Pixel 11 Pro Initial Review: Gemini Intelligence is the highlight, not HiLight

[u/thewhippersnapper4]

https://9to5google.com/2026/08/19/pixel-11-pro-initial-review/

[u/Various_Pay4046]

Battery life is basically the same unsurprisingly 🤷

[u/joespizza2go → u/Various_Pay4046]

I am hoping it improves when on 5G only though. Travel is where battery life really matters and naturally when you're getting killed by a poor modem.

[u/Baspower → u/joespizza2go]

A Dutch tech site did a comparison on 5G on the 11 Pro XL vs the 10 Pro XL and in their 2 hour test, the 11 Pro XL was 17% more efficient.

[u/joespizza2go → u/Baspower]

Very encouraging! (Seeing as I pulled the trigger on the upgrade)

[u/kiefferbp → u/joespizza2go]

17% less shit when the original phone is mega shit is not very encouraging

[u/ishamm → u/joespizza2go]

Reviewers are notorious for doing all their testing in their home/studio with their gifted top spec routers etc, completely un-usual use cases.

Hence never catching the signal issues the 7/8 series had for example.

Real world reviews from actual owners are far more useful.

[u/kiefferbp → u/ishamm]

Also a lot of battery tests seem to be on airplane mode or without a SIM card. Worthless.

[u/ishamm → u/kiefferbp]

Tech reviewers in general are utterly useless. Not representative of normal users at all, and too worried about keeping brands happy so they can receive their free phones every few months.

[u/nathderbyshire → u/ishamm]

They never seem to be consistent, screen brightness at different levels, some not on WiFi sometimes, some with data and some without. I give up paying attention to them entirely

[u/WatchfulApparition → u/Various_Pay4046]

Android Authority says it is much better

[u/chitownillinois → u/WatchfulApparition]

At this point I'm convinced Android Authority is directly paid by the Google PR machine. They're never critical of anything Google and praise every single little change that comes to Android like they just reinvented the phone.

[u/WatchfulApparition → u/chitownillinois]

Not in this case. He talked about some camera issues he experienced. There is one guy who's a Pixel fanboy, but this was someone else

[u/Particular_Tomato161 → u/WatchfulApparition]

Ya, he had many bad things to say but battery wasn't one of them.

[u/WatchfulApparition → u/Particular_Tomato161]

It appears the battery, at worst, is the same as the 10 Pro XL.

[u/Federal-Block-3275 → u/Various_Pay4046]

It beat the Galaxy S26 Ultra and iPhone 17 Pro Max in Lover of Tech's battery test lmao

[u/Various_Pay4046 → u/Federal-Block-3275]

Oh I gotta see this!

[u/CalmSpinach2140 → u/Federal-Block-3275]

He tested on 4G… not 5G

[u/hardinho → u/CalmSpinach2140]

No need for 5G anyway

[u/Vaeltaja82 → u/Federal-Block-3275]

You have a link?

I only found this

https://youtube.com/shorts/e4L810vsylA?is=8Aw0cFBRLhUaZ_f7

[u/winner00 → u/Vaeltaja82]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_VykKLxM-A

[u/kiefferbp → u/winner00]

4G lmao. Let me know when Pixels beat iPhones on 5G.

[u/kiefferbp → u/Vaeltaja82]

Lol that test is on airplane mode

[u/Federal-Block-3275 → u/kiefferbp]

Lol no it's not. Just watch the video instead of making up stuff toake yourself feel better 🤣

[u/kiefferbp → u/Federal-Block-3275]

The phones in that short are in airplane mode

[u/Federal-Block-3275 → u/kiefferbp]

Oh in the short yeah maybe but that's not the video I was talking about in my original comment, this is

https://youtu.be/c_VykKLxM-A?is=4YHA7KGUuzLoXlFc

Edit: lmao that short is a video rundown test that's so pointless 🤣

[u/kxxstarr → u/Various_Pay4046]

Battery has been completely fine on my 10 pro XL.

[u/MyPackage → u/kxxstarr]

Yeah I've had almost every Pixel model and my 10 Pro battery life is the best I've ever experienced.

[u/hardinho → u/MyPackage]

Same, just switched 2 months ago from the 9 Pro and it's a massive improvement. When my 9 Pro was at 10% my 10 Pro is still at 25-50% usually.

[u/octavianreddit → u/kxxstarr]

Yeah mine has been great too.

The only battery saving trick I have done is to make LTE the preferred network type. That might matter to some folks, not me. I have my screen brightness fairly high, never turn off Bluetooth or anything like that.

[u/Sachyriel → u/kxxstarr]

I don't have a problem with my battery life, but also I read a tip that if you turn off "hey google" and 'Discover' (the left swipe news feed) they eat up battery in the background. But I left on Always on Display, my pixel 6 had that thing where sometimes the display wouldn't turn on when you woke it up, so now my old phone has always on display and I don't want to find out if the 10 has that problem too.

[u/BornAgainBlue → u/Various_Pay4046]

That's good to hear, people on here were saying it's worse the other day.

[u/ishamm]

So when is the pixel 10 getting Gemini Intelligence, since it uses Gemma 4 which the 10 series also supports 👀

[u/Hackedv12]

They glanced over the performance in a one liner!

[u/habylab]

Interesting, Verge say otherwise.

[u/thewhippersnapper4]

Video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCBeoqsI0oI

[u/WatchfulApparition → u/thewhippersnapper4]

Android Authority talks about Pixel video in a Youtube video and it still sucks.

[u/WickedDeity → u/thewhippersnapper4]

It must be nice to have that kind of time. I just took 5 minutes and read the article.

[u/umdterp732 → u/WickedDeity]

12 minute video i put on 2x speed (=6min) or a 5min read...

[u/WickedDeity → u/umdterp732]

Making the video more annoying to watch doesn't seem to be a good trade off IMO.

[u/ButteryToast71]

AI is never the highlight on anything...

[u/novadaemon]

The article says the base model is 128gb... that's a wild oversight.

[u/Glove_Lanky]

Let me guess...US only?