Google - Pixel 11 256GB (Unlocked) - Obsidian

The Pixel 11 is a very good smartphone! The Pixel 11 closely resembles the Pixel 10 in many ways but adds several hardware and software upgrades. I am migrating from a Pixel 8a, and in my instance the change is very significant, and the Pixel 11 is a nice upgrade from my older phone. The Pixel 11 is Google’s latest Pixel model, released in four variants: Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro and Pixel 11 Pro XL and Pixel 11 Pro Fold. The Pixel 11 is my fourth Pixel phone. I have been using Pixel phones since 2019 when I obtained a Pixel 4XL. I subsequently added a Pixel 6 and Pixel 8a. I have the Pixel 11 base model with 256 GB of storage and 12 GB RAM, in Obsidian (black). My experience using Pixel phones has been good overall. My Pixel phones have been good smartphones with excellent cameras. I believe that it is advantageous to have phones which run “pure”, unadulterated Android, and which receive the latest software updates much sooner than other phones. The Pixel 11 will receive seven (7) years of Android OS updates and seven years of feature drop updates and security updates from Google. My Pixel 6, which my wife has been using since I got my Pixel 8a, is the last of my five (5) year supported phones, with end-of-support rapidly approaching in October 2026. The Pixel 11 has some improvements over the Pixel 10, but it is disadvantaged compared to the Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL versions. The Pixel 11 has a 6.3” Actua Display, 1088 x 2424 OLED at 422 PPI, rated at 2000 nits HDR and 3000 nits peak brightness, covered with Gorilla Glass Victus 2. The Pro has a Super Actua display, 1280 x 2856 LTPO OLED at 495 PPI, rated at 2400 nits HDR and 3600 nits peak. The Pro XL expands to a 6.8” screen, 1344 x 2992 LTPO OLED at 486 PPI. Although the Pixel 11 screen brightness is the same as the Pixel 10, and the 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio is the same, I am migrating from a Pixel 8a and I am immediately appreciative of the significant improvement over the Pixel 8a with its older 1400 nit HDR and 2000 nit peak screen that has only 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio. The screen improvement from the Pixel 8a is very significant. I am enjoying that this screen is bright and clear. The display is smooth without any lags. I use Pixel’s “Smooth Display” feature which automatically increases the refresh rate from 60 Hz to 120 Hz for some content, at the expense of some additional battery drain. The touchscreen is sensitive and responsive in most cases, and the sensitivity can be increased with the “Adaptive Touch”, “Increased Sensitivity” and “Optimize for Screen Protector” settings. While the Pixel 10 started at 128 GB of storage, all Pixel 11 models start with a base level of 256 GB with 12 GB RAM, with 512 GB / 16 GB RAM and 1 TB / 16 GB RAM versions available. The Pixel 11 and Pro have the same dimensions of 6” x 2.8” x 0.3”. The Pixel 11 weighs 6.9 oz and the Pro is barely heavier at 7.2 oz. The Pro XL grows to 6.4” and 8 oz. The Pixel 11 battery was slightly increased to 4985 mAh from the Pixel 10s 4970 mAh (although the Pixel 10a has a larger 5100 mAh battery), but my Pixel 8a only has a 4492 mAh battery, which currently has over two years of use and hundreds of charging cycles. I am still charging my Pixel 11 daily to ensure that I will get a full day of use from it, however the phone has at least 10%-20% more residual battery capacity than my Pixel 8a did when placed on the charger. Even with my level of use, it is apparent that I could generally get more than 24 hours between charges, but I do not like to run low on power at unpredictable and inconvenient times, so I prefer to charge daily at a convenient time and ensure that I will not be hunting for a charging opportunity when away from home. Google says that the Pixel 11 will fast charge up to 55% in about 30 minutes using a 30 W charger, and wireless Pixelsnap charging at up to 25W is supported. No charger is included with any of the Pixel phones (since the Pixel 5a model). The major change for the Pixel 11 over the previous Pixel 10 is the new Google Tensor G6 processor and Titan M3 security chip, as well as a new modem. The Pixel 10 had the G5 and M2 chips, with a Samsung Exynos modem. Apparently, the Pixel 11 has a MediaTek MTK-t900 modem. However, although the new modem is capable of Dual-SIM Dual-Active (DSDA) which allows having an active call on one SIM while the other SIM is running data, the modem is being limited by Google to the same Dual-SIM Dual Standby (DSDS) functionality of the older Pixel phones, wherein both SIMs