Apple will be unveiling the all-new iPhone 16 at its “Glowtime” event on September 9, and I’ve been wondering how it could win me back. When the Google Pixel 9 range came out, I upgraded to a Google Pixel 9 Pro. Having been an iPhone user my whole life, I was nervous about dipping my toes into the Android waters, but I can report that the temperature is glorious, so get in there! Full disclaimer: My previous iPhone was quite old, so it was long overdue for an upgrade, meaning the bar was set very low, but thankfully the Pixel 9 Pro easily surpassed that and then some.
Honestly, after reading our review of the Pixel 9 Pro, I was just curious to see what a Google Pixel phone would be like, and it quickly became clear that in day-to-day use, a Google Pixel 9 isn’t much different from a new iPhone. Sure, they use different hardware, the haptic feedback is a bit different, and they have different camera specs, but for day-to-day use, it’s the experience of using the phone that matters most. Once you understand that you’re using the Play Store and not the App Store to download apps, life goes on more or less as normal for a former iPhone user. Pixel phones have facial recognition for unlocking the phone, so nothing changes for an iPhone user here, but they also have fingerprint recognition when more security is needed for payments.
All the apps I used on my iPhone like Facebook, Threads, X, Instagram, Slack, Gmail, YouTube, etc. are available on the Pixel 9 Pro and they all work exactly the same. The basic gestures to use the phone are similar enough, and my AirPods Pro work just fine with an Android phone. I even get to keep my Apple Music subscription and Google Pay works the same as Apple Pay in stores. Even my banking apps look and feel the same.
Apple Intelligence vs Gemini
However, there is one area where Google and Apple have a chance to differentiate themselves from the competition, and that is in artificial intelligence. Google beat Apple to the punch by being first to market with its AI assistant called Gemini, but right now I would describe the implementation of Gemini as a little clunky.
You can tell your Pixel 9 to use Gemini instead of Google Assistant. However, there are still some things Gemini can’t do, so it still resorts to Google Assistant for help. Sometimes it feels like the two are fighting for ownership of the phone.
When I say “Hey Google, launch Gemini,” Google Assistant tells me it can’t find Gemini on the phone, and then starts telling me about Project Gemini’s space missions! The only way to get to Gemini Live (the part where you talk to your phone and it talks to you like a human) is to launch Gemini and then touch the Gemini Live button on the phone. It feels counterintuitive to have to touch the phone to get to the part where you talk to the phone… But the lack of deep integration goes even further—you can’t currently start timers from within Gemini Live, for example, and many of the features Google demoed at the launch event, like searching your Gmail inbox with Gemini Live, require extensions that haven’t been rolled out yet. Basically, a lot of Gemini Live is “coming soon.” Plus, you have to pay for it. You get a free trial for a year with a new Pixel 9 phone. However, after the year is up, it will cost you $20 per month (£18.99, AU$30) to become a Gemini Advanced subscriber via a Google One AI Premium plan, which offers some nice extras like 2TB of storage.
So it looks like Apple has a chance to use Apple Intelligence to improve Gemini when it launches the iPhone 16 lineup. Unfortunately, it’s not like Apple is going to knock Gemini out of the park with Apple Intelligence. At launch, it looks like the iPhone 16 lineup that ships with iOS 18 won’t have any Apple Intelligence features at all. We’ll have to wait for them to arrive in iOS 18.1 when it launches (hopefully) in October, and then we’ll have to wait until early 2025 for the full Siri 2.0 experience.
I used to compare phones in two ways: first based on specs like processor, storage, and camera, but then also based on the operating system and apps and how they would fit my current workflow. These days, I find the line between iOS and Android operating systems is so blurred that they feel interchangeable. So now it all comes down to who has the best AI. There is one exception when comparing specs, though, and that’s RAM. RAM is critical to how well AI works on a smartphone, so I’m excited to see how much RAM Apple packs into the iPhone 16 lineup on September 9, and then we’ll know if Apple can win me back.
