thing to get around in that way. I didn't manage anything. It will tell you it won't generate humans, and then it will eventually generate humans. Like you can get it to do it. It's not an impossible task. So it and it's the same with like, it doesn't want to make copyrighted. Actually, at first, it seemed like you needed to like have a text work around for copyrighted material. And then like after a while, it just gave up and started like, I'd be like, give me Mickey Mouse. And it's like, here's Mickey Mouse. So yeah, yeah, I didn't manage to make anything as bad as what you were referring to with Joe stuff. But it's not difficult to do that. And again, if you're meant to be sharing the sort of imagery, it's we're getting into we're getting into misinformation territory here. And it's yeah, I could be dangerous. And as much as I understand the concept of like, well, you're putting the prompt in. So isn't it on you? It's like, I just like, don't think that we need to have an app that like, you can make like a Nazi Spongebob. Like, I just don't see, and I don't even see what that's like, like, why is that not blocked? Like, I don't understand like why these guardrails aren't in place to prevent that to begin with. And who knows how copyright holders are feeling about the fact that you can do all this stuff? Like, I'm sure they're looking at these pixel nine reviews being like, Hey, get our lawyers on the phone. What are our options here? Like, I would if I was running these companies, because it's not great that the phone that Google is about to spend the entire NFL season advertising every 15 minutes, it can generate hateful content featuring your favorite kids characters. It's just not good. I think there's, I mean, there's a freedom of speech argument here and many people will use it. Sure. And I think that's fair. Saying, I'm not saying it should be illegal or Google should be in like, trouble with the government over it. I just think it's like a bad look, like it's bad optics. No, I disagree. I actually think it shouldn't be allowed. I actually think the fact that they cannot put proper guardrails on this is a problem. It sounds like they don't want to. But here's the thing, right? It's not a moderate, like, this is not a social network. This is not something in the public. The fact that you, your phone has downloaded this Gemini Nano model onto its software. This can this can generate Nazi imagery with no internet connection, right? So you have the ability to do it right now. And Google's argument, which I suppose is same as any other companies like OpenAIs or Metas is even musk with Grock. Like that's what I mean. That's like, they want you to generate Nazi imagery on Grock fair enough. But I think the truth is that when you have an LLM, a multimodal LLM that has been trained on everything, and you want to give people the ability to create cool things, you necessarily have to push the boundary of taste or ethical acceptability, moral acceptability, a bit further than what we would consider to be proper content moderation, right? And I think Google is battling with that because it's very quick to remove those kinds of images from Google image search. Like, if I uploaded Barney shooting Elmo as a cartoon, I can generate with this. Like, to be, that's that's an example because Joe put it on there. Like, Google would would allow it to exist on my website, but it would not, it wouldn't index the image. And what's just so interesting here is Google's quote in justifying this, I suppose, is we design our generative AI tools to respect the intent of user prompts. And that means they may create content that may offend a lot of maze here when instructed to by the user. That said, it's not anything goes. We have cleared policies in terms of service and what kinds of content we allow and don't allow and build guardrails to prevent abuse at times some prompts may challenge those tools, guardrails. We committed, remain committed to continually enhancing and refining those safeguards. What's going to happen, obviously, because this is going to generate a news cycle, like what happened with when Google wouldn't generate white people, basically, in this early barred image generation, and they just removed the ability to create AI humans entirely. It's still not there. It's still not there. It's why when you open Pixel Studio, it says it can't make humans yet. It's because of that. What's going to happen is they're just going to claw back as much of this as possible to the point where it's not fun anymore. And then people, the First Amendment proponents are going to complain that all the softies out there, us soy boys complaining about the fact that they weren't allowed to make Nazi imagery, are also not allowed to make anything else fun. What is that boundary? What is that boundary? Literally, because I think the potentially more damaging side of this is not the big ostentatious, you know, creating images of Barney shooting Elmo. It's being able to reimagine something very subtle that looks realistic enough that we can then put out in the world. And it may be seen as real, you know? And Google's leaning on this idea that it's using synth ID as a watermarking and verification back end to ensure that, like, if you know how to look out for it, you can tell the difference between an AI image and a non-AI image. But what it can't do is prevent you from screenshotting an AI image and just uploading it as a JPEG and completely removing all of that metadata. And that is increasingly what's going to happen. Well, and to your point, oh, go ahead, James. No, just the average person is not going to know any of this process either. They'd like think about all of our parents. They're not going to know what you see it all face. You see it like a Facebook slop that we're going at the moment. It's just, yeah. Oh, Facebook is a freaking mess right now. The the Verge ran