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the story of the Google pixel is one of a lot of back and forth at first we saw the company try to tackle a smartphone competition that just did not work out with the Nexus and so we went from this affordable approach into something more premium as companies like Apple and Samsung were not having a problem in making a market for themselves within that Realm as a result the pixel was good in that it differentiated itself as a computational photography phone at a time when it was still new enough to be considered an innovation today this is what you know as Ai and it allowed Google to stick to salvage old hardware for years and keep the cost of their phones down it wasn't until the pixel 6
series that the company really changed the approach it was no longer an either Flagship premium or affordable approach but instead you could pick all three with the pro the bass and the a series aside from minor tweaks you could access Google's latest technology across the board with the caveat that it was the latest only in Google's bubble if anything this new pixel series is a bit more of that but with some added choices that are pretty interesting the only question left is if it's worth it to pay as much for this as it is for the products that offer more at least in numbers I'm he with pocket now and it's time for our extended
review I guess the best way to start this review is by disclaiming that I've spent most of my time with the pixel9 pro XL my experience using the pixel 9 pretty much indicated what to expect from the 9 Pro with the exception of things like cameras and RAM as those two phones even share the same phone cases the pro XL is really where the story is at because we hadn't seen the company Define the large variant as an Excel in a bit now when it comes to Hardware I think it's easy to say that these are the company's best pixels ever from the shiny rails to the symmetrical Cuts all over this phone is elegant beautiful and at the same time yeah it's kind of polarizing I'm not going to lie I love
the symmetry of absolutely everything but yes it looks like an i phone from the front from the back you can surely differentiate the product but man this camera hump is large it protrudes so much that it's almost like stacking half of another phone on top in thickness but at least the pill design saves it from wobbling on a table and also by the way if you were to remove the step design on the iPhone it's almost as thick if not the same thickness overall I'm not going to call this phone light by any means but I do feel that it does a better job at weight distribution than any of its predecessors which for me is a big deal probably one of the most important changes with this device comes on the
display because we've seen the company T their act to displays for a couple of years but I can't say I felt the improvements until now pixels would struggle with their ability to balance light whenever you were in a har scenario but that's gone whether it's really dark or crazy bright the screen is fully usable and color production is on point for Content consumption and the Dual firing speakers are not necessarily the most balanced out there but they are loud enough for you to notice a difference if you don't muffle them bet you won't tell a difference and everything else from colors to viewing angles to everything you'd want from a flagship display you'll be just fine with pixel 9 the biggest problem with the pixel continues to be really
internals and that's mainly because of tensor now in its G4 and listen it's better than before but it's computational is no longer a selling point we do know there's a broader Vision coming up but it's not on these phones that being said these devices do have as much RAM as you want for AI tasks and the battery is also decent you've got the latest forms of connectivity as well but then the problem is that at this price 1208 gigs of storage is genuinely too little I can remember the last time that I bought so little storage for my mless camera for example so that alone makes the pro name sound poorly addressed I'm sure I know Apple does this as well but if Google wants to compete they need to pull a Samsung and double the storage like
seriously and once you get into the software experience a lot of these concerns go away Google has done an amazing job at tuning tensor in a way that allows this phone to feel buttery smooth in how it approaches Android 14 because yes this is the first pixel that does not launch with the latest version of Android still I do like the minor improvements like the company working on the grid in a way that makes it more comfortable for you to load your favorite widgets on top and be able to make it yours sadly at a glance is still a widget you cannot remove but hey it can't all be perfect other than that I do feel that this phone is adequately performant in what Google sells it for
which is the AI experience as such we get to see new tricks that I consider mostly invaluable the screenshots application for example has spared me from looking in my phone's gallery for basics for example now I did try to hold this review for Pixel Studio to be complete and start allowing humans in the imagery as we saw in the demos back in the Hands-On but no it's not available and I did want that because it's almost the Photoshop replacement but yeah you are going to have to wait otherwise the benefit of going pro with pixels this year is your free access to Gemini advance for a year it's been great to test it before you have to pay $20 a month which I feel is pretty steep and in its current state I will tell you
