I've had the pixel 9 Pro in my hands now for about a month and I recently switched to it from the iPhone 16 Pro Max as my daily driver now I've already made a video talking about why but I want to discuss my findings and tell you whether or not I feel like I made the right decision on paper these are two very different devices however I found them to be a lot more identical than I would have thought with the pixel pulling through in areas that I find myself heavily preferring rapid fire here Gemini
for instance is solid I love the promptness the response that I'm getting and overall it feels a lot more practical right now than Apple intelligence to me it feels like something that's actually useful and it's integrated correctly over being an afterthought Universal Navigation gestures are also heavily appreciated since I can swipe out from any side of the device to back out of a page or make my way through menus this is far more practical than how the iPhone handles it the UI and the pixel's Android 15 in general is also a breeze to work with
it's not overwhelming for new users it's very easy to tr transition to and in my opinion it looks really nice it's also super Snappy there's no fluff the app drawer is far less confusing than Apple's app library with everything being listed alphabetically and I like that widgets don't have to pertain to a certain format they can have nice transparent backgrounds like the weather widget that I use there is a lot more though and before we dive deeper I just want to say thank you so much for the support that you've been showing me we're almost
at 50,000 subscribers and if you can leave a like and a sub on this video I would really appreciate it I can't believe believe we're pushing that close and I can't thank you all enough for the support anyways look in reality these two are very similar I mean at the end of the day they're both smartphones and their functionality isn't really going to differ too much from one or the other but the iPhone has started to feel stale and I find myself going into this trap every year the thinner bezels the faster s so and
gimmicky features that I want to try out this time around being camera control the iPhone doesn't really bring anything new to the table though I guess I was just under the impression that iOS was just going to handle what I needed to better I figured for apps like Instagram the iPhone was just going to pull through dramatically and don't get me wrong the camera performance in app is better but it's actually really not that far off in apps that I also use like Lightroom I expected the slower tensor G4 to handle it poorly whether that
was in export times using tools like generative fill or just getting too hot after an extended period of time but again I was also just very wrong in fact in Lightroom I found my experience with the pixel to be on par and in some cases even better than what I'm getting with the 16 Pro Max and like I mentioned earlier the battery life since I'm using the smaller pixel 9 Pro and not the XL I thought it wouldn't even come close to the iPhone in terms of battery performance but once again I was wrong the
pixel can easily exceed 9 plus hours of screen on time and while it does have a larger battery than the 16 Pro Max for some reason I still can't wrap my head around how this is possible on a smaller device I guess at the end of the day that just goes to show you how efficient the tensor G4 is inside of the pixel despite the A8 Pro in the 16 Pro Max being incredibly powerful and efficient as well however one thing that I do care a lot about though on my phone is the displays brightness
I find myself shooting most of my b-roll Outdoors these days and although that's temporary since I am moving into a new studio shortly what's been a huge help is when devices are able to push through that direct sunlight now with the pixel 9 Pro and the 16 Pro Max both do not share the anti-reflective coating that the s24 ultra has which is fantastic in harsh lighting environments but I will say that I was pleasantly surprised by the performance of the pixel when Outdoors much like the iPhone it's very visible and Google claims a 3,000 knit
Peak on the OLED display and when side by side with adaptive brightness turned off the pixel is very bright of course this doesn't just help with filming though it is nice being able to go outside on a sunny day and be able to see exactly what I'm doing clearly and that's also why I prefer using these devices with these brighter displays and it's the reason why the s24 ultra stood out to me specifically because the antiglare coating was actually really good in that use case however from what I've noticed using these two devices on this
table the pixel in a lot of cases actually does get brighter and stay brighter for longer without feeling the thermal burden which is another thing and not that this is an issue and it'll go completely unnoticed when using a case but the iPhone actually does get warmer than the pixel the iPhone gets warmer while charging it's warmer while I'm in the Sun and whilst I don't believe this has any real impact on things like games when it comes to throttling at least the iPhone does get warmer with longer play sessions now I'm not going to
lie this is kind of a BS statement to make and I do see this thrown around a lot and just to clarify yes the iPhone does get warmer but that doesn't have any negative impact on the iPhone's performance at least when compared to the pixel the thing is in heavy games the iPhone does get warmer but with the a Pro it's also much faster and way more powerful than the tensor G4 inside of the pixel so when I say it gets warm in games and the pixel remains cooler don't get it twisted because the iPhone
does heavily outperform the pixel 9 Pro in pretty much every task that is going to put stress on the GPU one game that I like to test a lot is war zone mobile and in terms of performance on the tensor it's not even close to the iPhone you cannot get the same frame rate with the same graphical Fidelity this doesn't mean that the pixel cannot game though and I do find myself occasionally picking up Diablo Immortal and cod mobile when I do have some downtime just to wind down and the pixel does handle it well
it's just that for mobile the pixel is not going to give you the flagship gaming performance that you're paying the flagship premium for and as I always say despite how positive I've been with the pixel 8 and 9 series of devices I don't believe anyone should pick them up for gaming as a primary focus now when it comes to actually using the phone there's a lot of areas in which the pixel for me does Exel I'm currently renovating a studio space in a basement and with the iPhone the reception down there is terrible I've actually
missed a very important call from my family doctor because it didn't go through and when I make a call I usually have to run upstairs and out the back door just to make sure that I'm actually getting reception with the pixel I do not actually have an issue with reception in this area at all every call goes through every call stays on the line and I can hear people clearly now it is interesting because I would say the iPhone 16 Pro Max did see an improvement in this area over the last handful because even the
