The Google Pixel 9 Pro has several key upgrades over the old Pixel 8 that earn it its “pro” moniker and also justify the price premium over the Pixel 9. Among them is an upgraded LTPO display panel – or it should have been, anyway. It turns out that you have to read the fine print.
The Pixel 9 Pro and even the Pixel 9 Pro XL may not have LTPO displays in India, Malaysia and Singapore. In those regions they have Actua Displays instead of the Super Actua Displays that are used on units sold in the rest of the world. Note that Actua and Super Actua tech is about display brightness rather than refresh rate, but it still shows that different panels are used. That is strange since the Pixel 8 Pro (the large phone that is the predecessor of the 9 Pro XL) already had an LTPO panel.
This may not be 100% accurate as the specs do list “1280 x 2856 LTPO OLED at 495 PPI” and “1344 x 2992 LTPO OLED at 486 PPI” for the Pixel 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL, respectively. The online stores even say “Super Actua Displays”. Still, Google has to clear things up and give a certain yes or no.
Anyway, there’s more – Pixel 9 phones sold in India do not support Wi-Fi 7, but phones sold anywhere else (including Malaysia and Singapore) do. This includes the two Pro models and the vanilla Pixel 9.
What about the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold? That has an LTPO inner display and a regular Actua cover display everywhere. But the Wi-Fi situation is murky. The Indian model is listed as supporting “Wi-Fi 7 (802.11ax)”. Wi-Fi 7 is 802.11be, ax is Wi-Fi 6, so that’s a typo. This mistake is present in both the specs listed by the online store and on the Google support page. But is the “7” the typo or is it the “ax”? Considering that its siblings don’t have Wi-Fi 7, we think the Fold doesn’t either.
We should note that India’s wireless agency still hasn’t okayed the use of the 6GHz band. That said, Wi-Fi 7 has improvements that also function in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands, so there’s no reason to drop support, whether or not the phones ever get to use the 6GHz band.
Another thing we noticed is that Google VPN, which is free for Pixel 9 users, isn’t available in the following countries: Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, India, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia and Slovenia.
There are a few other differences, but they are the usual regional differences. For example, different regions use different 5G bands (sub-6GHz and mmWave), Pixels in Japan support FeliCa and so on. The other differences are harder to explain, however.
