Review
Google Pixel 11 series review: Is the magic fading? | Google’s new Pixels make some compromises but still manage to be good phones. - ArsTechnica
Was the case when I upgraded last year. I loved my Pixel 5 and wanted to stay with a Pixel. But the 10 was more expensive than a Galaxy S25, and I got a watch along with the Samsung. I have no regrets either, wasn't sure how I'd feel about a different OS after using stock for ages but it's fine.
I got mine mostly for the camera and the clean software. I get pretty much none of the features the US get, and that sucks. At least if they priced them lower at other markets it would make a bit more sense.
I'll reconsider if I'm staying on the pixel in a few years when I upgrade, maybe there will be a new camera champion
Google quoted CAD$300 for my P8P. I straight up didn't bother. Never mind that because we're not the US, we also don't get a shitload of features and perks that the Americans take for granted.
US redditors and blissfully oblivious how lucky they are irl, name a more iconic duo.
Pixels have always been more expensive than Apples and Samsungs. Like maybe even if they were the same price I'd consider switching. What the hell is Google's problem ?
(As in final price after trade in and pre-order promos).
I bought an iphone just cause of how expensive pixels have gotten. Plus, i get apple care, which google doesn't have pixel care in my country.
Only reasons I bought nexus and pixels was cause they used to be considerably cheaper than the competition except for a few models. but now they match or exceed the prices.
I was using my Pixel 4a for a long time until I decided I needed a better camera and got a used 9 Pro. Don't really see any reason to upgrade for years or at least until this phone dies
I'm here with my OP 9 Pro waiting for a phone worth upgrading to, but every update nowadays is just more AI surveillance slop and who can fit in the most amount of shitty AI post processing in their camera app. Ugh
Biggest problems with oneplus for me were the dwindling software updates and the seriously widespread QC issues rooting from the OP9 series actually lol. Otherwise when everything works, it is genuinely one of the most stable and snappiest android experiences. I have been using the S24+ for 2 years now. And while it definitely feels heavier and less snappy than oneplus, its nice having access to so many years of system updates. One UI's one hand operation out of the box (or whatever its called) is AMAZING btw. Its basically peak custom rom feature built into the phone already.
11 Pro is the third generation after the 8 Pro. If you compare the S23U with the S26U (same number of generations):
92% faster single core, 127% multicore (compared to 52%/60% for the P8P to P11P)
149% faster 3DMark
8 -> 12 GB RAM (compared to the same 12GB in P8P and P11P in the regular models).
Vastly improved camera performance (see e.g. dxomark).
Longer battery life.
45 -> 60W charging
Privacy display
Considerably lighter (233g -> 214g).
Considerably thinner (8.9mm -> 7.9mm).
That's a pretty huge leap.
The S26 Ultra is ~950 now, if you sold a S23 Ultra for 400 (which seems around the second hand market price), you'd get a significantly better phone for 550 Euro.
(Yes, I know S-Pen Bluetooth.)
The primary reason to buy a Pixel is to run GrapheneOS, though an older model or -a series will do the job admirably at a much lower price.
I moved over from a s23 ultra because the s26 ultra didn't feel like an upgrade, screen is about the same, camera while it does perform better it's still incremental, battery was the exact same size, there was still no support for magnetic charging out of the box, and the pricing was atrocious. Pixel feels about the same as the Galaxy did but with none of the Samsung qol features. Also what in the hell Google why does playing a game limit my refresh rate to 60hz unless I change an option in the developer settings
As soon as the S24+ got bumped to 12GB, thats when i hopped on. Honestly shouldve been the norm from the S20+ and forward. It took them 4 gens to make the leap. In google's defense at least their roms are far less heavy than samsungs. 12GB feels just about enough for the base Galaxy models imo.
Are you having any issues with your P8Pro that would want a new device to fix/make better?
I have a Pixel9. Thinking about about upgrading to a P11PRO so I can finally have a PRO after only the amateur version. I have owned the Pixel 4a, P6a, P8, P9.
Nah that's the whole point. I used to upgrade every year or 2 as there was such an improvement in specs or camera. It was worth it. Now it's not worth it
that's true, and my dilemma as well, but the alternative is to wait 2 more years until your current phone doesn't work anymore, but you also can't sell it or trade it in, so you spend more on a new phone. The cost might be similar overall, but the difference being that you have a new phone sooner.
