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Google just launched their new phones, the Pixel 11, the 11 Pro, the 11 Pro XL, and the 11 Pro Fold. And something very strange has happened here because their flagship product, the 11 Pro XL, has had a price increase of $100 compared to last year, as well as having the RAM on the base model dropping from 16 gigs down to 12 gigs. Now, this stems from the fact that the memory prices around the world have skyrocketed and just consumer electronics pricing is jacked up like crazy. But, we're seeing Google launch a new phone with lowered specs and a higher price compared to the previous year. Now, you do have the option of going back up to 16 gigs of RAM, but it is tied to a storage upgrade
that costs $100. It's not great. So, I was able to try these new devices at a Google event, and despite the increase in price and the drop in starting RAM, I do think there's some interesting features this year that are noteworthy. So, the headlining hardware feature is seemingly a cluster of lights on the back they call highlight. It's on the Pro devices only, so the Pro, the XL, and the Fold. And the light is located where the flash would have been, and it essentially serves as a advanced like notification light. You can set it so it glows in a color for specific contacts, but also for Gemini when you're interacting with Gemini, it'll have the flowing pattern as you talk to it, and
when it responds back to you, it'll be in a different pattern, and it's just there to visualize your interaction with the AI tools. It's neat, but you do need to have your phone face down, and I think some people don't like leaving their phones like that cuz you can pick up scratches, you got to get cases and protect the screen. I don't think the idea of a notification light on the back of phone is inherently bad. I actually think it's good nowadays because having a tool like a voice-operated tool that you can just look at your phone and know that it's how it's interacting, when it's interacting, that's a good thing, but I think they're marketing it a little bit heavily, like it's just a
light. I love it, but I don't think the highlight is for everybody. And by introducing it this year, they had to remove the temperature sensor that we've seen on the Pixel Pro devices since the Pixel 8 Pro, so that's gone. Now, there's some other cool AI software features they showed. In the camera, there's a new mode called magic capture that records video and when you use it, in addition to the video file that you would get normally, you also get these still images that it intelligently selected and snapped while you were recording video without any effort from you. And these images are cropped and unblurred and just tweaked to look as nice as possible. Now, when I first heard about this feature, I was like,
this is silly. Like, why would I ever want to do this? Like, if I want to take pictures, I take pictures. If I want video, I want video. But then, I saw it in use and I realized this thing is awesome. So, I have kids and I have a family that like anytime I try to take pictures of my kids and I ask them to pose, it's just a goofy-looking photo. This allows life to just happen, things to just happen, and then it just picks up really nice moments and turns them into stills. And when I saw this in use at the event, I was like, this Like, I was taking pictures of this dude I'd met there and if he'd if it'd been like, "Hey, do you guys want to take a picture?" It'd just be like two awkward dudes that
don't even know each other. It'd be like, you know, the weird picture. But this captures something that just feels candid and just natural. And I think they just look a lot nicer. I think this is something that sounds silly, but in actual use, I think a lot of people will enjoy it. There's also a new teleprompter feature in the camera app where you can load up a script or something and it'll just prompt you as you go and it'll adjust the prompt speed depending on your speech. It's neat, but I just can't help but think like, how many people are actually going to use this? Like, are there that many creators that use phones to do this stuff? As someone who makes YouTube videos, I've
never in my life used a teleprompter. So, I can't imagine like getting a phone for this purpose or like if you even did use them, like I don't know. It was strange because this was like a launch feature that they're showcasing as like, "Hey, this is what's new with the Pixel 11." It's neat, I guess, but for a small number of people, maybe. My favorite AI tool that they showcased was the new voice-to-text feature, which is just really good. It's able to take the stuff you're saying and remove the ums and ahs. Like, we've seen that before, but now it's able to do like simple math. And this is just the demo the guy showed.
Remind me to get milk, cheese, two avocados, two oranges, um 12 eggs, and actually I need three avocados and I don't need milk. And can you also add banana and beef, please? I love that. I thought that was genuinely useful. It's able to take our natural speech and then turn it into this clean, simplified text. And it's seemingly all done on device. I don't know how long it'll be like a Pixel 11 exclusive, but it's really cool. Uh the other thing that's new is a new live translate. So, we've seen it last year, I think, where you could just get like phone calls and be able to do live translate, but this is now able to do it with videos and
podcasts. And the demo was really cool. Sorry, but they're taking the first steps on YouTube. Our goal is to help you get the most out of your YouTube channel. So, that demo might have been sandboxed. I don't know how accurate of a depiction that would be for the actual user experience, but it was impressive, right? You have a Spanish video, when you click a button, 2 seconds later it's coming back to me in English. Interestingly, the person's voice was like it the English-sounding voice matched the voice of the original host in terms of like just the timbre of the voice, but also it had like an AI-generated accent.
