Pixel 9 Pro review: a real contender for the best small phone

The Pixel 9 Pro is a rare beast: a smaller phone that keeps the same bold design, specs and camera as Google’s biggest and most expensive model. It makes it an instant contender for the best small phone going.

At £999 (€1,099/$999/A$1,699), it is cheaper than its larger Pixel 9 Pro XL sibling but still firmly in the high-end bracket. What sets it apart is the 6.3in screen is significantly tighter than the monster 6.7in-plus sizes you usually need to get the very best hardware.

While not exactly tiny, it is small for a modern high-end phone, joining only a handful in the market such as Samsung’s 6.2in Galaxy S24 and the 6.1in iPhone 15 Pro.

The screen is bright, fast and crisp, rivalling the best in the business. The bold new camera lump on the back makes the Pixel stand out, while the flat aluminium sides and frosted glass back look and feel expensive.

The new Tensor G4 chip, 16GB of RAM and starting storage of 128GB all match the 9 Pro XL and perform similarly. It is snappy in operation and handles apps just fine, but can’t match the raw performance of Android rivals running Qualcomm’s top chips, particularly in games.

The Pixel’s battery life is pretty good for a smaller phone. It lasts just over 48 hours between charges with the screen actively used for about seven hours on a mix of 5G and wifi, meaning you have to charge it every other day or so. That’s a few hours short of its larger sibling, but a good 10 hours longer than the iPhone 15 Pro.

A full charge takes just over 80 minutes using a 27W or greater USB-C charger (not included).

Specifications

• Screen: 6.3in 120Hz QHD+ OLED (495ppi)

• Processor: Google Tensor G4

• RAM: 16GB of RAM

• Storage: 128, 256, 512GB or 1TB

• Operating system: Android 14

• Camera: 50MP + 48MP ultrawide + 48MP 5x telephoto, 42MP selfie

• Connectivity: 5G, eSIM, wifi 7, UWB, NFC, Bluetooth 5.3 and GNSS

• Water resistance: IP68 (1.5m for 30 minutes)

• Dimensions: 152.8 x 72.0 x 8.5mm

• Weight: 199g

Android, Gemini and next-gen AI

The Pixel ships with Android 14 and seven years of software support, including an upgrade to Android 15 in the autumn, making it one of the longest-lasting phones on the market.

The big new additions for the Pixel phones this year are all AI-based, being some of the first handsets to run Google’s latest Gemini Nano AI models on device. Similar to the 9 Pro XL, the new Gemini Live experience is undoubtedly the highlight.

It provides a new, fully conversational mode allowing you to speak to Google’s most advanced Gemini assistant with an open mic and have it respond via voice for a flowing, back and forth discussion. It is smart enough to remember the topics and progression of your conversation, can provide useful information and asks its own questions to help move things along. One chat I had with it, we discussed the fastest parkruns in the south-east of London. It asked if I was after a personal best, talked about the surfaces, discussed the average attendance each Saturday, then was able to give me travel times and the weather forecast for each park.

The system is not perfect all the time, but the answers were very human, with a touch of personality. It requires a £19 a month Gemini Advanced subscription to use, a year of which is bundled free with any of the Pixel 9 Pro phones.

Another useful AI utility is the Screenshots app, which collates your shots and makes them searchable. The Pixel Studio app quickly generates images via text prompts with a range of styles. The Google Photos Magic Editor can automatically reframe an image by either cropping or expanding the canvas using generative AI. The new “reimagine” feature goes one step further and can fully recast a photo or insert objects into it using text prompts. How far you go with it is up to you, but it can produce stunning images, or problematic ones, with very little effort.

Camera

The camera is the 9 Pro’s crown jewel. It supports the full top Google camera system, including a 48MP ultrawide, 50MP main and a 48MP 5x telephoto camera, which comfortably outzooms similarly sized rivals that are typically limited to 3x.

The cameras are all-round excellent, capturing detail-rich images across the board. They excel in more difficult scenes, such as dim lighting or motion. The 5x telephoto camera has an in-sensor zoom feature producing the equivalent of a 10x optical zoom to meaningfully close the distance to objects. The additional digital zoom, up to 30x, is surprisingly good in bright light too.

The new Add Me feature helps photographers join group shots by blending two photos taken back to back into one image. The photographer takes the first shot then hands over camera duties to another member of the the group for the second shot. An augmented reality overlay shows where to position yourself to get in the shot. It works well in some scenarios, but requires practice to get right and sometimes trips up on certain objects in the scene.

Sustainability

Google does not provide an expected lifespan for the battery, but it should maintain at least 80% of its original capacity after 500 full charge cycles. The phone is repairable by Google and third-party shops, with genuine replacement parts to be available from iFixit soon. The repair specialists awarded the Pixel 9 Pro XL five out of 10 for repairability.

The Pixel 9 Pro is made with at least 18% recycled materials, including recycled aluminium, plastic, rare earth elements and tin. The company breaks down the phone’s environmental impact in its report. Google will recycle old devices free of charge.

Price

The Google Pixel 9 Pro costs from £999 (€1,099/$999/A$1,699).

For comparison, the Pixel 8a costs £499, the Pixel 9 costs £799, the Pixel 9 Pro XL costs £1,099, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra costs £1,149 and the Apple iPhone 15 Pro costs £999.

Verdict

The Pixel 9 Pro is one of the very best small phones you can buy.

The fabulous 6.3in screen may not be truly small, but the Pixel squeezes all the top-end hardware from Google’s 6.8in superphone into a much smaller and more manageable body. That means you get the full camera system with a 5x optical zoom that rivals at this size simply can’t match.

You also get long battery life, decent performance, software support for seven years from release and all the latest cutting-edge AI features you can shake a stick at. A bundled year’s subscription to Gemini Advanced enables the impressive Gemini Live conversational AI assistant, too.

It isn’t a bargain at £999, but that sort of price is unfortunately par for the course for a high-end phone, matching Apple’s iPhone 15 Pro.

Pros: seven years of software updates, great camera with 5x and 10x optical zoom, great screen, good battery life, recycled aluminium, impressive local and generative AI features, Gemini Live included for a year.

Cons: expensive, face unlock option not as secure as Face ID, raw performance short of best in class, temperature sensor is still a gimmick outside the US.