I revisited the Google Pixel 9 Pro; it didn’t go how I expected

As hard as it is to believe, the Google Pixel 9 Pro is already six months old. It’s a phone I used quite a bit last summer/early fall, and as a longtime Pixel fan, it’s one I really enjoyed.

But as this job often goes, I eventually had to put the Pixel 9 Pro away to test/review other phones. Fast forward to March 2025, and it’s been a while since I last spent any quality time with Google’s flagship. With its six-month anniversary here, I figured now was as good a time as any to revisit it. So, for the last week, I’ve been back on the Pixel 9 Pro as my primary smartphone.

How’s it been? It’s been … interesting. There’s a lot I still really like about the Pixel 9 Pro (love, even), but other parts haven’t held up nearly as well as I remembered. It’s resulted in a frustrating week with lots of ups and downs, and despite how much the phone continues to get right, I’ll be putting it back in my office closet once this article is published. Let me explain why.

I want to start on a positive note. While I have issues with the Pixel 9 Pro (which I’ll get into later), there’s so much the phone gets right. As has often been the case for Pixel phones, almost everything I love most about the Pixel 9 Pro revolves around its software experience.

Google’s Pixel software has been top-tier for a few years now. After using OnePlus and Samsung phones before starting this revisit, I was quickly reminded of the small details that make using a modern Pixel so irresistible.

Face unlock is an excellent example of this. While many Android phones today have a face unlock option, it’s only good for getting past your lock screen. If you want to open 1Password, access your banking apps, or authenticate a Google Wallet purchase, you need to use your fingerprint sensor.

That’s certainly not the end of the world, but the Pixel 9 Pro lets you use its face unlock feature for all those things — and it’s incredibly convenient. It works so seamlessly and in the background that you almost forget anything is happening. I don’t have to actively think about scanning my fingerprint when I want to check my credit card balances. I open the Chase app on the Pixel 9 Pro, and in less than a second, my face is scanned, and I’m in.

I also love Pixel Screenshots, not necessarily the dedicated app, but the little shortcuts you get after taking certain screenshots. One day, I took a screenshot of a movie ticket receipt in my email so I could then go into Google Wallet and add it as a pass. After capturing the screenshot, the Pixel 9 Pro gave me an “Add to Wallet” shortcut. I tapped it, and just like that, the ticket was in Google Wallet. It’s also been helpful for screenshotting local events I find while scrolling through Google News or Instagram and putting them on my calendar with the “Add to Calendar” button that appears.

The Pixel Weather app is fantastic. The “AI Weather Report” is whatever, but the app’s design, customizability, and swath of information make it my favorite weather app on Android. Pixel Recorder is still the best audio recording/transcription app I’ve used. And nearly eight years after its release, Now Playing continues to be one of the most helpful smartphone innovations in the last decade.

And those are just my favorite Pixel features! That’s not mentioning the numerous (and excellent) calling tools, photo-editing tricks like Zoom Enhance or Add Me, and more. Unique and helpful software is where the Pixel series has long stood out, and after going back to the Pixel 9 Pro, I can confidently say that point holds true in early 2025.

Here’s where things get a bit more complicated. On a technical level, the Pixel 9 Pro has fantastic cameras. The 50MP primary, 48MP 5x telephoto, and 48MP ultrawide sensors hold up incredibly well, and I shouldn’t have anything to complain about with them.

But in practice, I’ve been irritated with the Pixel 9 Pro’s cameras. Not because the sensors aren’t capable, but because I’ve found myself growing more and more annoyed with Google’s image processing.

For the last several years, Google’s Pixel cameras have had a very distinct look — one that favors lots of HDR and very minimal contrast. That’s true of the Pixel 9 Pro, and all of the photos I take with it — objectively — look good. They’re clean, sharp, and oh-so consistent. But they’re also, at least to my eye, incredibly dull.

The photo of my dog lying on the couch is a prime example. The Pixel 9 Pro’s photo is technically great. My dog is focused, the photo is sharp, and there’s nice, natural bokeh around his rear legs. But it just looks so damn drab. There’s no popping color. No sense of contrast. The whole image feels flat.

The same scene captured by the OnePlus 13 looks much better to me. The blue couch and yellow pillow are more vibrant, while my dog’s fur has a deeper, warmer brown color. You lose a tiny bit of detail in the dark fur around his eyes, and the window in the background is slightly more overblown, but the picture as a whole feels more alive.

It’s a similar situation with the photo of my cat with his head peeking out over some blankets. It’s hard to be upset with either shot, but once again, I’m drawn to how the OnePlus 13 captured the scene. The cat’s green eyes pop more, his brown and black fur are richer, and even the colors in the paintings on the wall in the background stand out in a way they don’t in the Pixel’s image. The Pixel 9 Pro delivered a technically great photo, but it doesn’t make me feel anything.

