Quick Summary
Google has started teasing the new Pixel 9 devices, confirming the new design.
A number of AI features are also confirmed, giving a hint at the phones’ capabilities.
Google has long had a tendency to respond to leaks by revealing everything. Having seen a flurry of photos, videos and other details about the forthcoming Pixel 9 phones, Google has pulled back the curtain and given us a glimpse of what’s to come.
Firstly, Google has confirmed that the design leaks are legitimate by switching up its header images on its social channels, giving us an official look at its latest flagship smartphones – the Pixel 9 Pro Fold and the Pixel 9 Pro (above). It hasn’t confirmed the name of the Fold, but at least we now get a proper look at it.
Beyond this, Google has given us a collection of videos, quickly revealing the Pixel 9 Pro and the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, with a final video revealing a number of features of the new phones.
The video runs through the new features in super quick time, only lasting 8 seconds. The idea is that you hit pause and see what advantage Pixel will bring you, but we’ve done the hard work of pulling out everything it says. Here’s a handy list:
- Wishing your photo had more scenery
- Forgetting the movie your friend recommended
- Forgetting the show your friend recommended
- Phone calls where you can barely hear the other person
- Concert videos that look too far away
- Your toddler looking everywhere except the camera
- Scrubbing videos for answers
- Gatekeeping
- So many emails. So little time
- Screening calls yourself
- Half the fam looking at the camera
- Not capturing the right moment
- Spending hours on hold
- The sky not being right
- The same old memes
- Lost in translation
- Forgetting what restaurant your friend liked
- Awkward photo requests to strangers
- Mom never being in the pic
- Photobombers
- Blurry photos
- Writer’s block
It’s immediately clear that this isn’t all new, but Google’s framing here is the advantage that Gemini brings through AI. The photo-related features are covered by Best Take, Face Unblur, Magic Eraser and Magic Editor.
We can see references to Call Screen, a nod to the 5x optical zoom and recent translation skills – but there are a few things that could be new, as well as a dig at rivals Apple.
What new features are coming to the Pixel 9?
Sitting in the middle of the list is “gatekeeping”, which is open to interpretation in many ways, but it could be a dig at iPhone and its walled-garden approach. For many years Apple has pushed its own products and services in preference to others, while Google likes to think of Android as a more open platform.
Whether you agree or not is open to interpretation.
Gemini powers the AI experience on the Pixel phone and the references to “forgetting” suggests that we’re going to see a new way to capture this information. Thanks to a leak of Google AI features, we know that a Screenshots feature is coming. That will extract information from screenshots so Gemini can easily report it to you later.
The same leak also introduced us to something called “Add Me”, which addresses the “awkward photo requests” and “mom never being in the photo” side of things. Add Me will allow you to add a missing person back into a group shot, so you don’t have to ask a stranger – and mom gets included.
We’ve recently seen Samsung talk about Galaxy AI (also powered by Gemini), being able to give contextual replies to messages and it looks likely that the Pixel will be able to do this too.
The reference to emails and times is likely to be about using AI to elevate important emails. Spam is already filtered out and social media already segregated, but this suggests Gmail might go further.
That gives us a whole range of things to get excited about when the Pixel 9 phones launch at the Made by Google event on 13 August.
