The Google Pixel 9 Pro XL is the latest large smartphone from Google, featuring a stunning 6.8-inch Super Actua Display. This display is incredibly bright and looks amazing. To protect it, investing in a good case is a smart choice.

In this list, we will rank the best cases available for the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL, including top options for carbon fiber cases, leather cases, and more. Without further ado, here are the best cases for the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL.

Best Google Pixel 9 Pro XL Case

Google Silicon Case

Google’s own Silicon case is hands-down the best case available for Pixel 9 Pro XL. And it’s actually a really nice upgrade over last year’s version. The Pixel 8 version was pretty sticky, and thus held onto every bit of dust and dirt that might be in the air. While the Pixel 9 Pro XL case is not quite as sticky, but still has a good amount of grip to keep it from falling out of your hand.

This silicon case costs $34.99 and comes in four colors: Obsidian, Porcelain, Hazel, and Rose Quartz. It can match the colors of the Pixel 9 Pro XL.

This case is great because it is a first-party case, so you know that it’s going to fit the phone perfectly. It also makes the camera bump nearly flat, which is great for it laying on a table. It feels great in the hand, and does keep the fingerprints off of those shiny rails, which is definitely important here. This is one of my favorite cases for the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL, and will likely use it for quite some time.

Buy at Google Store

Best Carbon Fiber Case

Thinborne

Over the last few years, Thinborne has secretly been making some of the best cases for flagship phones. These are thin, Aramid Fiber cases for the Pixel 9 series, which also includes a Magnet for MagSafe accessories. I’ve been using this case for a little bit and have to say, the MagSafe magnet is actually very strong. I sometimes have trouble taking the MagSafe battery pack off with this case.

Thinborne cases are not cheap, they cost $69.98 for all of the Pixel 9 series. However, what makes up for this is the fact that they also come with a tempered glass screen protector. Kind of making it worth the price.

The only downside to Aramid Fiber cases like this is, the fact that they will hold onto all oils from your fingers. So you will want to wipe it down pretty often.

However, this case does offer a pretty small lip for the display and the camera bar. In fact, the case does go over the camera bar, so when you put the phone on a table, the camera is actually not touching it. Which is even more important. This is one of those cases that I use on virtually every smartphone that I get. So it definitely needed to be on this list.

Buy at Amazon

Best Leather Case

Bellroy Leather Case

Bellroy is another company that’s quietly been making some really good cases. This is their leather case, which is only one of a few companies making a real leather case – a lot of others are doing faux leather. Ironically, it’s cheaper than the Thinborne Aramid Fiber case above.

This Bellroy Leather case is available in four colors: RubyRed, Black, Terracotta, and SimplyTaupe. It costs $59, from Amazon. Which is not a bad price for a fully leather case. Especially one that is real leather and will actually patina.

If you’re a big leather person and love seeing it patina over time, then this is a really good option. It also features metal buttons for the power and volume rocker. So it will definitely feel premium in your hands.

Buy at Amazon

Best Rugged Case

Spigen Tough Armor

The Spigen Tough Armor is another very popular case for the Pixel 9 Pro XL. This is a rugged case with a kickstand. But the good thing here is, it doesn’t look like a rugged case. As those rugged cases are typically pretty ugly. Instead, this looks pretty nice, and does still pass the MIL-STD-810G tests, and can withstand drops from higher heights. So you can pick up this case and not worry about dropping your phone as much.

This is a dual-layer case, which sports a soft TPU layer that goes against the phone, and a hard outer shell that will take the impact when the phone is dropped. Spigen has included a nice lip to protect the display as well as the camera module on the back. Additionally, there is a kickstand on the back. But honestly, this kickstand is rather flimsy and you probably won’t want to use it that much.

Spigen is selling this case for $18.99, and is available in black, Metal Slate, and Abyss Green.

Buy at Amazon

Honorable Mention: UAG Case Scout

Spigen Rugged Armor

The Spigen Rugged Armor Case for the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL is a must-have for those seeking the perfect blend of style and protection. Its sleek, minimalist design with carbon fiber accents complements your Pixel 9 Pro XL without adding unnecessary bulk. Despite its slim profile, this case packs a punch, offering military-grade protection thanks to Spigen’s innovative Air Cushion Technology. You can confidently take your phone anywhere, knowing it’s shielded from everyday bumps and accidental drops.

The case’s precise cutouts ensure easy access to all buttons and ports, maintaining the phone’s functionality. Its raised edges provide an extra layer of defense for your screen and camera lens against scratches. The tactile buttons provide a responsive feel, and the textured sides offer a secure grip. If you’re looking for a reliable, stylish, and pocket-friendly case for your Pixel 9 Pro XL, the Spigen Rugged Armor is an excellent choice.

Buy at Amazon

Best MagSafe Case

TORRAS 360-Degree Spin Magnetic Stand Case

Mous Super Thin Phone Cover

Buy at Amazon

Apple’s even tinier Mac mini is here — with M4 power. It’s also more affordable than ever and better value. It won’t shock you to hear the M4 Pro is very fast, but the Mac mini comes with 16 gigs of RAM as standard too.