remain active only while in standby mode, but when one SIM is in active use, the other SIM is deactivated. The new Tensor G6 processor is represented as being much faster than its predecessor, with a 50% faster Tensor Processing Unit and upgraded Image Signal Processor to significantly improve photography and video performance, particularly with the powerful software based photography and video enhancements. I have found my Pixel 11 sometime gets palpably warm during use. Even low intensity tasks such as scrolling and reading the newsfeed and reading emails results in the phone warming quickly and perceptibly with the internal sensors frequently showing 102.6°. The Pixel 11 has an aluminum frame and glass back. The build of the phone has the premium appearance and solid feel that is typical of Pixel phones. The newer style rear camera bump-out with rounded corners only protrudes about 1.5 mm (approximately 1/16”) on the base Pixel 11 but is thicker on the Pro and Pro XL models. The camera bump is loaded with cameras and sensors, but the Pro and Pro XL get more and better technology in the bump-out. The bump is where I found a minor manufacturing defect on my Pixel 11 that surprisingly passed the QC inspection. Between the Main Camera and the Ultrawide Camera the small hole for the internal microphone was not drilled cleanly and a bit of plastic remained attached (which scraped off). Google phones are often praised for their excellent cameras and photography capabilities. The Pixel 11 cameras have some improvements over the Pixel 10. The Main Rear camera is still a 48 MP Quad PD camera with f/1.7 aperture, but the sensor size has increased from 1/2” to 1/1.56” to admit more light. The Ultrawide camera remains a 13 MP f/2.2 lens and the 5x Optical Zoom Telephoto remains 10.8 MP Dual PD f/3.1, but the “super zoom” has increased to 30x (the 11 Pro adds Pro Zoom up to 120x). The Front camera remains a 10.5 MP Dual PD f/2.2 auto focus selfie camera. The video specifications remain the same with 4K and 1080p at 24/30/60 FPS with 20x digital zoom. The Pixel 11 retains WiFi 6e while the Pro models retain WiFi 7 capability. All Pixel 11 models retain IP68 ingress protection for dust and water resistance. I have always liked the Face Unlock feature on my Pixel phones and the Pixel 11 continues to have almost instantaneous facial recognition and unlocking. However, I have noticed that my Pixel 11 requires better lighting than my Pixel 8a for Face Unlock to operate. I have never had great performance with the optical, under-screen fingerprint sensor on my Pixel 8a, but the ultrasonic sensor on the Pixel 11 performs even worse. Even with the “Optimize for screen protector” setting enabled, the ultrasonic sensor evidently really does not like my screen protector and only rarely will recognize my fingerprints. This is more problematic with some financial apps that limit biometric login to fingerprint only, rather than allowing facial recognition. The excellent quality of Pixel phone cameras has always been important to me. The Pixel 11 is very well equipped for excellent smartphone photography and videos. In addition to having very good camera specifications, the Pixel 11 is packed with powerful AI camera features. The Pixel 11 shares the lengthy list of outstanding and powerful AI camera features of the Pixel 10 and has added some new features. Magic Capture produces video and photos from the same event. The new Camera Looks feature provides an assortment of image customization settings which operate when the image is captured, rather than editing the tonal characteristics later. For videos, the new Creator Suite provides some useful and helpful tools for producing better videos and even includes Teleprompter for vlogging. The 11 Pro models get even more new video features including Pro Stable Video and Night Sight Video. The Pixel 11 benefits from the expanding and evolving Google Gemini AI. The new Rambler function cleans up dictation including adding appropriate punctuation and rewriting speech into a polished written message. Setting up the Pixel 11 was easy and straightforward. The wireless migration of apps, accounts, photos and settings from my old phone worked well and saved considerable time and effort. The Pixel 11 is very easy to like. It is a great, user-friendly smartphone with excellent call quality and audio quality. The still photography and video quality are excellent. I believe that the Pixel 11 is excellent overall. Its specifications are very good, and the hardware is very nice, including a great, bright and responsive display. The AI features continue to expand and mature. I am really enjoying the Pixel 11!

