How Google’s Pixel 9 Pro Will Change Smartphones Forever

Updated August 11 with details on the new iPhone 16 software, and Apple’s financial guidance.

Next week will see the launch of the Pixel 9 family of smartphones at the titular Made By Google event. The annual event allows Google to demonstrate what it believes a smartphone should represent. Last year’s Pixel 8 family offered new displays, improved cameras, updated software and its custom-designed Tensor Mobile chipset.

All of those changes allowed Google to pitch the Pixel 8 and Pixel 8 Pro as the AI-first smartphones. In the process it defined how generative AI would be introduced to the mobile world. One year later, with that view of the market now the norm, Google can build on that success, entrench its view of smartphone AI, and control the vital high ground of artificial intelligence.

This week, Google gets to do it all again except this time, it’s not about defining the market but fortifying it.

Google has several AI tools the Pixel platform has demonstrated, and similar tools are available from several Android manufactuers. You have tools to remove, move, or edit individual elements of a photo; you have the option to move expressions between photos to get the best composite image possible, and you have tools to clean up audio recorded in a video.

You have tools for transcribing audio, summarising information from web pages and emails, and searching based on a screenshot or even a circled part of the screen. AI can help screen spam calls, act as a translator while travelling, and suggest replies, topics, and more when creating on your phone.

All of these debuted on the Pixel 8 family before echoing throughout the ecosystem. In fact, Google’s circle to search feature actually debuted with Samsung’s Galaxy AI platform, which mirrored many of the Pixel features and added in many of its own. Other manufacturers introduced their own AI tools, and chip manufacturers ensured support for AI routines were hardwired to support AI code.

These all followed the same direction and ethos Google laid down in public with the Pixel 8. That direction will only be emphasised this week with the launch of the Pixel 9 and a raft of new AI features.

There’s also another competitive aspect with the rise of genre-defining AI in Android. Apple is nowhere to be seen.

Update: Sunday August 11: How much of a challenge will Apple’s iPhone offer in the battle to define generative AI for the 2024/25 season of smartphone releases? Two key factors will be the uptake of the new handsets and the availability of the software.

Gurman, as well as confirming the four iPhone models that will be revealed in September (namely the iPhone 16, iPhone 16 Plus, iPhone 16 Pro, and iPhone 16 Pro Max), also looks at the potential for an increase in sales and a larger than usual uptake of new handsets. This is an important point for those measuring the impact of the awkwardly backronymed Apple intelligence suite; apart from last year’s top-tier iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max, Apple will not backport its generative AI tools to countless existing users.

Effectively no new hardware means no adoption of Apple Intelligence. According to the latest financial projections offered to investors by Apple, the company is not planning or expecting any significant boost in sales. There will be new handsets, but don’t expect a sudden rush of upgrades to increase the user base for Apple’s AI plans.

Without a wave of existing iPhone users to capture the zeitgeist, Apple will struggle to change the discussions around generative AI on smartphones away from that decided by Google and its Android partners.

Google’s Pixel launch happened two weeks after the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro were released. Apple’s September launch did not feature generative AI or any of the new frontiers about to be explored. Arguably, the iPhone 15 family was the last of the great smartphone pillars to launch without AI. Apple’s first chance to talk about AI for the iPhone did not arrive until its Worldwide Developer Conference in June.

The awkwardly backronymed Apple Intelligence software would not be available immediately; it would have to wait for September’s launch of the iPhone 16 family. It would not be backported to any existing iPhone (except for 2023’s iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max). Neither will Apple Intelligence be ready for the September 2024 launch of the iPhone 16. A limited set of tools will be included in an October update to iOS, a basic ChatGPT implementation by the end of the year, and the full package displayed at WWDC will only arrive in the first half of 2025.

Apple has still to catch up with the first generation of AI smartphones,

Meanwhile, Google is pushing Android forward with the second generation of AI smartphones ready to be revealed to the public. Google is the company that will make the decision on the future direction of AI.

Now read the latest smartphone headlines in Forbes’ weekly Android Circuit news digest…