The base Mac mini has an M4 chip sports a 10-core CPU (four high-performance cores and six high efficiency), a 10-core GPU and a 16-core Neural Engine. For $1,399, you can bump up to the dramatically more powerful M4 Pro chip (like our review unit), featuring a 14-core CPU (10 high-performance and four high efficiency) and 20-core GPU. (But that’s a pricey upgrade.)

Its Geekbench 6 and Cinebench scores still beat most of the computers we’ve tested this year, and its GPU is fast enough for solid 1080p 60 fps gameplay. And it’s that small!

— Mat Smith

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It’s available on most Workspace tiers.

Google Vids runs on Google’s AI model, Gemini, to create workplace and marketing videos from Google Drive files and descriptions. You can either start a video from scratch or use a pre-made template to get a first draft going. There’s even a Help me create option.

Google Vids doesn’t make videos from the ground up, like the mostly creepy creations of Runway’s Gen-2 or OpenAI’s Sora. Google uses different media and compiles them based on your suggestions and the content of the source documents.

Continue reading.

Paragon or renegade?

Variety reports that Amazon MGM Studios is developing a TV series based on the sci-fi universe of Mass Effect. Daniel Casey will be the series writer and executive producer. He has action credits on the screenplay for F9: The Fast Saga and made contributions to sci-fi films Kin and 10 Cloverfield Lane. The Mass Effect series includes a critically acclaimed trilogy of titles and a critically panned sequel, Andromeda. There’s also another game in the works, which I assume would dovetail into this show somehow. Corporate synergy, baby.

Continue reading.

As enterprises continue to invest heavily in advanced analytics and large language models (LLMs), graph technology has become one of the most favored approaches for setting up the data stack. It allows users to understand complex relationships in their datasets, which are often not apparent in traditional relational databases.

However, maintaining and querying graph databases alongside traditional relational databases is quite a hassle (and an expensive one). Today, PuppyGraph, a San Francisco-based startup founded by former Google and LinkedIn employees, raised $5 million to solve this gap with the world’s first and only zero-ETL query engine. The engine allows users to query their existing relational data as a unified graph without needing a separate graph database and long extract-transform-load (ETL) processes. 

The engine launched in March 2024 and is already being used by several enterprises to simplify data analytics. Its forever-free developer edition alone is witnessing a 70% month-over-month download increase. 

The need for PuppyGraph

A graph database architecture mirrors sketching on a whiteboard, storing all the information in nodes (representing entities, people and concepts) with relevant context and connections between them. Using this graph structure, users can identify complex patterns and relationships that may not be easily apparent in traditional relational databases (queried via SQL) and deploy algorithms to quickly enable use cases such as AI/ML, fraud detection, customer journey mapping and risk management for networks. 

In the current scheme of things, the only way to adopt graph technologies is to set up a separate native graph database and keep it in sync with the source database. The task sounds easy but becomes very complicated, with teams having to set up complex and resource-intensive ETL pipelines to migrate their datasets to graph storage. This can easily cost millions and take months, keeping users from running critical business queries. 

Not to mention, once the database is set up, they also have to manage it continuously, which further adds to the cost and creates scalability problems in the long run. 

To address these gaps, former Google and LinkedIn employees Weimo Liu, Lei Huang and Danfeng Xu came together and started PuppyGraph. The idea was to provide teams with a way to query their existing relational databases and data lakes as graphs, without data migrations.

This way, the same data that is analyzed with SQL queries could be analyzed as a graph, leading to faster access to insights. This can be particularly useful for cases where the data is deeply connected with multi-level relationships, like in supply chain or cybersecurity. 

“The deeper the level, the more complex the query becomes in a traditional SQL query. This is because each additional level requires an additional table join operation, compounding the complexity and potentially slowing down the query performance dramatically… In contrast, graph query handles these multi-level relationships much more efficiently. They are designed to quickly traverse these connections using paths through the graph, regardless of the depth of the connection,” Zhenni Wu, who joined PuppyGraph’s founding team, told VentureBeat. 

Wu said PuppyGraph eliminates the need for extensive ETL setups entirely, enabling ‘deployment to query’ in just about 10 minutes. All the user has to do is connect the tool with their data source of choice. Once done, it automatically creates a graph schema and queries the tables in graph models. Also, the engine’s distributed design allows it to handle extremely large datasets and complex multi-hop queries.

It can connect to all mainstream data lakes, including Google BigQuery and Databricks, to run accelerated graph analytics – while keeping costs on the lower side at the same time.

“The separation of storage and compute architecture means that low cost is PuppyGraph‘s one of the biggest advantages. There is zero storage cost because the engine directly queries data from users’ existing data lake/warehouse. It provides the flexibility to scale compute resources as needed, allowing adjustments to handle fluctuating workloads efficiently, without risking resource contention or performance degradation,” Wu added.

Significant impact in early days

While the company is less than a year old, it is already witnessing success with several enterprises, including Coinbase, Clarivate, Dawn Capital and Prevelant AI.