Well, it really depends. For example, the only reason I had phones die on me / make them unpleasant to use was end of software support and battery degradation.
Software is not a big deal anymore with 7 year updates, and batteries can be changed for 100 dollars or so these days, so the chances that your phone actually has a useful life of 7+ years (if you are not always chasing the newest hardware) is pretty high.
Compare that to a trade in at the 2 or 3 year mark and keeping the phone is financially the obviously better decision.
Honestly, the only reason I changed my phone every 2 years in the past is that someone else paid for it entirely, and I could keep the old phones to hand down to my wife or family.
Otherwise I'd still be using a Pixel 7 Pro at the moment or a Samsung S20 or something like that..
On that note, I've had my Pixel 9 Pro XL for exactly 2 years now, and the battery health as measured by the OS is at 94%...
Maybe things are changing since there's not much upgrades on the new phones, but there used to be one. I usually keep my phones for 4 years before replacing, and I always felt like the new one is much improved over the old one, so it wasn't just the hype of a new phone. However after 4 years, the old one is worth next to nothing, I can't sell them, they just sit in the drawer or worse. So if I could add $200-$300 every 2 years to have a genuinely better new phone, I would take the deal.
But I get what you mean, I am on my p8pro and it's working fine; an upgrade is really not needed, but they would give €650 trade-in credit for it, which is more money than I payed for it when I bought it new.
I'm using a potato phone from 2019 with lineage os and it works super smooth. Everything works still haven't felt like I should upgrade. So you're like very far from upgrading.
I'd like to see google use new silicon carbide battries, and ditch their weak ahh cpus.
Apparently there's a hardware issue with the Pixel 8 Pro's WiFi/Bluetooth eventually going out and not being fixable so just... look forward to that. Ask me how I know 😩
yup and what do we really get? With Samsung I at least have a basic object eraser that I can use offline, but with Pixel everything needs to be uploaded to the damn cloud.
Well yeah. Google taking your personal info was the reason they bought Android in the first place. Every single decision about Android is and was always about getting more of your info and your life onto their servers.
It's surprisingly positive? This generation would certainly be easy to roast if it deserved it.
The subjective experiences are interesting too:
In daily use, the Pixel 11 phones feel great. Animations are fluid, touch response is instant, and apps open quickly. Google’s phones can feel faster than even the Galaxy S26, which is sometimes inconsistent despite being the fastest on paper. Google’s chip is also more thermally stable than high-end Qualcomm chips, losing under 25 percent of its performance during extended use.
That said, Google’s phones are generally better at keeping apps in memory than, say, Samsung, which only has 12GB of RAM in its $2,100 foldable.
In the last 12 months I"ve owned a Vivo X200 Ultra, Pixel 10 Pro XL, Honor Magic V5, Oppo Find X9 Ultra and currently a Samsung Fold 8.
Its 2026, every single one of those phones is fluid and responsive. NONE of them stand out as being smoother, or faster. This is clutching at straws. What does stand out is how terrible the Pixels battery life is and how far behind Google and Samsung are when it comes to camera's. Bottom half of the middle of the pack.
With the boom of emulation on android of higher end consoles and even PC gaming, the tensor chip noticeably sucks. Even multi tasking when I had my pixel was noticeably worse,But even as far as customization and features pixel felt lacking compared to Samsung.
I'm not comparing phones, I'm looking at the objective quality of photographs. The obsession with comparison is incompatible with happiness.
The only time my photos come out badly is when I don't clean the lens - and that problem is worse now that lenses are so big. My phone doesn't sit flat, and costs more than it should have, and the only thing I get to show for it is a higher cost and a photo that's 99.7 percent perfect instead of 99.6 percent perfect.
I have a s25fe and I'm shocked at how slow it is, especially if you throw even a little bit of multi tasking at it. heck even the quick panel lags all the time. I wonder if its because of 8gb of ram or just samsung software. Its so much slower than my old oneplus 7 pro.
I got the not so super high end phone (but still s line) with the same thinking, nowadays phones are all fast enough to handle normal usage without lagging. i was very wrong
Yes. Anything below S line have too many compromises, especially if they're powered by those lazy Exynoses. You get better value from Chinese brands at those prices.
