The Pixel 9 ships with year-old Android 14, but it doesn’t really matter

OPINION: Prior to its announcement, there was a bevvy of rumours swirling around the internet suggesting that the new Pixel 9 range wouldn’t ship with the new version of Android, also known as Android 15. 

That was a pretty big deal at the time, considering the Pixels are usually the first smartphones to offer the latest version of Android and that has been the way of things since the first-gen Pixel.

Well, we finally got confirmation at the Made By Google Event earlier this week that, yes, the Pixel 9 collection will ship with the year-old Android 14, while the Android 15 treatment will appear sometime in September or October. 

A glance at certain social media accounts would have you believing that this is the worst thing to ever happen in tech – but it really isn’t. In fact, I don’t think it matters in the slightest. 

I mean, for one, it’s only the earliest adopters that’ll have to deal with this anyway. If you’re buying the Pixel 9 a little further down the line once the Android 15 update is available, it’ll almost certainly be pre-loaded on the device, ready for you to use straight away. 

Plus, considering early adopters tend to be pretty tech-savvy, it’s not going to be difficult to get them to upgrade to Android 15 once the update does roll around. 

Then there’s the misconception that, like recent iOS updates, new versions of Android bring sweeping changes to the experience on offer. From my perspective it’s rarely that transformative, often introducing smaller new features or improving existing ones. 

Take the Android 15 update for example; some of the more notable features include the ability to screen share or record a single app instead of your entire display, improved satellite connectivity with support for RCS, and a tweaked Camera UI that makes it easier to switch between photo and video. That’s all good stuff, but it’ll hardly blow the doors off the smartphone industry.

Instead, it’s up to manufacturers to bring exciting new features to the Android experience, like Samsung’s Galaxy AI as part of OneUI 6.0 – but these aren’t usually tied to the core version of Android, and new features can appear at any time. That’s just as true with Google, with its own updates framed as Pixel Feature Drops that appear throughout the year. 

Crucially, every key feature introduced as part of Android 15 – including those I mentioned earlier, alongside smaller tweaks like improved camera quality when using the phone as a webcam on Windows – is already available on Android 14 via the Pixel 9 collection, alongside a bevvy of new AI features like Pixel Studio and Pixel Screenshots. 

I’m confident that when the Android 15 update does appear, it’ll be hard to tell on the Pixel 9 range because all the key features are already there, present and accounted for. 

When it comes to Pixel phones, it seems like Android versions are just a number. I suppose that’s a benefit you have when you’re using phones made by the same company that creates the Android operating system.

Besides, Google’s long-term software promise is a little different to most manufacturers; aside from offering a staggering seven years of OS upgrades and software support, Google doesn’t actually count individual Android OS upgrades as part of its promise. 

Instead, the Pixel range will simply get every big update until August 2031, so shipping with Android 14 before getting Android 15 won’t take one of the promised OS upgrades as you might expect.

So, yes, the Pixel 9 collection is a first for Google by shipping with year-old software, but with all the new features of Android 15 already bundled into the handsets, as well as Google’s unique approach to software updates, it doesn’t really matter.