With few new features

Review: Google Pixel 11 Pro – Compact camera champion

If you want a relatively compact mobile phone with excellent cameras, the Google Pixel 11 is the best option. The shortcomings appear elsewhere.

Elias Nordling Elias Nordling

Published 24 September 2026 - 14:24 Modified 24 September 2026 - 14:25

Google is not like other mobile phone manufacturers. It makes good money from the operating system and does not need to make a profit from its own phones; on the contrary, if they are too successful, they compete with their own customers.

Pixel phones are more of a kind of technology platform where Google can test new software on its own hardware platform, in recent years primarily AI. Pixel phones have also gained a dedicated following who believe they represent Google's pure vision of what Android should be, combined with superior cameras.

The system is, of course, Android 17, and Google promises seven years of system updates, security updates and the special feature updates known as Pixel Drops, which gradually add new features to the phones. The latter in particular are appreciated by fans.

In my view, the fact that the system is so clean has both advantages and disadvantages. Naturally, you have no pre-installed apps other than Google's, so you can fill the phone with exactly the content you want. On the other hand, Google persists with certain interface quirks that are among the first things other manufacturers change when they get their hands on the system. For example, you need to swipe twice to access the settings shortcut in the status bar, a button you want as easy access to as possible. Overall, the status bar is organised rather inefficiently.

Larger camera island with notification light

The design of the Pixel 11 Pro has looked more or less the same for three generations now. It is a relatively compact phone (if you want a larger screen, there is the more expensive Pixel 11 Pro XL), but it is heavy for its size and has a prominently protruding camera bar on the back. On the Pixel 11 Pro, it protrudes even more than in previous generations. As the camera island runs across the entire width of the phone, it can rest steadily on a table without rocking when you tap the screen.

The main new feature of the physical design is that the camera light can now act as a notification light, but its functions are extremely limited. The light pulses when you speak to Gemini to show that the phone is listening, and you can make it light up in a particular colour when one of your favourite contacts calls, but there are only five colours to choose from. Google does say that more functions are coming in future Pixel Drops, but do not expect it to flash when you receive a notification from a favourite contact.

One new feature compared with last year is that the display has a higher peak brightness. This is noticeable when using the phone in sunlight. I also notice that the screen illumination is uneven, with darker shadows around the edges of the display, something you do not get on, for example, Samsung's flagship models. Otherwise, the display is high-resolution and fast, and can show the time and notifications even when the screen is off.

According to Google, the screen is twice as scratch-resistant as its predecessor thanks to an extra protective layer. I have not tested this in practice.

The Pixel 11 Pro is powered by the Tensor G6 chipset, which Google says delivers 25 per cent faster web browsing and 15 per cent faster app loading. The reason for giving such specific figures turns out to be that, overall, measured in benchmark tests, the Pixel 11 Pro is not actually faster than the Pixel 10 at all, and its results are more in line with mid-range phones from other manufacturers than with other flagship models. Google says it does not care about benchmark tests and that its own chips allow it to optimise the experience for its own software. Google is right about that, as the phone never feels anything but fast and responsive when in use. In any case, the performance improvement Google is likely to care most about is that the speed of AI calculations has increased by 50 per cent with the Tensor G6.

The Pixel 11 Pro is sold in 12/256 GB, 16/512 GB or 16/1024 GB configurations. The cheapest variant therefore has more storage but less RAM, a consequence of the memory shortage affecting the entire mobile industry. Google is said to have optimised Android 17 to work better with less memory. Our test unit has 16/512 GB, so we cannot assess how performance is affected in the cheapest variant.

Solid camera setup

The camera setup is similar to, but not identical with, its predecessor. That is, you have a main camera with a 1/1.3-inch sensor, an ultra-wide camera with a 1/1.95-inch sensor and a telephoto camera with five-times optical zoom and a 1/2.51-inch sensor. However, the sensor sizes differ slightly from the previous generation. Although only the ultra-wide camera is clearly larger, this suggests that newer sensors have been used, which may potentially be better. Above all, the processor's increased performance for post-processing is noticeable in several areas.

One such area is that you can take sharp images at up to 120x zoom, compared with 100x in the previous generation. However, the images are created with generative AI that guesses what the image should look like based on the blurry image delivered by the sensor, and the guess is far from always correct. At around 30x zoom, I think it manages to produce good images.

Another is faster low-light photography. Where other mobile cameras may need 3–4 seconds for a low-light shot, the Pixel 11 Pro takes the image in one second, albeit with some compromises in image quality.

Many people think Pixel phones have the best mobile cameras on the market. I can agree that, for a compact phone, it is difficult to find anything better. Overall, the image results are excellent in most situations. But I also think they have weaknesses. Colour reproduction sometimes feels a little too cool, and images taken in sunlight look as if they were taken on an overcast day. Google relies heavily on what it calls computational photography, where several exposures are combined and great importance is placed on post-processing. Sometimes the result becomes odd, such as a house façade where small differences in the colour of the surface texture are emphasised, making the house look completely chequered in the image. And despite all the talk of combining results from several sensors, Google is surprisingly poor at pixel binning, that is, taking cropped images at full resolution to get more zoom from the cameras.

Hobbled AI

In case anyone has missed it, Google is keen on AI, and most of the new features in the Pixel 11 Pro are new AI functions. The problem is that far from all of them will be available to us in Sweden. This may be because they have been developed for American conditions or lack Swedish language support. Whatever the reason, we in Sweden only get a limited selection of AI functions, with some emphasis on the cameras. In addition to the functions I have mentioned, there is Magic Moment, where instead of taking a still image you record a video, and Google then uses AI to select the best moment to turn into a still image. The image is also sharpened and cropped if necessary.

Another function is Rambler, where, when entering text, you can choose to dictate using the microphone. You can stumble, say um and like, and change your mind, and the result is a correct and tidy version of what you meant. We are likely to see this function in more phones than just Pixels in the future, but the Pixel 11 series is first.

Examples of AI functions we will miss out on include proactive Gemini, which is meant to anticipate what I want and suggest actions directly in the system. For example, if it sees a calendar event involving a trip, it can help book a taxi. But not for us, then.

Battery life has always been a weakness of Google's phones, and that also applies to the Pixel 11 Pro. On paper, the phone has just as much battery capacity as other similar phones, but while Google uses its own Android as is, other manufacturers modify it to minimise power-hungry background activity. As a result, in our battery test, where we stream video at maximum brightness, we get rather poor screen-on time. It is also noticeable in that the phone can lose quite a lot of battery while sitting idle and not being used.

My criticism of the Pixel 11 Pro is relatively minor and does not stop it from being an excellent phone. Those who are fans of the Pixel series probably think even that criticism is unfair and disagree. But even for fans, there are few reasons to rush out and buy a Pixel 11 Pro. The differences from its predecessor, and indeed the model before that, are small, while the phone has become noticeably more expensive. Why not take the opportunity to buy a Pixel 10 Pro when it becomes cheaper? Most of the features that are new in the Pixel 11 will arrive through feature updates anyway.