I have been a current user of the Pixel 6 Pro since early 2022 with no issues and few complaints regarding performance since I knew what I was buying. After that time my battery was still at 98% health, but the phone was never very power efficient. Upgrading to the option of using face unlock has been a great timesaver! I had issues viewing the screen in daylight given the peak brightness being between 700 and 800 nits on the 6 Pro, and it was prone to overheating issues. I decided to go with the standard Pixel 11 because I wanted a smaller-sized phone, and I really didn’t need the few extra features of the Pro model. The Pixel 11’s brightness goes up to 3000 nits at peak, and I’ve had zero issues reading the screen in direct sunlight with much better contrast. While the battery is a similar size, the power consumption is much lower. I was regularly near 30% at the end of the day with my 6 Pro, and I’m routinely in the 60% range with the Pixel 11. The Pixel 11 has Google VPN built in, along with all the added security features available with the Tensor G6 processor paired with their Titan M3 security chip. While you can still use the standard voice input for word-for-word translation, the new Rambler feature has been a game changer for me. I have had to make zero corrections in any spoken texts or other input, whereas previously it was required almost every time. It understands what you meant to say instead of what you may have said. So stuttering, lists, and punctuation so far have been correct. And you can preview the text and make corrections, such as “replace apples with oranges” or “add an emoji”. Safety features include the VPN already mentioned, theft protection, which will lock down your phone if criteria are met, satellite SOS phone calls, and crash detection and crisis alerts. The camera features and quality of photos are also great upgrades. Magic Capture will create high-quality photos while taking videos, which can then be edited. The camera controls are fully customizable, including a preset launch mode and quick access controls. The camera also includes a Creator Suite, which takes over a lot of the editing tasks to save time, including auto Folder & Storyboard, teleprompter, audo visualizer with speech enhancement, and a social media grid setting to keep your frame in line with online requirements. The video stabilization is fantastic from settings to stabilize if you and the subject are moving to an outstanding setting of keeping a fixed object stable while you move! The night site setting is intuitive and is manually selected, and you can use the camera for circle to search. Many of the features are powered by Gemini, and I still haven’t exhausted learning all it can do, from visual cards and automations in chats to location-based suggestions. On top of all that, it’s still the best personal assistant that I have found.

I upgraded a work phone from a relatively basic A17 to this Google Pixel 11 and that has been such significant jump in performance and capability that it has had me strongly considering a swap to it as my daily driver as well. This phone is fantastic. It is fast, smooth, fully featured, the perfect size, takes outstanding pictures, and has long battery life. The always on OLED 120hz screen is gorgeous, and the small hole punch front facing camera is unobtrusive and takes clean selfies. It is also capable of facial recognition in addition to the under-screen fingerprint scanner that works great even with a screen protector installed. It supports Qi2 wireless magnetic charging that google calls pixelsnap which works in virtually exactly the same way as competitive offerings and that is a good thing. Pixel phones have had a well-earned reputation for some of the best quality picture taking on the market for many years and I can see why. They really do take incredible photos and have excellent editing and creation suites on top of all that. The camera hump is large but since it spans the entire width of the phone it doesn’t cause any wobbling when laying it down on the backside. Being a smaller size makes the device easier to hold and carry compared to the larger A17 as well as being very lightweight so it is comfortable to interact with for extended periods. Google, like everyone else these days, is really going all in on AI. Their version of course is called Gemini. It is nice to have for certain aspects of workflow but in general I still don’t know if its quite where it needs to be. I have wanted to have a capable enough voice assistant that I can ask it to perform any function on the device without hesitation but that reality is still far away. It is still more of a neat parlor trick at this point, especially if you don’t want to pay for another subscription for the upgraded version. The Pixel 11 is a really impressive phone and I love it. It has just the right blend of features with a great design and top notch performance. Feels just right in the hand and pocket, well built, charges quickly and does everything I need it to and more. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a high performing device that won’t break the bank.

