Possible Google Pixel 9 spotted running new Tensor G4 chip

There might shake up the Google Pixel 9 series in 2024.

There are rumours of a new design for the flagship phone series, but also a fresh new Pro model too. New information reveals that there could be three models in the line-up and all running on the next-gen Tensor G4 chip as the company moves beyond the Pixel 8 Pro.

The details come from a Geekbench result (via MySmartPrice), revealing that new Google hardware has been benchmarked for the first time. The benchmarking scores don't really matter at this point – they're rather on the low side – but it's likely this hardware wasn't supposed to be tested with the information making it into the public domain.

Geekbench has been a source of new device leaks for many years, but it's also far from confirmation of the device or the hardware that it's testing. The single-core score of 1082 and multi-core score of 3121 aren't really any indicator of future performance at this point.

However, what it does tell us is that we're looking at an unreleased device called the Google Tokay. It's thought that this is one of three Pixel 9 models that could be released: the Google Caiman and Google Komodo being the others.

Google likes themes for its codenames, and Tokay, Komodo and Caiman have a reptile slant - in the past there have been fish, birds, cats and dogs.

What are the three different Google Pixel 9 models?

It's thought that Google is going to shake-up the Pixel 9 series to more closely reflect the positioning of iPhone models. That might mean that we're looking at a regular Pixel 9 (Tokay), alongside the Pixel 9 Pro (Komodo) with a 6.7-inch display, and finally a smaller Pixel 9 Pro (Caiman) with a 6.3-inch display.

Previously, the codename for the regular Pixel 9 wasn't known and I suspect that's what Tokay is. When it comes to launch, that model could get slightly overlooked and sit in the shadow of a new Pixel 9 Pro model, designed to give you all the features of the top model but in a smaller body - essentially a rival to the iPhone 16 Pro.

As for the details of the Tensor G4 that we can garner from Geekbench, the details say that it is an octo-core processor with a prime core clocked at 3.10GHz, three cores at 2.60GHz and four cores at 1.95GHz, along with a Mali G715 GPU. The configuration is essentially the same as the Tensor G3, but with higher clock speeds.

Google's focus with the Pixel 9 models is likely to be on boosting AI performance and introducing new user-focused features rather than on pure power, where we'd expect Apple and Qualcomm to power the best phones and have the advantage when it comes to pure grunt.

The Pixel 9 series is not expected to launch until October 2024.