Amazon Prime Day Deal: The Pixel 9 Professional is a stable smartphone that appears even higher throughout Amazon Prime Day. Proper now, you will get the 128GB model in Obsidian for $749 or you possibly can seize it Hazel or Porcelain for $734. Greater storage capability variants are additionally discounted. If you wish to go huge, the XL fashions even have had their priced slashed for Prime Day.
CNET’s key takeaways
Android telephones usually get a nasty rap for being overly convoluted. And to be honest, that is usually properly justified. Samsung’s Galaxy S25 vary, for instance, has deep menu programs for messing about with practically each facet of the telephone, together with options just like the Edge Panel sidebar and a wide range of Samsung’s personal AI instruments. You even get Samsung’s model of some apps, so you find yourself with two apps for images, two apps for internet searching and so forth.
For a lot of Android customers, the deep customizability of the OS has all the time been a promoting level over the extra simplistic iOS discovered on Apple’s iPhones. However simply since you need an Android telephone, does not essentially imply you are a fanatical tech nerd who desires to tinker with menus all day.
The Pixel 9 Professional is the simplest Android telephone I’ve ever used, and there is a variety of key explanation why.
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My expertise with the Pixel 9 Professional
First, it is Google’s personal telephone, that means there is no secondary producer software program pores and skin excessive of the working system. It is pure, uncut Android. Google’s interface is clear, straightforward to learn and uncluttered. Naturally, it makes use of Google’s personal apps by default. Samsung, in the meantime, masses its telephones up with its personal browser, electronic mail shopper and photograph gallery, all of which sit beside Google’s Chrome, Gmail and Images apps, that means you have already got duplicates of every software.
Samsung isn’t the one phone-maker to do that. Virtually all Android telephone corporations load their telephones up with a minimum of their very own browser and gallery app, whereas some corporations, like Samsung and Honor, go so far as making their very own electronic mail purchasers and calendars.
With its pure Android software program, the Pixel 9 Professional affords a super-clean and easy-to-use expertise.
I just lately reviewed the Honor 400 Professional, and one of many huge points I discovered with that telephone was how a lot unsolicited stuff comes pre-loaded as normal. Third-party apps from TikTok, LinkedIn, WPS workplace, Temu and a wide range of others are all proper there as quickly as you flip it on for the primary time, making the telephone really feel cluttered, bloated and sophisticated earlier than you’ve got even had an opportunity to put in one app of your personal. The Pixel has none of this.
It is the identical with AI instruments. Samsung has its Bixby assistant, plus an enormous number of its personal AI features. The Honor 400 Professional packs a bunch of AI options for real-time translation and transcription, as do the OnePlus 13 and varied different latest Android telephones. However all of them include Google’s Gemini Superior, too, together with Circle to Search. The Pixel does not have to pointlessly double up. If you wish to use AI along with your telephone, its instruments are baked into the center of the telephone expertise with out you needing to additionally activate and signal right into a third-party service.
This straightforward strategy extends to the digicam, too. Open the default digicam app and also you’re met with a neat interface, comprised largely of the shutter button and zoom ranges, with different capturing modes discovered alongside. It does not attempt to overcomplicate issues right here, as a substitute letting you shortly shoot pictures with out messing about with settings.
It is an strategy that works right here, and in consequence, the Pixel 9 Professional takes a few of my favourite computerized pictures from a telephone digicam, doing an important job of balancing publicity and colours. I like the Xiaomi 15 Extremely’s digicam, however to get the most effective from it, that you must shoot in Professional mode, taking handbook management of the settings, which makes it extra suited to superior photographers who need to fine-tune their pictures.
The digicam’s easy software program makes it straightforward to take images with little effort in your half.
The Pixel does supply deeper management if you’d like it, conveniently hidden behind a small settings icon, relatively than requiring you to change utterly right into a “Professional” mode. For these of you desirous to take handbook management of your white stability to heat up a ravishing sundown, the Pixel 9 Professional affords a simple method in.
The specs
- 6.3-inch LTPO OLED show, 2,856×1,280 pixel decision, 1-120Hz adaptive refresh charge
- Google Tensor G4 processor
- 16GB RAM
- 4,700-mAh battery
- 50 megapixel fundamental digicam, 48 megapixel ultrawide, 48 megapixel telephoto zoom
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Google has clearly taken notes from Apple’s strategy in making the Pixel vary. Apple’s telephones could also be derided by Android followers for his or her lack of customization and “locked down” nature, however iPhones are famously extra easy to function. They’ve built-in {hardware}, software program and companies that make them straightforward to grasp whether or not you are new to smartphones or a veteran gadget obsessive.
Apple’s “you do issues our method” strategy is a giant a part of the telephone’s success, and the Pixel 9 Professional feels just like the closest approximation of the Apple expertise you could find on Android. For those who’re in search of a clear expertise with a smartphone that does not attempt to get in your method with useless extras, the Pixel 9 Professional is definitely price a glance.
Watch this: Google Pixel 9, 9 Professional and 9 Professional XL Arms-On