The Google Pixel 11 is a powerful smartphone loaded with great features, amazing cameras, and updates for 7 years! Design The Pixel 11 is covered in glass, front and back. It does look slick, and amazing. I found it a little too smooth and it actually slid off my night stand. Thankfully it didn't break and now I have a case and screen protector. They use very strong glass, but I still recommend a case and a screen protector. I had no problem finding some great options even though this phone is new. The right side has a power button and a volume rocker. There is a slit at the top of the phone, just above the screen, where the earpiece speaker is. There are two speaker output holes on the bottom. There's a mic on the top edge, one on the back with the cameras, and a third mic somewhere, maybe in one of the speaker output holes in the bottom. There are three cameras and a flash on the back. The cameras are in a bump that goes most of the way across the top, back, of the phone. I love this design because I can set it on a desk and use the screen without it rocking back and forth. It has a USB C port on the bottom in the middle. There's no 1/8" stereo/headphone jack. This has the Google Tensor G6 CPU, all new and much enhanced for better speed and battery life than the Tensor G5. It has 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. It also has PixelSnap which is MagSafe compatible and QuickShare is not AirDrop compatible! Interface I'm a fan of Android 17! This is the smoothest Android experience I've seen. Everything feel fast and smooth. I'm not saying my other phones were slow or I thought they gave a bad experience - I actually really liked my previous phones. This does feel smoother though, just all the time. I don't like having the Google app load on the page when you swipe right from the main/home/left Desktop page. I was glad to find that's easy to turn off in the "Home settings". Just tap and hold on the Desktop and choose "Home settings". There you can turn off "Swipe to access Google app". You can also turn off "At a Glance", which shows the date, weather, and then some summary info, like stop prices, at the end of the day. If you don't want that to take the top row on your home screen, go into "Home settings" and into the settings gear next to "At a Glance" and turn off "Use At a Glance" and "Show on home screen" separately, then all of it goes away. A new feature I'm really liking is called Bubbles. You can tap and hold on most apps, I like it for messaging apps, and choose "Bubble". It will open that app in a window anchored by it's icon as a bubble around the side of the screen. You can move it where you want and see it over other apps. You can have a number of apps set as Bubbles. They stick together and you can move them around the screen. When you tap the Bubble, all app Bubble you have line up at the top and you can select the one you want, switching between them with one touch. It also works great with the Calculator, which could be very helpful for me sometimes. Also, the Quick Access Panel (swipe down from the top) is much better than I'm used to. Tiles are different sizes depending on what they're for, so space is used more efficiently. Swipe down again and you will see two rows at a time instead of one. Swipe right, keep swiping if you need to, to see the rest. When you edit the Quick Access panel, the tiles are grouped by category. Again, I'm not sure this is new in Android 17 but it's an improvement over what I'm used to. Overall, I really like the interface. I wish they gave the option to swipe right, so I could wrap around from the first screen to the last without going through the others. I have five screens with widgets and apps. Maybe Android 18 will do that! But I do love Android 17 anyway! Display This screen is crazy bright at 3,000 nits! It's bright enough that I have no problem using it in the bright sunlight; I actually was today. I'm pretty sure it's the brightest smartphone screen I've seen. Besides the brightness, it's supports up to 120Hz, which is a high refresh rate for a phone, and it's OLED, which means it has an extremely high contrast ratio (this is a very good thing) so it supports HDR with ease. What all that means is you get, bright, rich, life-like colors. Pictures look great and video plays well. I haven't noticed ghosting or anything like that. The screen is lit very evenly. Also, because it's OLED and every pixel provides it's own light, you can save power on your phone but using a dark theme, for instance. Black should use no power and darker colors should use less power than brighter colors. The downside with OLED is that they tend to burn in. OLED has been improving so it should be less of a problem than it used to be, but only time will tell how this display does - and it also depends on