Once More Unto the Pixel, Dear Friends, Once More (Premium)

Thanks in part to the rise of generative AI, 2024 has emerged as a critical year in the battle of digital ecosystems.

But there’s much more going on than that: Energized by the improvements I saw in the Google Pixel 8 Pro, I invested heavily in the broader Pixel ecosystem and was horribly disappointed. Thanks to the then-coming Snapdragon X-based PCs, I purchased an Apple MacBook Air and was blown away by its quality, performance, and efficiency. That experienced started a deeper dive into Apple’s ecosystem, with me returning to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, purchasing AirPods 2 Pro earbuds, a 13-inch iPad Air, and, most unexpectedly, a pair of expensive HomePod 2 smart speakers, and subscribing to a 2 TB iCloud plan. And then the inexcusable Sonos meltdown almost pushed me completely over the edge, triggering a reevaluation of how I consume digital music. It’s been a crazy, chaotic year.

And then Pixel 9 happened. Suddenly, everything is up in the air again.

I need to get a grip: On the one hand, I know that no matter how good these smartphones are, the broader Pixel ecosystem is still lackluster compared to what Apple offers. And these phones were telegraphed well in advance, so this shouldn’t have been surprising. When a reader asked whether I’d be upgrading to the next Pixel Fold–what’s now called the Pixel 9 Pro Fold–I said no, that the Pixel 9 Pro XL was the right phone for me. But I was doubting this assertion even as I typed my reply. Part of me was wondering why I should even bother. With Pixel, with Android, with anything consumer-related that didn’t sport an Apple logo. I was teetering on the edge of a mad, mad new era of certainty. For me, the biggest change of all.

I write about these things all the time. Sometimes explicitly, and sometimes just as an aside. Despite this, you have no idea how often the events and changes of the past several months have caused me to rethink almost everything I do. And that’s saying something because I make a point of specifically testing alternatives regularly, so I can stay up to date on where competitors to the products and services I do use are. And in those rare instances where it makes sense, change the way I do things. I am still writing a very long article specific to music, the article that triggered last week’s From the Editor’s Desk: Music (Premium) editorial. It’s not ready, in part because of uncertainty: It’s all in flux. But I didn’t expect Google’s event this week to change a thing. Why would it?

And yet, in a year of unprecedented change–and, yes, unprecedented spending on my part–I still found myself swayed by what Google announced today. The new Pixel phones are an interesting and unexpected wrench in what was slowly turning into what felt like a solid, obvious direction. I surprised myself by being as interested as I am.

To be clear, only two of the devices Google announced today are of any interest. My experiences with the Pixel Tablet, Pixel Watch 2, and Pixel Buds Pro over the winter are all I need to know about those product categories: The only tablet worth considering is an iPad, with the only question being which one, and I did just buy an iPad Air, so I’m good for the next few years at least. And while the just-announced Pixel Watch 3 and Pixel Buds Pro 2 look solid enough as upgrades, I don’t want or need a smartwatch–I can barely stand my Fitbit, which gets almost a week of battery life on a charge, as it–and the AirPods Pro 2 and Bose earbuds I already own are terrific. So I’m not swayed.

But the Pixel 9 Pro XL and Pixel 9 Pro Fold are … interesting. Very interesting.

As I get older, I find myself preferring larger displays on devices of all kinds. This is true with computers–my MacBook Air M3 and Surface Laptop 7 are both the larger 15-inch models–tablets–my iPad Air is 13-inches, up from 10.x or 11-inches previously–and even wearables: I can barely read my Fitbit display and couldn’t read its tiny battery display if my life literally depended on it. But it’s also true of smartphones, of course. I have almost always gone with the larger iPhone or Pixel models when possible–the one exception being the iPhone 13 Pro, which was a mistake–and I am delighted to know that the iPhone 16 Pro Max will be even bigger than the iPhone 15 Pro Max I’m now using. But now there are two Pixel Pro models with large displays. A Pixel 9 Pro XL and a Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

So it’s gut-check time.

The high price of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold combined with all the money I’ve spent this year are hedge enough for me to back off from that mistake. There are many foldable phone skeptics, just as there are AI skeptics, and I get it to some degree. But the promise here is obvious: The Pixel 9 Pro Fold speaks to a dream rarely realized, that magical single device that can replace two devices, one that could refute my “right tool for the job” mantra. In this case, a smartphone and a (mini) tablet. The reason this dream is rarely realized is that these multipurpose devices usually make too many compromises on both sides of the equation. In this case, a non-optimal phone combined with a non-optimal tablet. It’s a concern, for sure. If it wasn’t, if the Pixel Fold was somehow a no-brainer, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.

