Without question, the biggest trend in 2024 has been AI. Samsung entered the foray at the start of the year with Galaxy AI, while Apple took a staggered approach with the release of Apple Intelligence. Others, however, have been slow with their rollouts.
But despite the onslaught of AI features from these companies, the best smartphone feature I tried in 2024 came from the true pioneer in the space — Google. What most people neglect to remember is that Google has been implementing AI into its phones longer than everyone else.
And with the release of its Pixel 9 series, the company continues to prove that it’s still untouchable when it comes to artificial intelligence. Nothing has captivated me more than Reimagine with my Pixel 9 Pro XL. Here’s why.
I’m big on photo editing and one thing I don’t ever have enough of is time, the time to sit down to edit them. Sure, I can handle easy stuff like adjusting the color temperature of a photo to boost the exposure, but removing or replacing elements in an image is time consuming. Usually this would be a painstaking process that can take several minutes, but the Pixel 9’s Reimagine feature does it all in under a minute.
Reimagine is just one of the latest Google AI features exclusive to the Pixel 9 series, complementing others that I’ve enjoyed using — like Add Me, Gemini Live, and Pixel Studio. The reason why it’s the best smartphone feature I tried this year is because it directly impacts my workflow. After selecting areas in my photos that I want to ‘reimagine,’ I simply just type in the text box what I want Google AI to do to transform it.
Just take a look at some of the photos I’ve edited with Reimagine above. They’re perfect examples of how artificial intelligence can streamline the task for me, while remaining as realistic as possible. One of the easiest things Reimagine can do is to change the background to something completely different, all by just typing in what I want in the text box. The second example in the gallery above shows this perfectly, as I’m able to swap out the trees in favor of towering skyscrapers.
Another cool trick I’ve found with Reimagine is its ability to change the colors in a photo. Do you see the lemons in the gallery above? They were granny smith apples, but you can see how Reimagine is able to transform them into legit lemons. Additionally, the second set of images of the Honda Prologue I was testing out was easily swapped the blue color of the SUV into a bright yellow one.
However, Reimagine truly shows off its impressive ability to take what I type and recreate it with amazing accuracy. I took my original photo of me wearing the Ray-Ban Stories smart glasses near the courtyard at my apartment from a few years back and asked Reimagine to change the background to a “beach setting with people playing volleyball.” And as you can see, it created exactly what I wanted.
What’s really important in all of this is that I haven’t found anything remotely similar to this, unless I’m using a third party photo editing app like CyberLink's PhotoDirector. Unlike Reimagine, though, my request is limited to the amount of ‘tokens’ I have in my account — which I could replenish by purchasing additional ones. With Reimagine, there’s no limit to the amount of requests I want.
Neither Apple or Samsung have anything remotely close to this. Apple brought out Image Playground with the release of iOS 18.2, but it technically functions differently in that it creates images from scratch by describing what I want in a text box. Google’s version is called Pixel Studio, which is also a Pixel 9 exclusive feature. I’ve put Image Playground vs. Google Pixel Studio to the test and ultimately came away more convinced by Google’s AI feature.
When I think about AI, I often look at the impact it has on my workflow. Reimagine is one of those tools that proves this fundamental principle because at the end of the day, it’s saving me time — and that’s exactly what I look for most. It’s there when I need it and no other phone has anything else close to it.
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