what's on your screen, in the exact same position, and for how long. Don't get me wrong, this is an incredible looking high-end display! Switching to the Pixel 11 This was the best phone switching experience I ever had. The Pixel 11 gave me a QR code on the screen. I scanned that with my old phone and followed the instructions. Before I knew it, I was transferring service to my eSIM on the Pixel 11 (my old phone had a regular, non-eSIM, SIM) and copying data from my old phone to the new phone. It copied everything over, contact, files from the file system, pictures, you name it, and some settings too. I was up and running with the phone functions working and many/most apps installed in under an hour! I couldn't believe it! Since then, it's been great. Most apps I still need to login or do some individual app setup, but they're installed and almost ready to go! App compatibility has been excellent. I had one game I played that the graphics didn't display correctly. Most of the screen just showed up as black. Things like that are to be expected with a brand new CPU/GPU on a brand new phone. Some games will need to be re-compiled to be compatible, not the developers fault or Google's, just part of the process. I'm happy to report the other 4 or 5 games I tried ran without issue. Speed It's hard to know what makes what fast, but between having 12 GB of RAM, the new Tensor G6 Processor, and fast UFS 4 storage - this phone seems to run everything fast! I don't exactly know how it compares to other phones, but Google concentrated on improving what people actually do on their phones and it seems they did a great job. My last phone was still running Android 13. This phone has Android 17 which just came out in June. One change made in Android 17 has to do with cleaning up memory at times when it doesn't impact performance, maybe that helped eliminate jerkiness, I'm not sure, but everything seems butter smooth now. Apps launch quickly. The phone boots fast. It takes pictures fast. Everything just feels fast as I use it. If you look at other processors and benchmarks, this will not be at the top, but those don't always speak to real world use. This phone is just fast and smooth all the time. It's designed to do what's needed and do it well. Battery Life Ok, this totally depends on what you're doing with the phone, but I got 48 hours of battery life out of it, starting at 100%, and finishing (charging again) at 22%. I could have gone longer but I'm thrilled with that stat. I wasn't trying to not use it either. I was still installing apps, testing things, playing music and video, reading, all kinds of stuff...and I use a light mode, not a dark theme. They made a few significant changes. The Tensor G6 is faster than the previous one, so it finishes tasks faster, saving battery power. It may also be a smaller die size than the G5, which would save power/reduce heat output, but that's not clear. The other major thing they did is the replaced the modem. The new modem uses less power than the old one and also should provide a better connection. Whatever they did, I'm very happy with the battery life!!! There's a mode where it only charges to 80% so the cells in the battery will last longer over time. I turned that on. Cameras I can't talk about this phone without mentioning the cameras. The front camera is excellent! It even has two modes, 1x and 0.7x (slightly zoomed out), which is great for group selfies! The back cameras just blow me away though. They provide 1x, 2x, and 5x optical zoom (it's sort of but not really optical zoom because that's not from one lens. There are two that provide that.) The third lens is a wide angle 120 degree lens. Please see my included pictures showing standard, 2x, and 5x. Then there's up to 30x digital zoom that actually looks very good! I have a picture of that too. Low light shots are equally as impressive. The distant and low light shots really come out great, not looking blurry or blocky, respectively. Did I mention the camera is fast!? It is really fast! My understanding is that most/all of the images are produced by taking 3 every time you try to take one, comparing data across the three, and using AI. The results are incredible. Summary I think Google made some excellent design decisions that produced an excellent phone. From it laying evenly on a table so you can use it without it wobbling to changing that modem to a better, more power efficient one, to the new Bubble mode for apps and all the other changes around and in between, the Pixel 11 was an upgrade I'm glad I made! I was going to list more features, there are many more, especially related to Gemini, but I ran out of room. If you need a new phone, or want a better phone experience, and haven't looked at the new Pixel 11 series of smartphones, you should check them out!