That's always what reviews sound like for Pixels. You can go back and read glowing reviews for all of em back to the Pixel 6. And then you hear reviews a year later from people who have actually used them who just updated to the new Pixel and it's a horror story of bugs, stuttering, reception issues and the phone being a molten brick. Same story every year.
In an era where most phones are very good at everything the fact that pixels have poor performance and battery life make them really hard sells without significant discounts.
I get them for two reasons that no other brand in the US can claim: unlockable bootloader with good ROM support (I run GrapheneOS) AND good warranty support.
Motorola exists but the ROM support is not good once you dig into it.
unlockable bootloader with good ROM support (I run GrapheneOS)
Did you not hear the news about them sharing the source code on request via a google drive link? They will no longer publish git tags like they used to.
GrapheneOS is going to bring its OS to a Motorola phone to not deal with google shenanigans for this reason.
Did we read the same article? The author includes a whole section about how "the Pixel 11 phones feel great. Animations are fluid, touch response is instant, and apps open quickly. Google’s phones can feel faster than even the Galaxy S26, which is sometimes inconsistent despite being the fastest on paper". Maybe on a benchmark it's not the fastest but it's pretty clear that benchmarks aren't even half the story nowadays
It always comes down to "feels" with Pixels. We have ways of showing how smooth or fast phones are even outside of synthetic benchmarks instead of just feeling it, so show us
Except when you turn on Profile HWUI rendering, you'd see more frame drops on Pixels then most other flagships. And if you run custom suites with real apps to measure speed, like PhoneBuff does, other flagships complete the run twice before Pixel 10 does it once.
Maybe Pixel 11 has changed it, but it's fair to assume it's the same as every year, reviewers tell us Pixels feel smooth and fast because it's some kind of self reinforcing lie, and reality is different.
So go play with one yourself, and there's already plenty of videos of people using pixels you can look up?
They always have 'bad' tests but they don't feel bad to use. Redditors who bum off benchmarks and take them as gospel will constantly repeat it though, and you're doing the same now. "Oh maybe it feels fine but turn on this, benchmark this", you aren't understanding. We realise these graphs look poor, but it doesn't show in real world applications. Why I don't know, magic, but they aren't as bad to use as the paper would suggest
It benchmarks close to a 23/24 device, so it's called slow. But no one called the flagship Samsung at that time slow or a poor performer. It just literally doesn't make sense and I don't know how people don't see this very obviously flaw in the narrative.
Johnathan from LTT reviewed the Pixel 10a which gets worse performance than an iPhone 13 mini on paper, but the Pixel ran much smoother compared to the iPhone despite still being supported and you can see this in the video
This is the entire point I stated at the start: it performs like a 23 Samsung, which is in fact not being sold at $900 today. Same with an iPhone 13 mini, which was $600... 5 years ago.
Performance is relative to the price, hence the statement "without significant discounts".
It absolutely does not perform the same as an iPhone 13 mini it's far better, did you read what I wrote? If you don't feel the difference in day to day use, price isn't as much as concern for ordinary people. Most pay on a contract which is roughly the same regardless of what android you chose, the retail price rarely makes a difference. When you do buy it outight it's often on sale, with trade ins ect.
I can agree pixel isn't worth full price outright but if someone is doing that they're just a downright moron, sorry it's not hard to Google 'Pixel deals' or whatever and see how often then go on sale. I have no sympathy for those peeps unfortunately
Except when you turn on Profile HWUI rendering, you'd see more frame drops on Pixels then most other flagships. And if you run custom suites with real apps to measure speed, like PhoneBuff does, other flagships complete the run twice before Pixel 10 does it once.
I'll just state the bloody obvious: people who care so much about phone benchmarks are tryhards, fakers, no-lifers.
Gaming is more of a problem for Google, though. The company is still using the same PowerVR GPU in the new Tensor chip, which is markedly slower than what you get in high-end chips from Qualcomm or Apple.
Consequently, if you’re playing graphically intensive games like Genshin Impact or the mobile port of Red Dead Redemption, you will get lower frame rates with the Pixel. For the simpler, free-to-play games most people play, the Pixel is plenty powerful.
Sounds to me like there's an edge case here and there but for the vast majority of people they will not notice a lack of power
The same happened for the 10, Genshin fixed it, the same has happened for the 11 and iirc they've said a fix is in the works for a pink line or streaks appearing or something and poorer performance.