I often discuss how decisions, especially product choice decisions are rarely black and white but are instead more nuanced, a matrix of choices, each weighted and personal to the decision maker. For example, I may prefer camera quality over anything else when I buy a smartphone, and so I weight that choice more heavily than someone else might. But decisions are also about not choosing something, and often times it’s because some limitation or problem–or perhaps a matrix of problems, each with its own weight–takes one choice out of the running. For now, at least, that’s true of the new Pixel Fold: It’s very expensive, and price is always weighted heavily, and I’m still not convinced that Android and the broader ecosystem is ideal for tablets/bigger screen devices. I’m looking at you, Pixel Tablet. And I’m not smiling.

That leaves the Pixel 9 Pro XL, inarguably the logical upgrade for my Pixel 8 Pro. Which, I’ll remind you, I found to be nearly perfect.

Size matters. The device itself is about the same size as the Pro 8–6.4 x 3 x 0.3 inches–and one thing I very much prefer about my 8 Pro compared to the iPhone 15 Pro Max is how much thinner and lighter it is.

The display is a big deal. Here, the Pixel 9 Pro XL has a slightly bigger 6.8-inch display (vs. 6.7 inches) that’s brighter (2000/3000 nits for HDR/peak brightness vs. 1600/2400 nits) and has twice the contrast ratio (2 million to 1). But beyond that, the displays seem nearly identical: 1344 x 2992 OLED, 20:9 aspect ratio, dynamic refresh rate up to 120 Hz, and so on. And the Pixel 8 Pro display is terrific.

Everyone knows how important the camera system is to me; indeed, in my personal weighted matrix of choices, this might be the top item. But the camera systems on each seem identical: a 50 MP Octa PD wide (main) lens, a 48 MP ultra-wide lens, and a 48 MP Quad PD telephoto lens with 5x optical zoom. There’s only one meaningful specification difference (to me), and while it seems minor, I suspect it’s a nice improvement: Where the ultra-wide lens on the 8 Pro has a 126-degree field of view (FOV), the 9 Pro XL has a 123-degree FOV that should help with edge distortion. (The selfie camera is a significant upgrade: 42 MP vs. 10.5 MP on the 8 Pro.) Still, not enough for the upgrade. So why bother?

Because the top-level specs don’t tell you everything: While the 48 MP telephoto lenses on each phone look similar, the unit in the Pixel 9 Pro XL has an upgraded sensor that improves autofocus, which helps deliver sharper photos and better results in low light. But the bigger deal is how the improved power of the hardware–Tensor G4 (vs. G3), 16 GB of RAM (vs. 12)–combines with the improved multimodal Gemini Nano on the Pixel 9 Pro XL to deliver new photo capabilities like Add Me, Zoom Enhance, 20x Super Res Zoom in Night Sight Video and Video Boost, and Night Sight Panorama that Pixel 8 Pro won’t get. (Well. At first. I could see some or all of those features getting there eventually, though they will likely not work as well or as quickly.) The Pixel 9 Pro also supports 8K video via AI upscaling, though that doesn’t matter to me that much.

Battery life matters. And this is one area where Pixel 8 Pro falls short. Google claims that efficiencies in the Tensor G4 processor and a new vapor chamber cooling system help Pixel 9 Pro XL deliver 20 percent better battery life. If true, that’s meaningful. Perhaps not iPhone-level meaningful. But you never know.

There are other things, smaller things, that help to make Pixel 9 Pro XL appealing. The 50 percent faster in-display fingerprint reader. The best possible Gemini AI experience across all the various features. The elegant design, which I loved from the moment I first saw it, a design that’s so cool it makes the previous three Pixel generations look suddenly dated and weird. Much better colors than last year, including the return of Hazel, my favorite. Much faster wired charging–up to 45 watts, finally–so you can get a 70 percent charge in just 30 minutes. And other things.

But in that weighted list of choices in the matrix of this decision, few items are weighted as heavily as the cost.

The Pixel 9 Pro XL is undeniably expensive at $1100 (to start). But then, it’s also not that expensive. With my Pixel 8 Pro trade-in–it’s in pristine condition–Google is giving me $700 off the price, bringing the total to a reasonable $400. I’m also getting $200 in Google Store credit for buying before August 28, and perhaps that could find a Pixel Buds Pro 2 experiment or whatever other peripherals. And Google is giving buyers Gemini Unlimited for free for one year, which includes a 2 TB Google One plan that I already pay for, and that’s worth $239. I had some Google Store credit. And as a Google One subscriber, I get additional Store credit on purchases. I’m not saying that I’m getting the thing for free, or even that it’s sort of paying for itself. But these are all meaningful.

And so I ordered a Pixel 9 Pro XL in Hazel and with 128 GB of storage. Many of you probably expected this. I wasn’t so sure, honestly. But here we are. I’m ready to spin the wheel again and see where it lands.

Fun.