space that I'm in right now was a challenge for the iPhone 15 Pro Max whereas this phone I have no issues with perception now with the pixel I also like that during calls I have the option for the pixel to screen them this allows me to answer the phone calls I'm unsure about but use the Google Assistant to navigate through them this makes it very easy to hang up on pesky salespeople who are very pushy and weed out spam callers that somehow make it through Google's insanely good spam filtering system and there are some quirky
things like audio emojis and this is not something that I'm ever going to regularly use but to be honest it is kind of funny that every time my brother calls me to answer the phone by farting into it um I don't know why this is a thing but it is kind of funny I don't know I just like how unserious Google can be at times because it makes the phone feel more fun like on the surface the Google pixel9 pro looks very professional whether you love or hate its design language it's a lot more elegant
than other devices but back to what I just said they're not afraid to give us colors that show the phone in a different light this is the iPhone 16 Pro Max's hero color desert titanium and it's very safe and understated this is the Google pixel9 Pros rose quartz and it's very bright and vibrant and whether or not it's your flavor it stands out as a more fun option in my opinion but on a serious note back to the whole phone calling thing I think that as a phone Google really excels things like hold for me
which let Google Assistant tell you when the caller is back on the line are very useful and direct my call although not available in Canada helps you navigate through robotic system menus to help you get to where you need to be when calling businesses weight times is something that's available only in the US at the moment but when calling businesses you can give feedback on how long the wait time actually was to let other pixel users know how long they can expect to be on the phone for I just think that the phone app is
something that's heavily overlooked by a lot of companies despite the phone app being pretty much the most important tool on a phone and I think that it is nice that Google is giving it the attention that it deserves over companies like Apple or Samsung and despite not being able to take advantage of a lot of these features yet here in Canada I still do appreciate the ones that we have and I am excited for the future when all of these roll out and there is also a really big feature that I appreciate notification summaries so
this is on the iPhone right now it kind of sucks it almost is always guesstimating or adding words that didn't exist which can make it super confusing and force me to read the extent of the text message just to make sure that I didn't miss any context and in its state right now this doesn't work through carplay I actually take that back I was in the car a moment ago and I didn't actually have my pixel on me because it was charging and I ended up using my iPhone on Apple carplay surprisingly it actually did
have notification summary now through carplay now it worked fine but it also didn't necessarily give once again really good context as to what the message was about it seemed to kind of just like oversimplify what the text was originally for and it kind of just left me more confused than anything so I had to look at my phone and see what the actual message was I definitely still prefer Google's way of doing this now Gemini actually does a really good job at summarizing the notifications and it is also available in Android auto and one thing
that I like about it is it's just very smooth and it works really well like I got a text message the other day from my dealership telling me that I had a scheduled appointment for my detailing and for my oil change on my car instead of just going through the whole message which was like three paragraphs long it told me you have a detailing and oil change appointment on this date at this time at this dealership it just was simple it worked very well and it didn't take a lot of time for me to actually
get the gist of the message it's something that I actually really do like and appreciate on the pixel there's also Circle to search which helps me find wallpapers that I see on other people's devices and allows me to look something up from an image another thing that I use a lot though on the pixel is the transcripts in the voice recording order and the iPhone does finally now have this but I find that it actually gets what I'm saying wrong a lot of the time and can be pretty jumbled and confusing the pixel is also
able to detect multiple speakers and categorize them which is nice for recording important conversations and being able to look back at them with a transcript for reference at a later date and now in terms of Hardware the pixel has been fantastic it's aluminum objectively not as harder as premium and durable as titanium but it is a very high-end feeling device the display is up there with the best it's sharp it's 120 HZ it's OLED and like I mentioned earlier it's very bright at 3,000 nits the phone has a frosted matte glass on the rear with
glossy aluminum sides making it easy to grip onto and despite the pixel 9 Pro's smaller size it's very capable it does house some very impressive Shooters there's a 50 megap main camera a 48 map Ultra wide a 48 map 5 times telephoto and there's also a 42 megap front-facing camera and the pixel is capable of delivering 4K at up to 60 frames per second for video the images on the pixel are hands down my favorite they're Punchy there's a lot of detail and contrast and it does a really good job with low light and I
like the look straight out of camera I will say that with the iPhone I do feel like I need to shoot raw to bring some of the life back into the images but the pixel does a really good job at making the scenes realistic whilst also making them feel alive and I will say there's just something about Google's character and Google's color science and there's no doubt a lot of people come to the same conclusion with the pixel cameras though I'll be honest for video I do stick with my iPhone it's not that I necessarily
think the quality is a 100 times better it is better but at the end of the day I think the iPhone does a better job with stabilization and lens switching and giving you a better result out of camera I also like that the iPhone can shoot in a really nice log format and it's just really convenient but for pointed shoot I would say that the pixel is honestly unreal I will also say though from my experience with applications like X I've always felt the performance to be kind of lame on Android with some features not
working correctly but on the 9 Pro there hasn't really been a single app that I've used on the pixel that's felt off to me so far it's almost been a perfect experience and now that the iPhone supports RCS I'm almost not losing anything like in a group chat conversation or when messaging my family we're able to send full res media to each other rather than resorting to SMS am I happy with the pixel9 pro honestly more so than I would have thought and to be quite honest if I can only choose one of these devices
to carry out of these two phones the convenience and the feature the pixel brings to the table far outweigh what the iPhone does for me so and I never thought I'd say this but yeah I'm sticking with the pixel 9 Pro thanks for watching this one if you manage to stick all the way through go ahead and drop a shark Emoji down in the comments below to let me know who the real ones are leave a like down below and don't forget to subscribe to the channel if you like this video I'll see you in
the next one peace out