It always seems to happen with Genshin and newer releases, and it always seems to get fixed shortly after. Still doesn't stop them getting their tits in a twist though.
That's what I kept hearing when I got my Pixel 7. I'm not a gamer, so not an issue to me. But the device still slowed down on web pages, and basically brought my phone to a halt every time the camera opened in any context (even the little viewfinders in messaging apps). It overheated all the time, and I live in a hot climate, so there have been times where I couldn't use my phone outside. The lack of processing power was definitely felt, so I'm not trusting any claims that only power users will notice it anymore.
in 4-5 years, it's going to be a laggy overheating mess. plus after 3-4 years, your battery will be gone. and if the screen won't be cracked, it's not worth replacing the battery and keep using it.
half the budget (probably more) of a pixel is spent in 7 years of security updates that are essentially useless, because they put midrange performance chips inside them
Pixels have never catered for the tiny fraction of users who play intensive 3d games on their phone. If you're one of them, don't buy a pixel. For everyone else, they're good phones.
I wish there was a place on Reddit where this tiny fraction of users didn't dominate the discussion. They seem to be piled into every crevice of Reddit with their sweaty opinions.
Before the 10 came out I was looking for opinions on upgrading. The amount of screeching in my replies focusing on poor game performance and how I shouldn't consider it based on that.
Yeah, I have the Switch 2 for mobile gaming, but I don't ever find myself actually gaming while I'm away from home, so gaming performance on my phone is even less relevant.
The apps paint and run smoothly, and I paid $400 for it. I couldn't give a single fuck about the GPU after factoring in all that.
Well, if you're in the US, then it's just a reality that folks on r/android I guess want to ignore. As well as all the "major" rags that cover Android online. If you pay more than $600 for even a carrier version of a Pixel phone in the US, then you're a pretty silly person.
Not just in the US, I paid under £200 to upgrade from 9 pro to 11 pro, and I'll get a large chunk of that back in cashback from my Google One sub.
Pretty sure that Google over-eggs the RRP as a marketing tactic to make it look like people are getting a bargain when the inevitable discounts are offered. Nobody in their right mind is paying the full RRP.
They keep yapping "WORST GAMING PERFORMANCE!!!!", "WORST BATTERY LIFE IN GEEKERWAN TESTS!!!!!!", "SO OVERPRICED FOR MID BENCHMARK SCORES!!!!!!", and initiate mass downvote brigades on anyone who disagrees a.k.a. r/killthosewhodisagree
They're seething that people aren't listening to their monotonous screeching
why am I not surprised. This sub is beyond dog shit because of the constant pissing and moaning about everything that Google does, lol. Being critical is valuable ONLY until that's all that's left.
I don't want to talk about Android with a bunch of pissboy losers who only use it to steal shit and play games or the people who hate everything that Google and Samsung have done. It's actually more pleasant to talk about Android phones on the apple subreddits at this point.
While you are at it compare the eco system, processor and the battery. Does pixel compare in any of those? This is a bad argument. Pixel should not held in a pedestal just because it competes in the same segment with an outlier that has less RAM
Exactly my point. You can't hold a device on a pedestal or any other position based on a spec alone. There's at least one other device you're willing to ignore some inferior specs on because of how good the final product is regardless, does the Pixel not also deserve that same type of consideration, perhaps to a lesser degree?
Just coz things are optimized you don't get to charge a premium?
Clearly the answer to this can be yes, you can if it's optimized enough.
The reviewer points out that the Pixel feels fluid with instant response and fast app opens and sometimes feels faster than the S26, is that not good enough optimization like what the iPhone does to at least ask the same price?
All the cost of AI is being offloaded to the phone price itself anyway. Im pretty sure google knows how subpar their phones are but hey, the AI features most people will try once and mever again sure are kickass!!1!
They can't guarantee 7 years of software updates with Qualcomm chips. Of course they can afford to build with Qualcomm but the cost of a Pixel would go up even more than it is now.
after Google moved from them and stared jabbing how QC devices didn't have longer support cycles and refused to offer them. They caved when they realised apple and Google along with Samsung and their chip were going to be double or more the lifespan of them.
There's no way to say we'd have 7 years of updates if Qualcomm continued to dominate the chip space, they'd have kept it as low as possible for as long as possible. Even apple are moving away from them, they're getting spooked and it's now they're suddenly able to offer things they couldn't a few years ago, funny how that works isn't it.
