Google’s Pixel 9 is still useable with wet hands thanks to a new feature

It’s no surprise that the most exciting part of the Pixel 9 is the phone’s new proprietary AI features, but it’s also worth mentioning some quality-of-life tweaks that Google has made to the new phone. One of the most useful is Adaptive Touch, which Android Authority pointed out makes it more convenient to use the phone with wet hands or when it’s raining.

Touchscreens make smartphones incredibly capable, but they also make them vulnerable to damage and outside elements. When phones were mostly just physical buttons, you didn’t have to worry about pressing them, but when it’s all software, suddenly the touch your phone can detect really matters. Adaptive Touch is a small tweak that recognizes your input more often.

Intelligent touch sensitivity adjustment doesn’t get as much attention as AI, so I understand why Google didn’t put it at the forefront, but that doesn’t mean Adaptive Touch isn’t worth considering. It’s useful enough that Google is enabling it by default on all new Pixel 9 phones, so there must be some value in it. Also, as someone who has tried and failed to use a touchscreen in a variety of situations, including work and travel, with hands that are varying degrees of damp or sticky, I wanted to see how Adaptive Touch compared to Google’s older phones.

Adaptive touch allows you to operate your smartphone even with wet hands

Google manages to make things run smoothly

References to Adaptive Touch have appeared in previous Android 14 releases, and the feature that comes with the Pixel 9 is largely unchanged.

You’ll find the feature turned on by heading to the touch sensitivity section of the Pixel 9’s display settings, and a brief explanation from Google says that with Adaptive Touch enabled, “touch sensitivity automatically adjusts to your environment, activity, and screen protectors.”

To enable or disable Adaptive Touch on your new Pixel 9:

1. open setting App.
2. Tap screen.
3. Scroll down and tap Touch Sensitivity.
4. Tap Adaptive Touch Toggle Turns the feature on or off.

Android has let you adjust touchscreen sensitivity for some time, and there’s even a “screen protector mode” feature that increases touch sensitivity on phones with screen protectors on, so the premise of Google’s new feature is familiar. Adaptive Touch is different in that it adjusts sensitivity on the fly based on what it thinks is needed. It’s unclear how many of the Pixel 9’s existing sensors are used to make these decisions, or if the phone is simply detecting that Android is becoming harder to tap and scroll on, but it’s still a clever feature.

Adaptive touch works surprisingly well

I wanted a clear example of how the Pixel 9 handled getting wet compared to Google’s older phones, so I poured a bowl of water over my hands and used both the Pixel 9 and Pixel 7. Google’s older phone had the same issues I’ve seen with other phones: Taps were sometimes detected, but the movement was jerky and phantom taps were common. To make matters worse, the more water I inadvertently spread around the screen while trying to use the phone, the worse it got.

The Pixel 9 was much better, and came closer to feeling like I was using a phone with dry hands. Taps registered properly, swipes worked, and overall it felt like I wasn’t fighting with the phone. Longer movements, like swiping up from the bottom of a long list, felt a bit stiff, but executed without issue, unlike my experience with the Pixel 7. This feels like a win for Adaptive Touch.

To get ahead of potential issues, Google changed the display between the Pixel 7 and the Pixel 9’s true predecessor, the Pixel 8. The Pixel 7 uses a 6.3-inch OLED with a 1,080 x 2,400 resolution. The Pixel 8 uses Google’s Actua display, which is also an FHD+ OLED, but it’s 6.2 inches in size and has a faster refresh rate, up to 120Hz. The differences between the Pixel 8 and Pixel 9 are even smaller, with the Pixel 9’s display being brighter than the Pixel 8’s primarily due to the Pixel 8’s display being brighter than the Pixel 8’s.

It’s not clear if these hardware differences have anything to do with where Adaptive Touch is available or how it works. Google doesn’t release information about the touch sensors it uses in its phones, but if there’s something hardware-related that enables the feature, it would be in the touch layer and not the display. More likely, this software toggle is essentially a software feature, and Google has simply gotten much better at predicting the state of touchscreens in the last few years since it started making phones.

The touchscreen is clunky, but adaptive touch helps

If you’ve ever stepped out of the shower and reached over to answer a call or change the song on your Bluetooth speaker, you know how difficult it can be to use your phone with wet hands. Most modern electronic devices use capacitive touchscreens, which detect touch when your finger completes an electrical circuit, but are easily confused by the natural conductivity of water. If you’ve ever accidentally gotten your phone wet and it started panicking or detecting phantom taps, that’s usually the culprit.

Pixel 9

The Pixel 9 features a 6.3-inch display and a familiar design, and in addition to Google Gemini and AI features, it adds a 48-megapixel ultra-wide lens to the rear camera array.

Eliminating or at least mitigating this behavior is a small thing, but it could go a long way to making Pixel 9 phones work where other phones don’t. Further testing in the rain and snow is needed, but for now, new Pixel 9 owners should be happy that Adaptive Touch is turned on. The Pixel 9 may outperform other AI-enabled phones, but thanks to features like this, it’s also just a better phone.