The Google Pixel 9 Pro has several significant upgrades over the older Pixel 8 that give it the “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 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 the Actua and Super Actua technology is about display brightness rather than refresh rate, but it still shows that different panels have been used. This is strange because the Pixel 8 Pro (the larger phone that is the predecessor to the 9 Pro XL) already had an LTPO panel.
This might not be 100% accurate as the specifications 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 store even mentions “Super Actua Display”. Still, Google has to clarify things and give a definite yes or no.
Well, there’s more – Pixel 9 phones sold in India don’t support Wi-Fi 7, but phones sold elsewhere (including Malaysia and Singapore) do support Wi-Fi 7. This includes the two Pro models and the vanilla Pixel 9.
What about the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold? It has an LTPO inner display and a regular Actua cover display everywhere else. But the Wi-Fi situation is unclear. The Indian model is listed as supporting “Wi-Fi 7 (802.11ax)”. Wi-Fi 7 is 802.11be, ax is Wi-Fi 6, so this is a typo. This mistake is present in both the specs listed on the online store and the Google support page. But is the “7” a typo or is it “ax”? Given that its siblings don’t have Wi-Fi 7, we assume the Fold doesn’t have it either.
We should note that India’s wireless agency still hasn’t approved the use of the 6GHz band. However, Wi-Fi 7 has improvements that work in the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands as well, so there’s no reason to drop support, whether phones ever use the 6GHz band or not.
Another thing we noticed is that Google VPN, which is free for Pixel 9 users, is not available in the following countries: Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, India, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Slovakia, and Slovenia.
There are some other differences too, 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. However, other differences are harder to explain.