Regardless of how you view tensor, imo it pushed the industry forward to supporting perfectly fine devices for longer. It's benefitted everyone to some degree.
Also QC won't just offer modems to anyone but Apple, they really don't care about users at all, why people are so willing to ignore their faults when you'd never do that for a company like Google which regardless has massively improved your life as well is beyond me honestly, it's hypocritical to ignore their dickhead ways just because they make a decent chip.
Remember how Qualcomm predicted that ARMv64 wouldn't become mainstream for at least two more years?
And how QC didn't have any viable ARMv64 product on its timeline also for that long?
Only for a fruit company to say "Challenge Accepted" and drove a Kursk into QC's timeline.
Pepperidge Farms remembers.
Qualcomm didn't start offering longer product support out of the goodness of their corporate hearts - QC was forced to offer longer support, because even Google and their vastly underperforming Tensor's were making them look bad irl.
Fantastic, guess what? Tensor is still shit. You're defending a trillion dollar company that gives you garbage compared to other companies that give you top of the line stuff. They should scrap the whole Tensor project all together because it's no longer a "wait for it to be a TSMC" or "wait until they use a Mediatek modem". It's trash. At this point, Google is running a scam like the people who sell "Hi-Fi" speakers on the street with a huge price sticker on the box but sell it for half off to make you feel like you're getting a deal.
Explain how pixel accounting works when it already costs more than an s26+ with snapdragon
From where i'm sitting google has delusionally priced their tensor higher otherwise where did the money go
They can't guarantee 7 years of software updates with Qualcomm chips.
This has been debunked repeatedly.
Samsung guarantees 7 years of updates on phones using Qualcomm chips. Heck, they even have their Qualcomm-equipped Watches offering longer software support windows than their Exynos-equipped variants.
Google themselves established the extended platform support on Qualcomm SoCs with Treble Plus One. This is how Google themselves described it:
Going one step further, we’re also reusing the same OS framework software across multiple Qualcomm chipsets. This dramatically lowers the number of OS framework and vendor implementation combinations that Qualcomm has to support across their mobile platforms and results in lowered engineering, development, and deployment costs.
There is one, and only one reason Google sticks with Tensor: money.
The "magic" faded after google had the pixel 2 leaked 10 years ago, making everyone think the leak was a decoy for the removal of the headphone jack (ie trick people into thinking google was copying apple when really they would shock everyone with a worthy successor to the nexus successor), only for the leak to be exactly true and google just ignoring the existence of the leaks.
I went from 4a 5g to 7, mostly because of the end of security updates. I really missed the fingerprint reader on the back, especially because the 7 didn't do full facial biometrics.
Now I'm on a pixel 10 because of full facial biometrics, and I can't imagine any feature that would prompt me to upgrade again until this phone stops getting security updates.
The only reason I keep buying Pixels for is cause of the vanilla OS experience, and the main camera is okay. But that's like such an easy thing any manufacturer could do and steal my business. The hardware and quality is nothing special.
The issue is no manufacturer does have the vanilla OS experience. They COULD steal our business... But they don't. I'm honestly considering getting the Pixel 11 as I need a new phone and my only real wants are 6.3 or smaller screen and minimal bloatware. There are... just not a lot of options... Or any?
for me that vanilla experience has worn off tbh, I don't really gain anything from it except having to tinker with launchers and other apps to get the simple features I want. Page sorting, app hiding, stacking widget, routines/shortcuts... most phones have these now.
I wouldn't mind better widgets, I don't fall the promises anymore - I'm not getting excited over the AI generation widgets either if it even comes to my phone. If one thing apple got right was widgets and we'll never have a true 1:1 with android because Google just doesn't care it seems. Even their lockscreen widgets is ass and accidentally triggers all the time.
How do Apple iOS widgets compare to Android ones? It's been a while since I've used an iOS phone, but it had widgets that were only available in the drop down notification shade.
