The 'plain' Pixel (i.e, the one with no suffixes) has been the most compact of the Pixel range in recent times and the Pixel 9 is no different. It is rather compact for a modern smartphone - it is 152.8 mm tall, although at 198 grams for its size,

With its straight metal sides, the Pixel 9 might give off very iPhone feels to some folks. However, its very distinct camera unit makes it out as a Pixel. It is no longer a 'camera bar' but more like an elevated horizontal capsule. It does jut out a fair bit but whether it looks good or bad depends on your own sense of aesthetics. We rather liked it because it gives the phone a very distinct look!

The phone comes in some very interesting colours including a bright pink Peony and a wonderfully stylish Wintergreen. Well, we got stuck with the plainest of the lot - good old Porcelain. But even that looks rather nice and thanks to that very eye-catching camera unit, it cannot be mistaken for being anything but a Pixel.

There is some pretty good hardware and software onboard too - you get a very good 6.3 inch AMOLED display with 2424 x 1080 resolution and 120 Hz refresh rate and the phone, like all recent Pixels, runs on Google's own Tensor G4 chip. This is combined with 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. You also get a 4700 mAh battery, which is a little on the smaller side in this day and age. There is still no charger in the box, and charging speed remains a very modest 27W over wired connection and 12W-15W over wireless.

Of course, one of the biggest attractions of any Pixel are its cameras. The Pixel 9 gets us a 50 megapixel main sensor and a 48 megapixel ultrawide on the back and a 10.5 megapixel selfie sensor. All of these have autofocus, something that is not seen very often.

Of course, as this is a Pixel, it comes with clean, uncluttered Android - Android 14, with assured updates for the next seven years. An added attraction is the presence of AI tools, which range from the Gemini Live assistant to special tools that let you add and remove objects from pictures and even generate images by writing descriptions. We will be talking more about them in the coming days, Suffice to say, they are fun. There is a lot of software magic happening on this relatively small phone.