The Google Pixel 9 Pro XL has landed in Australian and over the past couple of weeks, I’ve used it as my daily driver, fully transitioning my dual-sim life to the phone. As Google’s flagship smartphone for 2024 (excluding foldables), the Pixel 9 Pro XL naturally commands a premium price tag. For background, I used the Pixel 7 Pro for the majority of the past 2 years and while it’s tempting to look at the changes year-on-year, most people don’t upgrade every year, so I believe my experience is closer to that of most Pixel owners.
Each year we expect the latest generation to be faster, smarter, better, stronger than the year before and on that front, Google certainly delivered. While there’s certainly changes to the hardware that we’ll get into in a minute, it’s really the software that delivers the biggest differences. In 2024, we are a couple of years into the Large Language Model game and phone manufacturers have an opportunity to deliver and integrate LLM to our pocket and that’s an opportunity Google is certainly taking with both hands.
This year there’s a bunch of new apps for the Pixel, including Pixel Studio, Screenshots, Weather, and of course an updated Gemini. It is incredibly rare for phone makers to make their phone thicker, but that’s exactly what Google has done with the new Pixel 9 range. The phone features matte aluminium sides that are flat, reminding me a lot of the iPhone 4 from more than a decade ago.
The look and feel in the hand is gre.