When you declare Integer i = 9 in java, is i considered to be primitive type due to autoboxing?

No, the type of i is still Integer (the reference type) - that's how it's declared, after all. The fact that it happens to be initialized using an int is entirely separate from the type of the variable. The literal 9 is a value of type int, but it's boxed into an Integer.

The code is equivalent to:

Integer i = Integer.valueOf(9);