What I liked most about the Pixel 9 Pro XL is its AI: finally Galaxy AI has a rival

If you have the feeling that Mobile phones are not changing much in recent years –and some things are even worse–, you are not the only one who thinks this, because at the hardware level there have been few important innovations in the last five years, with the sole exception of foldable phones.

The current craze for artificial intelligence – a technology that is not new either but is more valued than ever in the industry – is causing smartphone manufacturers to cling to AI as a differentiating element with respect to the competition. Finally, a novelty in mobile phones.

Samsung has become the great reference in artificial intelligence in mobile phones, thanks to its commitment that began at the beginning of the year with the Galaxy S24 series and which it has expanded with a second generation with its foldable Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Flip 6.

Apple is lurking, but it has been slow to react and catch up with this technology. The American giant has already announced its own version of AI for its devices, including mobile phones, Apple Intelligence, and it is expected that it could launch it for the first time in the new iPhone 16 family that it will present in September.

Now, Google has launched its new generation of Pixel 9, its high-end mobile phones with a very clear focus on AI, as I have been able to see first-hand when I analyzed the most advanced model in the series, the Pixel 9 Pro XL, over the last week.

While it also includes features you’ll find on the fly, like the ability to translate WhatsApp chats or those from other apps that are in another language, the Pixel 9 Pro XL stands out for offering direct access to Gemini, Google’s AI platform.

Despite the similarities with Samsung, which are logical when you think that both companies have worked hand in hand to develop AI, there are several reasons why The Pixel 9 Pro XL manages to crown itself as the mobile with AI in capital letters:

Hardware adapted to AI

As I tell you in the analysis, everything in the Pixel 9 Pro XL is designed to be the best AI mobile on the market, starting with the hardware, where the main protagonist is the new version of Google’s own processor, Tensor G4.

The new Tensor G4 has been developed in conjunction with DeepMind, Google’s artificial intelligence unit, and has been specifically designed for these tasks thanks to the use of a more developed neural processing unit (NPU) than normal.

Thanks to this processor, the device is the first mobile phone that can run multimodal AI, meaning it can understand text as well as images, audio and video, all within the umbrella of Gemini, the AI ​​tool with which Google competes with OpenAI and its ChatGPT and Dall-E.

It’s a shame that Google was only able to achieve this at the cost of a slight loss of performance. in other tasks compared to the Pixel 8 Pro, which used the previous processor, but I suppose it depends on what each user is looking for, it will be a better or worse idea.

Faster access to AI

One of the successes of Google’s AI approach in the Pixel 9 Pro XL is in reusing concepts that were already present with the Google Voice Assistant years ago, as is the case here with the shortcut via a physical button.

If you want to activate Gemini AI on the Pixel 9 Pro XL you don’t have to open any application, just hold the lock button which, along with the volume up and down buttons, is in fact the only button present on this terminal, with a fairly clean design.

This shortcut seems like a good idea to me because much of the use of generative AI today is to obtain explanations for the things around us or to resolve quick doubts, so this element makes it always at hand.

On the other hand, the Pixel 9 Pro XL may experience the same thing that happened to many older smartphones that had a button with direct access to the Google Voice Assistant: Too many accidental keystrokes end up making it more of a nuisance than a useful tool..

The fact that you have to hold down the button for a few moments to activate it has meant that this rarely happens in my experience – with the Google Assistant buttons and a click was enough to open it – so I don’t think that’s going to be the case here.

Forget about waiting like in ChatGPT

One of the problems that plagues many of the current AI models is that they are cloud-based and require the use of their servers to process user requests, so this process takes a few seconds to obtain the answers.

One of the things I liked most about using AI on the Pixel 9 Pro XL is that it performs a significant portion of tasks locally and, thanks to this, is able to get answers to your questions much faster, with a second or even less wait in most cases when the query is text.

If you use Gemini’s multimodal features and want to search for something related to an image, whether you have it saved or using the camera, or whether you upload a document to make a query, in this case I did have to wait about 5 seconds in most cases, but it seemed reasonable compared to the time taken by other models.

It’s not all Gemini: the other AI features of the Pixel 9 Pro XL

Beyond the Gemini AI platform, there are other AI tools that are present in the new Pixel 9 Pro XL, such as the Image editing via Google Photos (an old acquaintance already) or in the translation of chat messages into another language.

I would highlight this second one in particular, because it is new and because it is something that Samsung has already done before. As the conversation is translated directly within the application, you continue to see it in the same style and have the same functionalities of the app.

Which saves you from having to copy text to translate it outside of WhatsApp or your favorite chat app and provides a much more comfortable experience. This feature is automatically displayed when it detects a single word in another language in the chat, even if it is only Forksand it suggests the language in which you have configured your mobile. It takes a few moments to work.

However, in this sense I do have the feeling that Google’s AI bet on mobile is more centralized and less dispersed than Samsung’s, where in normal use you find more details in which the technology tries to help you in your daily life or provide you with new functions. Something that can be good or bad depending on how you look at it.

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Tags: Artificial Intelligence, Analysis