Pixel 11 Pro takes RAM away, and I think Google is betting you won't notice the difference

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That contradiction is what our readers picked up on. One of them summed it up better than we did, pointing out that great software stops being great the moment it starts working against the hardware, and another described upgrading from a Pixel 7 Pro to a Pixel 10 Pro and finding both game performance and connection speeds noticeably worse.

Our own testing backs that up more than it comforts. The Pixel 9 Pro beat the newer Pixel 10 Pro outright in a GPU benchmark, with both sitting far behind the Galaxy S25+ and iPhone 16 Pro of the time.

Our Pixel 10 review put the Tensor G5 at roughly 2,300 points in single-core, about 30% behind the Galaxy S25. In our combined battery estimate, the Pixel 10 Pro XL finished last against its rivals despite carrying the biggest battery of the group.



The Tensor G6 does not obviously fix any of this. Google's Vice President of Hardware confirmed the chip stays on a 3nm-class TSMC process rather than the 2nm node many expected, so the silicon is holding roughly steady while the memory budget goes down.

So where does that leave the phones people would cross-shop? In our Pixel 11 Pro XL versus Pixel 10 Pro XL review we found the two close enough that software parity was the honest verdict, since both run the same Android 17 with the same seven-year update promise.

That is a genuine Pixel advantage, of course, and it is also the reason the upgrade is hard to justify this year. Against the Galaxy S26 Ultra the gap is the one we keep measuring, raw performance, and we have argued that the Galaxy S27 Ultra may end up in the same disappointing spot, so this is not a Google-only problem.

If you own a Galaxy S26 Ultra or an iPhone 17 Pro Max, none of this changes what is in your pocket. Samsung and Apple have little to worry about here either, at least this year, because trimming memory is not the move of a company about to out-muscle anyone on hardware.

Who this actually changes things for

The people this touches are the ones buying the entry 256GB Pixel 11 Pro or Pro XL, since that is where the 16GB became 12GB. If you want last year's memory you now pay for a storage tier you may not need.

Everyone else can mostly sit still. Pixel 10 Pro owners are getting the same Android 17 features on the same seven-year support window, so there is no software reason to move.

The signal I would not ignore is the reader who left for One UI after five years on Pixel, and said the reason was that Google slowed down on software changes. That is the one advantage Google cannot afford to let slip.

What I still think after reading the comments

I still believe the software is the reason to buy a Pixel, and nothing in that thread changed my mind. But the defense only works while the software keeps outrunning the silicon, and asking it to do that with less memory at a higher price is asking a lot.

Google says it is engineering its way through, and I hope that turns out to be true, because the alternative is a phone leaning on a trick it can no longer afford. I'd personally love to see next year's Pixel win an argument on hardware for once, so this one stops being about what the software has to make up for.

• Our Pixel 10 Pro review, if you are weighing last year's model instead
• The Pixel that makes the most sense to buy right now
• Come argue with me on X and Threads, where I post hot takes and the behind-the-scenes bits that do not fit in an article