Posted by 
The Pixel 9 is the Android flagship for anyone who just wants a dang phone.
The Pixel 9 is the kind of device you get after a few generations of incremental progress.
One minor update after another doesn’t look like much year-over-year. A faster fingerprint sensor? Uniform bezels? Not the stuff of headlines. But eventually, the little stuff adds up to something significant. That’s the feeling I get holding the Pixel 9, and I like it a lot.
The Pixel 9 is the only non-Pro phone in the 9 series at this point, which, as best I can tell, means it has 12GB of RAM instead of 16GB and doesn’t have a telephoto lens. It’s smaller than the aptly named Pixel 9 Pro XL, the same size and shape as the regular Pixel 9 Pro, and it doesn’t fold in half like the other 9 Pro does.
But mainly, the Pixel 9 just works. The screen is bright and the battery goes all day. The fingerprint sensor is quick and accurate, finally. Although it’s pricier than last year’s model at $799 versus $699, that’s basically the going rate for a non-Pro flagship phone. And for the first time, the Pixel line feels like it has earned a place right alongside Samsung and Apple. Google just needed a few years to get here.
