All four of Google’s Pixel 9 phones get lined up and shot (by regulators)

Enlarge / Now I'm going to show you a series of photos of Pixel Folds, and you just tell me if you recognize any of them from the bank earlier today, okay? (credit: NCC/Android Authority)

Can you really call them "leaks" if, every year, Google's Pixel phones end up being sloshed all over the web for months before their official release? What volume of photos, hardware specifications, and other details constitutes a leak, rather than a quick-draining colander?

Google's Pixel 9 series of phones are expected to be launched at an event on August 13. Because those phones need to be certified by various regulators, including the Taiwanese National Communications Commission, or NCC, there are now photos—so many photos—of all four phones Google is expected to announce next month. The Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, and Pixel 9 Pro Fold, Google's second attempt at a folding phone, have been sized, measured, rated for battery life and charging speed, and even disassembled for a look inside.

As has been suggested by Pixel 9 renders, renders of all three non-folding phones, and pictures of prototypes, the NCC pictures confirm that Google's "Pro" phone in this series is the same size as the standard model 9 but with three rear cameras and upgraded, possibly AI-friendly specs. The NCC filings don't confirm all internal specs, such as the eye-popping 16GB of RAM seen in an earlier Pixel 9 Pro prototype. Google has previously noted that keeping certain generative models to be "RAM-resident" requires more RAM.