a really good piece, but reimagine specifically. Like, I know we've been really focused on on Studio and it's it's partially because like, I was in the group chat where Joe was sending me these like images as he was like, just trying stuff out, right? And so like, I watched his process, but in life, you know, participating too. Men had my own thoughts and the review that you can read on AP, but like, the Verge focused more on reimagine. I would say most of their examples are not like super damning, but there's one of like a woman next to like what appears to be a needle of some kind and then like, some kind of powder that is supposed to be cocaine on the ground and like the tie that you would use if you were shooting a heroin. And it's like, it doesn't make a lot of sense. No, like the cocaine is on carpet. It doesn't that's not right. But like, it doesn't matter. That's bad enough and looks realistic enough that like, you wouldn't know truthfully, you wouldn't be able to definitively say, Oh, yeah, that's from reimagine for sure. I'm sorry, like, I'm just looking at it. And so like, when Google is being like, Oh, well, like, you know, we're just pushing boundaries, man, like, we'll keep reinforcing like those guardrails. Like, the fact that this shipped with the ability to be like, Hey, reimagine that my friend I took a photo of is about to do a line of cocaine is a fucking problem. Agreed. That's funny. Obviously, Pixel Studio reimagine there's zoom enhance, which has was supposed to ship with the pixel a pro. It's now shipping on both that phone and this phone. I wrote it off entirely because it basically uses gen AI to rebuild cropped images and every single example that I've tried to create looks terrible. So I'm sure that it may be nice for buildings and things, but I far prefer the way that Google tried to improve images with face sun blur. Last year, I think the effect was more effective. It was it was just a better it was a better result. There is video boost, which existed last year has received a massive update this year. This I love. I think this is absolutely awesome because what it allows you to do, the pixel still doesn't take great video. It's not as good as the iPhone or the or the Galaxy, but it takes better video this year. And then you upload it to the cloud, you can do it in the background. And then six hours later, whenever you get it back, you just have a much better quality video with no intervention on your part. And I like this. I think it's kind of the best of all worlds because it's not like Google's manipulating the image. It's not really adding anything to it. It's just boosting the colors. It's stabilizing the frame rate. It's doing everything that the phone wants to do locally, but can't because it doesn't have the computing power. So it uses the cloud to do it. It just showcases the success of Google sort of pixel through Google photos through Google cloud pipeline. And what it's built, we criticize Google a lot for its enormous size and its monopolistic tendencies. But when you have that pipeline from local all the way through the cloud, plus the service layer that sits in the middle, that's user facing and people love it, which is Google photos, you get a really good experience and it's all behind the scenes. I think my complaints about video boost, aside from the fact that I do think it kind of similar to my like one complaint about pixel photo processing is that it like it doesn't know what to do with shadows and contrast and just kind of brightens everything, which like you don't always want, is that like you can't just leave it on. You have to remember every time that you go to make a video that like you need to if you want to use video boost, you have to turn it on, which I don't know, I get why that's there, but like there should be maybe it exists deep in settings, but like you definitely like if I turn video boost on and then close the app and then reopen it and go to take another video, it's off again. So I just feel like they should make it an option that you can use a little bit easier if it's going to be in the place of making it so that the pixel can take native 8k video, which it can't. Yeah, I think you're right. I'm surprised you can't permanently turn it on. Like I said, I don't want to like fully say that there isn't an option. I'm just I don't think you can. I'm looking now. If you can. Yeah. Let's close it out. Is there anything else that we didn't mention? Probably. But we'll have a lot more time next week and and we're going to keep using the phones, right? Like, Daniel, your your review is going to be up either today or tomorrow. We can talk more about that next week. Yeah, next week, I want to talk about Gemini. I think yeah, I another week to use it will be useful. Let's do a big Gemini live. Let's talk to Gemini live. The whole question goes here's a teaser. I've had like some serious problems with Gemini live. Like it it does not love when I interrupt it. Like it fails more often than not. So we'll we'll leave it there. And maybe I'll keep using it. I can go back and forth and I'll make it say good things about lost on air. I had to bring it back up. Yes. Circle. Well, James, it's been a pleasure. Will, you're no longer on the show. James, I'll see you next week. See that. We at least put my AI in there. Like, can we? Yeah, we can using Gemini live. That's sound. But yeah, James, thanks for coming. We'll have you on again soon and have a great weekend. Thank you for having me. All right, folks, that's it. If you have any thoughts or feelings on the Pixel 9, if you bought one or are waiting for the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, that will be coming in another episode as well. Along with the Pixel Watch 3, Pixel Buds 2, there's lots more to come from the made by Google event. Join us next week. And we will talk to you very soon. All right. Bye. Bye. Bye. [Music]
