At the ninth annual Made by Google event, Google showered the global tech community with a whopping announcement—the launch of its Pixel 9 series—indicating major strides forward in artificial intelligence and hardware advancement.
The event on 13 August in Mountain View, California, hammered home the message that Google was truly serious about AI being integrated right across its product ecosystem, headlining it with the new Pixel 9 series alongside a number of other groundbreaking innovations, reported The Verge.
In a summary blog post, Google underlined its vision of AI making life easier: “We believe that AI can make day-to-day life more productive, open up new ways to learn, and create ways for people to express themselves. This is especially true when AI is built into the devices that people carry around with them everywhere.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai shared a post from X and said they were excited for the launch: “Today at #MadebyGoogle, we’re sharing how we’re bringing AI advances to mobile across the Android ecosystem. We also introduced our latest Pixel devices—including Pixel 9 phones built with Google Tensor G4, our fastest and most efficient silicon yet.”
The event was live-streamed on the official YouTube page of Google, that is, ‘Made By Google’.
The launch was led by the new AI from Google, Gemini, which will feature a new multimodal model, Gemini Nano. This is an AI model that processes text, images, and speech uninterruptedly, evincing how Google wants to provide high-level AI capabilities across all products.
The Pixel 9 series is an absolute bombshell of an addition to the lineup, featuring a total of four different models: Pixel 9, 9 Pro, 9 Pro XL, and 9 Pro Fold. All these devices provide refreshed designs along with powerful new processors and a slew of AI-driven features.
The new Pixel 9 models come with a refreshed design: the standard Pixel 9 will have a larger 6.3-inch display and a redesigned rear camera bar. The Pixel 9 Pro XL will have a screen reach of 6.8 inches, while the Pixel 9 Pro simply adds advanced features found in its Pro counterparts.
Notably across the series is the new Tensor G4 processor, which ensures better on-device AI performance. While the Pro models come with 16GB of RAM, the standard Pixel 9 makes do with 12GB.
New AI features include the following:
- Magic Editor: A text prompt could alter part of the image.
- Add Me: Group photos enabled through images taken and stitched together
- Recall-Like Ability: Helpers in the cataloging of screenshots so information therein can be retrieved later.
The series will also be the first Android handsets in the US to offer Satellite SOS for emergency help when conventional phone reception is not available. It will launch with Android 15 later this year.
Moving on to cameras, the 9 series remains with the same 50-megapixel main camera but upgrades the ultrawide cameras. Pro models get a new 42-megapixel selfie camera with autofocus.
The series will finally come to India, with prices starting from Rs79,999, Rs1,09,999, and Rs1,72,999 for the Pixel 9, 9 Pro, and 9 Pro Fold, respectively. Pre-booking for Pixel 9, 9 Pro XL starts on the 14th of August, and it will finally be available in the markets on 22nd August. An announcement related to the availability of the Pixel 9 Pro will be very compartively shared in due time.
Other than that, Google also introduced the Pixel Watch 3 and Pixel Buds Pro 2 for advanced health tracking and connectivity, while delivering better sound.
The series is a big jump in hardware and AI strategies by Google, aided by these new features and enhanced global availability.
ANI