I did find it to be very useful Gemini live alone is insane and how well it can handle a conversation with you the problem is that in its current state it can be unreliable sometimes so again I'm glad that I'm able to test it before having to pay for it which I doubt I will now in absolutely everything else the experience of using this phone has exceeded my expectations battery life is far better than before even when you're not using the phone at night I won't call it a 2-day phone but a reliable Workhorse during the day for sure phone calls are another thing that I feel this company has done really well as I do consider that callers will now hear you far better than they did before and the same can be said about
connectivity which I do feel that this phone has finally been tuned in a way where it does cling onto data better than its predecessors now obviously the biggest selling point for these devices is photography now that we have the same capabilities regardless of the size and in that sense you could say that you get some improvements and specs but not necessarily the ones a lot of people were expecting some sensors have been here for years in typical Google fashion which I know may concern some when it comes to longevity but I think what's most important is what you buy and the results in that regard it's interesting that the contrasty photos we've known pixels 4 have been toned down it could
just be that Google is pushing the highlights a bit higher to make the photos more pleasing for everyone and not just photography nuts like us and in all fairness yeah I do consider that the results are pretty good and that's regardless if you're using the ultrawide primary or also Al the telephoto even up to 30X this phone can truly push detail through software here after the fact and all these photos are pretty usable which not all competitors can claim even with extra camera sensors and more megapixels and everything you can think of and when it comes to low light this is actually when you're going to notice more of the extra contrast that we've been used to before photos sometimes seem too good to
be real it's like if you edited them on Snap Seed where even the skies are not as dark as your eyes saw them in the moment if you're going for accuracy this is really not your phone but if you like interesting pro tricks then this is cuz I love things like action pan and long exposure which are all modes and not an invitation to go crazy on manual controls this is one of the reasons I do consider these to be some of the best pro phones out there and then another reason why I love these Pro pixels even over the 9 Pro fold is the selfie camera we're back to getting an ultra wide that performs fantastic I seriously wish every phone had this feature particularly every pixel but right now
you can only get it on these two phones so yeah it's really great for group shots or even if you want to take a selfie of more than just yourself it's made it really hard for me to stop using this phone even up to portraits though yeah I do notice that they aren't handling borders as well as they did before clearly there is some tuning left to be done when it comes to video I still consider pixels to be the closest to an iPhone clearly Google has tune tensor to give it more bit rate which helps in quality but sadly it's still not perfect once you start introducing contrast you'll notice that the darker scenes are going to introduce grain and not the good kind it's almost like
digital Distortion which only gets worse at night I do enjoy stabilization regardless of what focal length you're using and even when you switch to the selfie camera which you'll notice is extremely pleasing in results but also has the same contrast problems and then there's the problem that I would have been willing to give this phone a harder try just because of that Ultra wide lens for video on the selfie but no somehow that incredibly useful feature particularly for video is disabled oh well anyways to conclude what can I say it's hard to deny that I truly have enjoyed my experience using this pixel9 Pro XL even if it's not necessarily the best Android phone by the standards of most people usually Android users are
looking for the most powerful Flagship that has the best ship and the most horsepower but in that end that's only as important as how well the product executes on that capability If we're honest most of these competing flagships don't necessarily take full advantage of all their chips and with the pixel 9 Pro XL that's not necessarily the case this phone does achieve a lot of the premises that it offers surely a few of the AI features are still a work in progress but hey at least it's some of it and not most of it obviously the question is if you should get one and if so which one I would say I love the fact that you now have more variety in the past you had to stick to larger flagships to get the
best of everything but now you don't hey if my eyesight wasn't where it is I'd pick the smaller probe but yeah 40s and reading glasses go together so that's the reason I'm using the XL I just highly consider going for more storage as all these AI capabilities have made apps be fear it's again not the best Android phone but if I were to pick between a smarter phone and horow seriously I'd prefer practice over Theory let me know if you agree with our assessment in the comments down below and while you're at it follow us on social media and subscribe to our channel for more videos like this one you also follow me on my personal handles to see me finally love a pixel again for the first time in years please
give this video a thumbs up if you like what you saw I'm he thanks so much for watching we'll see you on the next one come
