Editorials · Reviewer Insight
One gimmick after another: The Pixel 11 shows me Google is fighting the wrong battle
The Tensor G6 performance figures aren't looking too hot, BUT HEY, LOOK AT THE NOTIFICATION LED ON THE BACK!
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Google will never stop treating us to gimmicks. | Image by Google/PhoneArena
The Pixel 11 range is here… and the crowd goes mild.
I wasn't too excited about Google's Pixel 11 series in the months before this week's official announcement, but even I was surprised just how few upgrades we've received with the latest phones.
Frankly, the potential 2 nm Tensor G6 was the only new hardware feature I secretly harbored any enthusiasm for, but it turned out that the new chip is actually once again built on a 3 nm TSMC N3P node. Moreover, leaked benchmark results suggest this one is a sidegrade at best that once again fumbles raw performance for efficiency but fails at both, just like all the custom Tensor chips before it.
And instead of addressing the elephant in the room, Google continues with its Tensor experiment for yet another year in a row, cuts the RAM, raises the prices, and tries to entice the Pixel fanbase with gimmicks. Instead of a silicon revolution, the current range of Tensor chipsets are fighting other mid-range phones in terms of raw performance.
I would have loved to have a proper Snapdragon or a MediaTek chip inside the Pixel 11 range in place of HiLight, but Google served me a cold soup of gimmicks. The tech circuses are boring, and the bread is stale.
What should your Pixel have at the back, HiLight or a thermometer?
No matter how you look at it, substituting the thermometer sensor at the back of the Pixel camera strip for a notification LED light is, essentially, subbing one gimmick for another.
I could see HiLight headed the same way.
Initially, I was excited for the prospect of having notification LEDs back on a modern 2026 flagship, but after getting acquainted with what HiLight is used for, my enthusiasm dropped like a fly.
HiLight could have been so good
You can only use HiLight to indicate if a certain contact is calling you, which is admittedly useful. However, the rest of the features of HiLight are less than useful. It will also light up its multi-colored lights to indicate that Gemini is responding to you or listening.
The Pixel line has a solid track record of gimmicks
Neither the thermometer nor the HiLight LED is unique as far as gimmicks on the Pixel lineup go.
Project Soli and Motion Sense on the Pixel 4 were definitely a gimmick that theoretically allowed you to control various phone functions by waving your hand over the front camera. It was supposed to make answering calls, dismissing alarms, or changing the music track easy. However, in real life, this wasn't the case, and the functionality proved to be inaccurate and basically useless.
Another gimmick that I actually kind of liked was Active Edge on the Pixel 2, Pixel 3, and Pixel 4 generations. This one allowed you to physically squeeze the phone to access Google Assistant and was moderately useful. However, it was way too trigger-happy, which led to many accidental activations. Additionally, many third-party cases interfered with it, so it was unfortunately not fit for real-life usage.
Overall, a gimmick, but bordering on the actually useful here.
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