That’s the point I keep coming back to. While I’ve never looked at a picture from the Pixel 9 Pro and thought it was outright bad, I also don’t feel strongly about the pictures I take with the phone. Are they technically good? Absolutely. But I want contrast. I want depth. I want some character and feeling. I find all of that lacking on the Pixel 9 Pro in a way it’s not from a phone like the OnePlus 13, and it’s made me want to interact with the Pixel camera less and less.

That leads me to everything else about the phone. Similar to the cameras, the Pixel 9 Pro as a whole is still high-quality and enjoyable. But there are a few nagging issues here and there that are quickly adding up in a way I don’t like.

The Tensor G4 chip is a good first example. It remains a perfectly capable chip for day-to-day tasks — handling social media apps, YouTube, and more without a problem. But as fast and responsive as the Pixel 9 Pro is, its repeated tendency to heat up even during light use is concerning.

On multiple occasions, the Pixel 9 Pro has gotten noticeably warm while doing the simplest of tasks — such as watching YouTube for ten minutes or responding to an active Telegram group chat. It’s not uncomfortably hot or anything like that, but these are tasks where I wouldn’t expect the phone to warm up at all.

What about battery life? It’s okay. I’ve ended a couple of days with 45% battery still remaining, but that was with three hours or less of screen-on time. On a heavier day with five and a half hours of screen time, the phone dipped to 15% by around the same time at night. This is fine endurance, but I consistently saw better battery life from the Samsung Galaxy S25 — a phone whose battery is 700mAh smaller than the Pixel 9 Pro’s.

While an improvement over previous Tensor chips, Tensor G4 never stood out in thermal management or battery efficiency. And in a world where the Snapdragon 8 Elite exists and has none of these problems, the shortcomings of Google’s in-house silicon are harder to overlook.

Then, there’s the display. For the most part, it’s fantastic. Colors are vibrant, text is sharp, and it strikes a good balance of being colorful without saturation overload. But once again, little annoyances raise their head.

Despite having an exceptional 3,000 nits of peak brightness, I’ve had to raise the brightness level more than other modern flagships. My Pixel 9 Pro often sits at around 75% brightness for indoor use, compared to about 50% on my OnePlus 13. I’ve also noticed a bizarre quirk with using the Pixel 9 Pro outdoors in bright sunlight. In these conditions, the edges of the display get a distracting shadow effect that doesn’t leave until I go back inside. I’m not the only one who’s noticed this, and as far as I can tell, there’s no clear fix.

Finally, there’s the hardware. From a quality standpoint, the Pixel 9 Pro is about as good as it gets. Between the matte glass back, the stainless steel frame, and little details like the buttons and haptics, all of it is exceptional. I loved everything about the hardware when I first used the Pixel 9 Pro, but coming back to it in March 2025, something about it is not clicking.

My main issue is the weight. At 199g, the Pixel 9 Pro is heavy for a phone with a 6.3-inch display. There are plenty of heavier phones out there weighing 200g or more, but they almost all have much larger bodies to spread that weight across. Cramming 199 grams into a phone this size just doesn’t work. It makes the Pixel 9 Pro feel bulky in a way that similarly weighted phones do not, and it’s been a real distraction while using the phone this past week.

For context, the Samsung Galaxy S25 has a similar 6.2-inch screen, yet it weighs significantly less at just 162g. It feels like a proper “small” phone and what I expect from phones this size. The OnePlus 13 technically weighs more than the Pixel 9 Pro at 210g, but because of its larger physical body and better weight distribution, it feels lighter in the hand.

This is all to say that I don’t find the Pixel 9 Pro to be a very comfortable smartphone. I love its craftsmanship and its looks, but I don’t particularly enjoy holding it. And in day-to-day use, it’s been difficult for me to overlook.

If I sound conflicted throughout this article, that’s because I am. I was eager to return to the Pixel 9 Pro. It’s a phone I loved just a few months ago, and I was ready for it to dazzle me all over again. While parts of it still do, other aspects of the phone haven’t held up at all how I was expecting.

I love the Pixel 9’s face unlock. Now Playing is one of my all-time favorite smartphone features. The build quality is unmatched, and Google’s overall software experience is so simple and welcoming in a way few other Android skins are.

However, as I used the Pixel 9 Pro again, the complaints I mentioned all came together in a way I found difficult to ignore. It’s not that I think the Pixel 9 Pro is a bad phone, but I don’t think it fits me well anymore — likely due to a combination of newer and more capable flagships, certain aspects of the phone not aging well, and my own changing wants/needs. There’s a phenomenal smartphone experience within the Pixel 9 Pro, and I wish I could overlook my issues with the phone to fully embrace it.