Pixel phone owners, get ready for a major free upgrade

Google Pixel users are in for an exciting treat, as Google appears poised to roll out some of the exclusive Pixel 9 camera and editing features to older devices.

If you own a Pixel 6, Pixel 6 Pro, Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro, Pixel 8 or Pixel 8 Pro, a significant upgrade could be on the horizon. Two major features – Auto Frame and Reimagine – are likely coming your way soon.

Both these tools are designed to make photo editing smarter and easier.

Auto Frame uses AI to automatically frame the subject in your image, even expanding the image if necessary by generating more background.

Reimagine, on the other hand, gives users the power to change images completely, replacing a section of a photo with almost anything you can think of. See the example of a UFO landing in central London below.

backgrounds completely making photos look more dynamic and polished.

While these new tools were initially thought to be limited to the Pixel 9 series, they could be making their way to older Pixels as well.

The news comes from an APK teardown conducted by Android Authority contributor Assemble Debug, who discovered code in the Google Photos app suggesting that Google might soon unlock these features for older Pixel devices.

Specifically, the teardown reveals three versions of the Google Photos app:

• A version for all non-Pixel Android devices.
• A version for Pixels released between 2021 and 2023, which includes the Pixel 6, Pixel 7, and Pixel 8 series.
• A version for the new Pixel 9 series.

The critical detail here is that the Auto Frame and Reimagine features, originally exclusive to the Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL and Pixel 9 Pro Fold, have now been spotted in the code of the Google Photos app (v6.99) for the 2021–2023 Pixels, indicating these tools could soon be available for older models.

Unfortunately for non-Pixel Android users, the same APK teardown showed that the general version of the Google Photos app does not contain these new editing features. This means that, at least for now, Auto Frame and Reimagine will remain exclusive to Google Pixel phones.

However, your Android phone may soon receive a huge search upgrade that is currently only available to users of Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy phones.

While there’s no official confirmation on when the rollout will happen, Google’s track record suggests it could arrive as part of a future ‘Feature Drop’ update.

Those are periodic updates that Google releases for Pixel devices, often bringing new capabilities and improvements to older models. So, while we don’t have an exact date, Pixel owners can expect these upgrades to arrive relatively.

If you still haven’t ordered one for yourself, be sure to check out our article on where to buy the Google Pixel 9 series.

And if the recent launch of the iPhone 16 series has made you have second thoughts, here are 5 ways the Pixel 9 beats the iPhone 16.