I will be sharing my experience coming from the Pixel 9 Pro phone with my day to day usage of this new Pixel 11 phone. I like to do a lot of research on devices before getting them, and this one seemed to be an incremental update to last years model, like most phone companies have been doing lately. And even though most of the updates appear to be minimal, there are a few meaningful and not so obvious ones that make a big difference for me in my 2 year leap. This years model came with some trade-off’s with RAMaggedon being a major factor. Higher cost, less RAM, but double the base storage…which has been the controversial part. Starting with the positives, Pixel phones always carry a premium feel in your hand. So much that I wish I didn’t have to have a case on it, this year is no exception. Its lighter than my other model while still having the same screen size. It also has better durability, a bright screen, and solid battery life. I like the Pixelsnap/Magsafe option built into it since my 9 Pro didn’t have this, I still use Magsafe cases so it doesn’t make a big difference for me, but its nice that’s the standard now. Coming from a Tensor G4 processor to a G6 has been refreshing! The G4 works great still and I’ve always been impressed with how fluid using the phone feels, just quick responses and interactions all around. This newer G6 is even better somehow! I’m not exactly sure how to describe it, but its snappier and more responsive…not a huge notice, but from basic day to day activities it feels like its got the edge on my old G4. I’m also happy about the new Titan M3 security chip as security has always been a big concern of mine, and seeing how this is one of the top security chips in the mobile industry, it provides me with peace of mind. I see many stories about confiscated or compromised phones, and all of a sudden your data belongs to a government or a malicious actor. I’ve always taken pride in Pixel phones for being at the forefront of security while minimizing bloatware. The phone setup was smooth and quick, I copied everything from my old Android phone wirelessly and it was basically replicated 1:1. There’s also an option to copy an iPhone, which I did not need to use. There is no physical SIM card in the US versions of this phone, which is a bit disappointing for me, but can be a bonus because its actually more secure this way since your SIM can’t be hijacked or taken. My first week of usage, the battery life has been impressive…another bonus for the G6 processor being more efficient (uses less power and is faster). While I’m not actively on my phone with the screen on for more than 2-4 hours per day, I still use it in the background for music and listening to videos with my headphones, and its been hard to put a dent in the battery. I know I probably use my phone less than the average person, but I have only needed to charge every other day so far with my usage. The downside is the fast charging does not seem to be as fast as it states. When I use the included charging cable, with a high speed charger, I’m only getting 15-20 Watts of wired charging speed, averaging close to half what it’s quoting I should get. Here is my charging speed in a time test: Went from 35% battery life to 72% in 30 minutes, then to 88% with an additional 15 minutes. Not bad, but not great. The camera is one of the few better upgrades that I’ve seen with this model. While I am disappointed that the 2 year newer Pixel 11 camera doesn’t fully outperform the 9 Pro camera in all areas, its still a solid camera with a 30x zoom. I’ve attached a few photos for reference, as you can see the zoom works quite well when zooming in on the mailbox photo, AI does a nice job of cleaning it up. I took the photos from the same position, and the zoom photo was 30x max. Also the low-light picture has improved, my 9 Pro has the Night Sight mode but the Pixel 11 activates it automatically. Night Sight does take longer to process photos, but the quality of dark pictures is much better on the 11 when activated on both phones. Without Night Sight on the 9 Pro its terrible. You can see my attached photo of the bourbon bottles in a dark room from both phones using Night Sight. The text and color is much better on the Pixel 11. There is also circle to search option for the camera and photos which I’m new to but find really useful. I can activate the circle to search feature in camera and in photos, and basically just circle any item in view and it will generate a Gemini/Google response about it. I’m also new to finding out about double-pressing the power button opens the camera, and very fast to open! Some of the downsides of this phone include gaming, from what I’ve seen this processor is not built or properly supported at running games…be it drivers, other software compatibility, or just the hardware isn’t designed for it. I don’t really ever game on my phone so its not a big deal for me, but from what I’ve seen it falls short on gaming. I’m also a bit disappointed in the less RAM, even though day to day usage is great, I do like to add local AI models (small ones) to run on the phone and those require RAM. With 4GB less than the previous models, I’ll have less room for running that. Overall, coming from the 9 Pro I think it’s a great phone and upgrade. If you’re coming from a Pixel 10 phone, you are probably better off waiting another year or two, or see if the prices come down any. I’m personally very happy with the switch, and while its not a drastic change, its enough subtle changes that makes the phone much more enjoyable to use. I’m hoping some software updates can improve the charging speeds and help with the gaming functions for others, but its still a high quality phone.