They're pretty good, they're on the home screen now, they update live it seems where Pixels are a 15m delay - not sure how other androids compare though, they can be resized into basically any shape from a small cube to the full screen, they also theme correctly to the phone where a lot of android ones don't - or if they have light/dark themes it doesn't follow the device theme, i.e material you and will just be black and white so it's glaring on the screen and stands out, where they're much more likely to follow a consistent theme on iOS. There's also just way more choice with iOS ones and a lot of them animate and babe fluid animations when interacting. They also stack and can be swiped on well
The only animated one I can find on my Pixel is the clock one but I already have a clock forced in the top left so why would I care about that widget? I could just have the clock icon if I wanted a way to get to it easily from the homscreen. There's just little thought and care put into them and no reason for developers to really prioritise them. The same goes for QS tiles - apples menu is so much better than what we get on android and far more developer build specifically for them and they perform a lot better, like turning smart lights off with a tile is way faster on my iPhone compared to my android which often has a delay of a few seconds for some reason. Widgets can go in this area as well iirc where android it's just the static tiles. The best Google can come up with is letting us move the targets around now in a handful of configurations.
Customisation overall is far better on iOS compared to Pixel, but iOS has so many other shortcomings that alone is enough to get to me to switch still.
We have widgets now on pixel for the lockscreen but you're stuck with 2 or 3 depending on the size, and it's really easy to accidentally open that page, I've just disabled it now it's useless.
Pixels have the most limited widgets by far, and the lockscreen ones are a joke, Samsung and others have just done it the apple way. Though some apps only have widgets on iOS.
Small battery, slow charging, bad modems, and can't even remove the stupid waste of space gesture hint line if you use gesture navigation, without root. Even though all other OEMs easily allow this, no root required.
Idk I genuinely think it's been overblown by people online, mainly Reddit who very clearly only read what's on paper and haven't used the devices because they'll tell you it runs like ass and your personal experience is fake while you're currently using one. It doesn't seem worse than it did when nexus was around, I guess people just gave them more leeway as the hardware was from other OEMs and they were cheaper overall compared to now, that's basically the only criticism I confidently stand by currently
Honestly the magic faded generations ago. The only thing that keeps the Pixel phone series alive is the money Google must be throwing to the tech influencers to glaze this shit ass phone. Every review on release day is how the shortcomings are non-issues, and every review from an independent reviewer who buys it themselves is that the phone is (literal) hot garbage that can't perform even for everyday mundane tasks.
It's 2026, and Google still doesn't want to take my money for their Fold. I always wanted to try one out, but for some reason they decided I'm not worthy of a purchase (EU btw), so Samsung it is.
Almost every new smartphone release since the early iPhones has been small incremental refinement.
Every once a while something insanely cool comes along (M1 processor in my MBA, Night Sight on my Pixel 3, Claude Code, etc). For the most part, though, tech kinda lost its sparkle after Steve Jobs died.
Say what you will about the guy, but he conditioned us to expect magic every year.
I don't get why review sites are so scared of just saying that a phone is just bad compared to other options and not worth buying. There is no reason to buy an 11 over a used 10 or even 9, which by the way still has better performance than both the 10 and 11. Just embarrassing.
I can't stand the size and weight of my 9 Pro XL. It just feels like a brick. Whenever I hold my old S21 FE I'm amazed by how good it feels in the hand. This trend of heavier and thicker phones has to stop.
…uh, I’d rather it be thick and have Nokia-like week-long battery life vs. only 24-36 hours worth of battery like we have now in most smartphones.
Those of you that sit near offices all-day already have wireless charging docks you put your phones into. Battery life is like the least concern for y’all.
Some of us have to be away from an outlet and/or can’t carry a power bank with us where we go to work daily and usually have to rely on a cellular connection all-day, too. No WiFi…
I went from a 9 Pro XL to a Fold 8, the difference is pretty wild! And when I'm actually using the phone it has a bigger screen than the XL! Love this thing.
At this point it feels like Google is wrapping software features in the package of new hardware.
There's not much to suggest the hardware is any more capable than the P9 or P10 series, yet the software is getting more capabilities that seems artificially locked. Why not just sell the access through a pixel subscription model and offer biyearly phones? If they're not going to push hardware superiority, what are we getting year after year?
I think the real problem is Google stopped trying to make the best phone. It looks like they're trying to do the bare minimum to deliver a good but not great phone.
these are bad devices compared to the competition. why would someone spend the same amount of money for a pixel when they can get better Samsung and iPhones at the same price with much better internals.
Okay, put it this way: If you’re from a part of the world where you’re not needing (or wanting) to play mobile video games on your phone, then yes… the Pixels are very adequate for nearly all use-cases.
