In 2025, Google packed the Pixel 10 full of upgrades over its predecessor. New features like a telephoto lens, a brighter display, and improved battery life made it feel like a real upgrade over the previous base-model Pixel. That is, unfortunately, not really the case with Pixel 11.That's not to say the Pixel 11 is bad in any way, really. This is a perfect respectable Android phone, but a lack of standout new features (aside from a slimmer camera bar) make it feel significantly more incremental than the Pixel 10 did. It doesn't even have HiLight, the lone hardware "improvement" that graces the Pixel 11 Pro devices. Between that and specs that mostly line up with last year's model, the Pixel 11 sorta feels like a phone that only exists because Google makes a new base model every year and skipping a year would cause business problems. It also doesn't help that 2026 is a great year to not buy a phone, thanks to RAMageddon price increases.Google Pixel 11: Design, specs, and price
It really is a much smaller camera bar.
With an $899 starting price, the Pixel 11 does unfortunately separate itself from the Pixel 10 by being $100 more expensive than its predecessor. There is some important context to note with that, though: Google has excised the 128GB storage option this year. That means this isn't technically a price increase because the 256GB Pixel 11 costs the same as the 256GB Pixel 10 did. However, not giving consumers a 128GB option (even if that's a pretty small amount of storage in 2026) means the starting price is higher than last year's model, and that's not great!The new Pixel 11 comes in four colors: Frost, Hibiscus, Pistachio, and Obsidian. I'm pretty partial to the Frost variant, but the rest of them are pretty plain, as far as I'm concerned. Here are the rest of the basic specs for Pixel 11:Display: 6.3-inch display with 1080x2424 resolution, 60-120Hz refresh rate, and 3,000 nits peak brightnessProcessor: Google Tensor G6RAM: 12GBStorage: 256/512GBBattery: 4,985mAhRear cameras: 48MP wide, 13MP ultra-wide, 10.8MP telephoto with 5x optical zoomSelfie camera: 10.5MPAs far as tech specs are concerned, the Pixel 11 is barely any different from a Pixel 10. I could've copied and pasted most of those specs from last year's review. The Tensor G6 processor is new, but basically everything else is the same. Display size, resolution, and brightness are all identical, which is a mild bummer because the Pro devices this year all got their peak brightness numbered bump up to 3,600 nits. Perhaps Google didn't see fit to improve the base model's brightness two years in a row, but that is one area where the Pro is more enticing, as it should be, I suppose.
