The same old 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 seems to be similar to the renders from OnLeaks that first got here out again in January. The most important change is a brand new pill-shaped digital camera bump as a substitute of the edge-to-edge design of previous fashions. It seems to be slightly fashionable in real-life pictures, with the rounded corners of the capsule and digital camera glass matching the physique form. The matte again seems to be prefer it nonetheless makes use of the wonderful “soft-touch glass” materials from final yr. The back and front of the cellphone are completely flat, with a metallic band across the facet. The highest edge nonetheless has a sign window reduce out of it, which is often for mmWave. The Pixel 8 Professional’s near-useless temperature sensor seems to nonetheless be on the again of this prototype. At the very least, the spot for the temperature sensor—the silver disk proper under the LED digital camera flash—seems to be 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 seems to be like proper now.
The cellphone was helpfully photographed subsequent to an iPhone 14 Professional Max, and also you would possibly discover that the Pixel 9 Professional seems to be somewhat 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 yr Google is supposedly delivery three fashions, including in a top-tier small cellphone. There’s the standard massive Pixel 9, with a 6.7-inch show, which is able to 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 standard smaller cellphone (6.03-inch) with cut-down specs like solely two rear cameras.
Rozetked says (by means of translation) that the cellphone 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 accordance with the bootloader display. The Pixel 8 Professional tops out at 12GB.
Something may change between prototype and product, particularly for RAM, which is often scaled up and down in varied cellphone tiers. A soar 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 circumstances. Google mentioned as a lot in a latest 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 want to maintain generative AI fashions in reminiscence means much less RAM on your working system to really do working system issues, and one answer 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 strategy. Google PR additionally not too long ago 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 start out taking pictures up.
The draw back is that extra RAM means a dearer cellphone, 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 preserving all this ChatGPT-like stuff quarantined to a single app apparently will not be an choice.
One last observe: It is bizarre how regular this cellphone seems to be. Often, Pixel prototypes have a novel emblem that is not the Google “G,” and infrequently they’re lined in figuring out patterns for leak tracing. This seems to be like a production-worthy design, although.