OnLeaks / 91Mobiles / MySmartPrice
The standard timeline would put the Google Pixel 9 at one thing like 5 months away from launching, however that does not imply it is too early to leak! Actual-life footage of the “Pixel 9 Professional” mannequin have landed over at Rozetked.
This prototype appears identical to the renders from OnLeaks that first got here out again in January. The largest change is a brand new pill-shaped digicam bump as an alternative of the edge-to-edge design of previous fashions. It appears relatively fashionable in real-life images, with the rounded corners of the capsule and digicam glass matching the physique form. The matte again appears prefer it nonetheless makes use of the superb “soft-touch glass” materials from final 12 months. The back and front of the telephone are completely flat, with a metallic band across the facet. The highest edge nonetheless has a sign window reduce out of it, which is normally for mmWave. The Pixel 8 Professional’s near-useless temperature sensor seems to nonetheless be on the again of this prototype. At the least, the spot for the temperature sensor—the silver disk proper beneath the LED digicam flash—appears an identical to the Pixel 8 Professional. As a prototype any of this might change earlier than the ultimate launch, however that is what it appears like proper now.
The telephone was helpfully photographed subsequent to an iPhone 14 Professional Max, and also you would possibly discover that the Pixel 9 Professional appears a bit of small! That is as a result of this is one of many small fashions, with solely a 6.1-inch show. Beforehand for Pixels, “Professional” meant “the large mannequin,” however this 12 months Google is supposedly transport three fashions, including in a top-tier small telephone. There’s the same old huge Pixel 9, with a 6.7-inch show, which can reportedly be referred to as the “Pixel 9 Professional XL.” The brand new mannequin is the “Pixel 9 Professional”—no XL—which is a small mannequin however nonetheless with all of the “Professional” trimmings, like three rear cameras. There’s additionally the Pixel 9 base mannequin, which is the same old smaller telephone (6.03-inch) with cut-down specs like solely two rear cameras.
Rozetked says (by translation) that the telephone is “related in measurement to the iPhone 15 Professional.” It runs a Tensor G4 SoC, in fact, and—this is a noteworthy spec—has a whopping 16GB of RAM in response to the bootloader display. The Pixel 8 Professional tops out at 12GB.
Something might change between prototype and product, particularly for RAM, which is normally scaled up and down in numerous telephone tiers. A leap in RAM is one thing we have been anticipating although. As a part of Google’s new AI-focused period, it needs generative AI fashions turned on 24/7 for some use instances. Google mentioned as a lot in a current in-house podcast, pointing to some options like a brand new model of Good Reply constructed proper into the keyboard, which “requires the fashions to be RAM-resident”—in different phrases, loaded on a regular basis. Google’s need to maintain generative AI fashions in reminiscence means much less RAM in your working system to really do working system issues, and one resolution to that’s to only add extra RAM. So how a lot RAM is sufficient? At one level Google mentioned the smaller Pixel 8’s 8GB of RAM was an excessive amount of of a “{hardware} limitation” for this method. Google PR additionally lately instructed us the corporate nonetheless hasn’t enabled generative AI good reply on Pixel 8 Professional by default with its 12GB of RAM, so anticipate these RAM numbers to begin capturing up.
The draw back is that extra RAM means a dearer telephone, however that is the trail Google goes down. There’s additionally the problem of whether or not or not you view generative AI as one thing that’s so extremely helpful you want it constructed into your keyboard 24/7. Google needs its {hardware} to be “the intersection of {hardware}, software program, and AI,” so maintaining all this ChatGPT-like stuff quarantined to a single app apparently will not be an choice.
One last notice: It is bizarre how regular this telephone appears. Normally, Pixel prototypes have a singular brand that is not the Google “G,” and sometimes they’re lined in figuring out patterns for leak tracing. This appears like a production-worthy design, although.