In one case, an enterprise transitioned to PuppyGraph from a legacy graph database system and managed to cut its total cost of ownership by over 80%. A leading financial trading platform was able to achieve a 5-hop path query between account A and account B across around 1 billion edges in less than 3 seconds. 

Before PuppyGraph, their self-built SQL-based solution couldn’t even query beyond a 3-hop query and had batch time-out issues. 

With this funding, the company plans to accelerate its product development, expand its team and increase its market presence by taking the zero-ETL graph query engine to more organizations worldwide.

According to Gartner, the market for graph technologies will grow to $3.2 billion by 2025 with a CAGR of 28.1%. Other players in the category are Neo4j, AWS Neptune, Aerospike and ArrangoDB. 

AMD launched its latest Ryzen 7 9800X3D to glowing reviews this week, but if you’re looking to buy one then you might have to wait for more stock. The 9800X3D is currently sold out at Newegg and Best Buy, with the majority of Micro Center locations also sold out of AMD’s best gaming processor.

The situation is similar across Europe, too. In Germany most retailers have run out of stock, with new shipments not expected to arrive until later this month. In the UK Scan is accepting preorders for the 9800X3D, but stock won’t arrive until November 29th. Overclockers in the UK says its stock is currently held at UK customs and that its first and second shipments are allocated and sold out. It’s not expecting another shipment until December.

AMD computing and graphics boss Jack Huynh shared photos on X of people lining up for the 9800X3D at retailers, while AMD CEO Lisa Su has been signing some of the CPUs for “some special partners.” Naturally, scalpers are trying to take advantage of the low stock situation with some 9800X3D listings on eBay asking as much as $999 instead of the $479 retail price of the CPU.

While there’s bound to be some pent-up demand for the 9800X3D after the disappointment of Zen 5 desktop CPUs and Intel’s Core Ultra 9 285K, it’s clear AMD doesn’t have enough stock of this new CPU for its launch period. The 9800X3D launch timing came as a surprise, arriving less than three months after AMD introduced its first Zen 5 desktop CPUs in August. AMD didn’t introduce its Zen 4 X3D parts until five months after the Ryzen 9 7950X was first released in September 2022, with the 7800X3D arriving nearly seven months later.

• Sennheiser Momentum 4 will be issued to Lufthansa first class flyers ‘for the duration of the flight’
• Amazon’s running a great Black Friday deal for UK buyers
• US buyers might want to wait for Black Friday

Sennheiser’s Momentum 4 Wireless Headphones are among the best wireless headphones you can buy, gaining the full five stars in our review. And now they’re taking to the skies – but you don’t need to be a high flier to enjoy a pair thanks to a newly discovered huge discount (in the UK, that is).

Let’s talk about the skies first. Sennheiser has teamed up with Lufthansa for an in-flight collaboration. Travelers in the newest Lufthansa Allegris First Class suites (see main image. Pretty swish, no?) will be offered a special Lufthansa-branded edition of the Momentum 4 Wireless to use “for the duration of the flight”. (Boo!)

With its latest flagship, the OnePlus 13, OnePlus has taken an innovative approach to managing storage space for apps and files. The company has already confirmed to provide users with over 5GB of additional storage space for user data.

This improvement comes with the release of Oxygen OS 15, OnePlus‘s storage-efficient operating system built on Android 15.

Oxygen OS 15, the latest iteration of OnePlus’s operating system, was initially released in beta for last year’s OnePlus flagship last month. While the update includes new features such as refreshed animations, a Quick Settings split panel, enhanced icon colors, and a “Share with iPhone” function, it also introduces a significant space-saving feature exclusive to the OnePlus 13.

OxygenOS 15 offers you more space for your apps and files

According to OnePlus, Oxygen OS 15 on the OnePlus 13 uses around 20% less storage space than Oxygen OS 14 on the OnePlus 12, giving OnePlus 13 users additional room for their apps, photos, and files.

The company optimized the system by analyzing and removing redundant features and reducing preloaded resources, like wallpapers, which users can now download on demand.

This change reduced the space required by system files while ensuring that essential features remain intact. OnePlus also fine-tuned the partitioning in its devices, giving the OnePlus 13’s user data partition more room.

Understanding partition changes

OnePlus achieves this optimization by resizing the “super” partition, which holds critical system files across various sub-partitions. Android devices use a set of dynamically resizable partitions within the “super” partition to facilitate updates and maintain system integrity. If OnePlus makes the super partition too small, the device may not support future updates. On the other hand, if it’s too large, it wastes valuable storage space for user data.

OnePlus identified an opportunity to save space by reducing the super partition size. The OnePlus 13 now reserves only 14.3GB for the super partition, down from 16GB on the OnePlus 12—a 1.7GB reduction. This change allocates more storage to the user data partition, increasing usable storage on the OnePlus 13 by 2.19GB. Developer MlgmXyysd pulled these numbers from the Chinese versions of the OnePlus 12 and OnePlus 13, though, and thus these figures might not be fully reflective of the global models.

Extra storage is beneficial, especially with increasing file sizes of apps, games, and media. Even those who opt for the base model of the OnePlus 13 will enjoy more storage without worrying about the limitations often associated with smaller storage variants.