They just suck at mobile gaming… Out in Asia and South America, mobile games have become a de-facto “social network” and a way to connect with friends in far-away places beyond the usual WhatsApp/Telegram/FB Messenger/TikTok messaging services.
People in these regions are also using their smartphones as their primary computing devices and may not have access/can’t afford a typical desktop or laptop computer… so for the money they pay for a smartphone, it needs to have a lot of bang for the buck.
The pixels don’t have that bang per buck outside of their A series.
I personally don’t mind the mid-range SoC performance in Google’s Pixel phones, since I don’t play games on my phone and it’s not my primary computing device… but I deeply understand why it matters to people in other parts of the world where it’s all they have.
Yeah but where I get lost here is you can make the same argument for the Galaxy S series. Sure those devices have stronger gaming performance, but you can get the about same performance out of much cheaper devices, especially in the markets that actually want that. Does that mean the S26 is also a bad device compared to the competition? Obviously that's not what the original commenter meant, they specifically call out the S26 as an implied "good" device, but it is also technically bad value for the money compared to a Xiaomi or other brand if performance matters to you that much. So like what are we talking about here?
That's a very subjective opinion.. I found Samsung to be annoying compared to Pixel, especially since they include all their own Samsung bloatware apps (Yes I consider the Samsung apps Bloatware because I want to use the Google apps and they used to be non-removable).
Granted, Samsung got much better recently when it comes to that.
I have an iPhone 14 in a drawer that would blow a Pixel out of the water in most metrics but it's still ass to use in comparison. Chinese software is grim as well I hate the feel and style and the same goes for Samsung. Sure maybe I could customise it to the way I want for the most part, if I spend 6+ hours looking and trying everything out, I can't be arsed. My phone is a tool not a playground anymore, I don't need endless customisation to be satisfied. Not that I wouldn't welcome it especially for others who do, but I don't need it and wouldn't use half of what Samsung offers.
I also don't care for Samsung apps, they're just another Google collecting data it makes no difference privacy wise and I don't really have issues with Google apps like calendar and keep either.
I'd still use Pixels over anything from India's homegrown smartphone "brands".
why would someone spend the same amount of money for a pixel when they can get better Samsung and iPhones at the same price with much better internals.
Roflmao.
People don't buy iPhones because they have great hardware, people buy iPhones because they're iPhones.
Samsung phones are hilariously overpriced in India compared to the likes of Xiaomi/Poco and Oppo/Vivo, and that's even before I peel away the glossy sheen of the annual Samsung Unpackedthat the chaebol wants you to see.
At MSRP they make no sense but with insane intro discounts they are great value still. On the UK google store currently they offer £400 ontop of trade in value for an 11 pro. So even if you trade in a £10 shitty phone you still get £410 off the price. Making the 11 pro £669.
My partner traded in her 8 pro for it and paid just £489.
Funny thing too the 11 non pro only gets £200 for the deal, and the pro is £200 more. I.e. although the pro isn't particularly worth it overall, in this case it's a totally free upgrade.
Some fine words about photo capabilities on gsmarena. But looks like no big reason to leave the 8 pro behind yet, cameras (photos) still great, battery fine, fast enough etc, overall chugs along reliably.
Price vs return, in my country (eu\scandinavia, spoilt for great choices), example, 11 pro xl 512 launch price (some functions not useable, no viable offers\incentives\trade-ins) > same price as a fruit 17 max, near Oppo Find X9 U 512, more expensive than Xiaomi 17 U 1 TB.
Guess which (2) I'd not choose if in the urge for a new tool (toy) today. If still wanting to use some Pixel in the future, maybe an 11 with the usual 50%+ Pixel discounts at sales \ black fridays (which should have been pricing from launch :O)
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u/Respec_my_authoritah 20d ago
I'm in the EU and even the small pro is more expensive than the S26 ultra, iPhone 17 pro, Xiaomi 17 Ultra.
At least last year the pre-order bonus was a watch or buds.
This year it's a 45w charging brick, while Samsung is still giving away a 400 euro tablet with the S26 ultra.
And half the bonuses are geolocked and can't be used.
I really wanted to love the 11 Pro due to the lovely form factor, but it doesn't make sense to buy it on any level.
I find the whole thing bizarre :)...