Like, she had a Spanish accent instead of just like a plain English accent. Like, it was neat, but I don't know, strange at the same time. The Pixel 11 has some new colors. The hibiscus color really pops. It's basically like a hot pink. It's super bright. Uh the pro devices, so the pro and the pro XL, you have a couple matte frame options this year. So, the obsidian and the olive have like a matte finish to the frame. And then the fog and the canyon colors still have the polished metal frame.
The pro devices also have slightly brighter screens than last year. It's nothing massive, but a brighter screen is a brighter screen. We always appreciate that. And then on the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, the camera bars look a little bit different this year. It also has the highlight on the back. The Fold only comes in two colors, the obsidian and then the olive colorway. It's still got the polished metal on the hinge. It's a little thinner and a little lighter than the previous generation. And Google's saying that the new hinge is three times stronger than before. All good to hear. But one thing I noticed when I held it in my hands, the panels
are different thickness. Like if you look at this shot here, the back panel, so the one with the camera bump, is a little thinner than the front panel. And it doesn't feel weird or anything. It still feels balanced and normal. And it could just be my eyes. Like I was looking at this thing and I was like, I think it's thinner, but I didn't have like calipers. But I really do think that the back pain, or the back panel, is thinner than the front panel, which I've never seen before. Like that asymmetric panel discrepancy on a foldable phone. Now, in terms of the crease, or like the visibility of the crease, it is better this year than the
previous generation. That one had a very noticeable crease, but it's still reasonably visible. If you're someone who's really bothered by creases, you should go for something else. Now, in terms of cameras, the Pixel 11, as well as the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, have a new main sensor. So, it's a bigger sensor, allows more light to get in, gives you better image quality. We'll be testing that shortly. But the pro devices, so the pro and the pro XL, don't have a new main sensor, but they do have a improved telephoto sensor. So, again, bigger sensor, allows more light to get in. This now goes up to a 120x super zoom.
Keep in mind, it's a 5x optical. So, to go from 5x optical to 120 requires a lot of software. Now, Google's very good at generating details with AI to kind of fill in that photo so it looks really good, but it is generated. There's faster wireless charging across the board, so all four devices can now do Qi 2.2 at 25 watts, and the battery sizes haven't changed much. In fact, the pro devices actually have slightly smaller sized batteries than last year. I'm assuming that the Tensor G6 chip is just so energy efficient that Google felt confident and comfortable to shrink the battery like this because they know that the efficiency will carry. At least that's what I hope. Okay, a quick note
about the 12 gigs of RAM. Like I mentioned in the beginning of the video, it can be argued that the new Pixel 11 Pro product that starts at 12 gigs of RAM, because it has less RAM and it costs more than the previous generation, is arguably a worse phone. I think there's merit to that conversation, but I bring this up because the way that Google has always done the Pixel experience is through a great software experience. And to have good software experience, you need a lot of RAM. More RAM than is being used. Like you want extra RAM just sitting there with lots of room for software to load into it and not have to be removed because that just That's what makes it faster and smoother, right? So, though
Google's uh Gemini Nano models, those get loaded into RAM. There's like a certain chunk or a certain portion of your memory on a Pixel phone that is reserved for their AI models, and this model grows over time. Right now, we're at V3, and I think it's at like 6 gigs of usage. So, a portion of that 6 gigs is like the model itself, but there's also another portion of the memory that's reserved for like how that model interacts with other applications. And right now, it's I think it's about 6 gigs. The next version of it, so Gemini Nano V4, it's invariably going to be larger, right? The bigger the model, the better, usually. And I feel like at 12 gigs, that is the minimum. That is actually
the requirement from Google to even have the proper Gemini intelligence experience. Anything less than that doesn't qualify. So, 12 gigs is the floor, and this new pro phone comes in at 12 gigs. Like it's just it's strange to me. Like I get why they did it. They have to have like a price competitive phone that starts at a certain price, and this is how they do it. But I think a lot of people are going to pick up that pro phone, the base one, 12 gigs of RAM, and not realize just how they've trapped themselves into just you can only [clears throat] experience this model in its full glory, but the next model will likely put them over the limit, and now they're like, "Oh, you can't have the proper Gemini
intelligence experience." It's so bizarre. It's not I mean, arguably it's Google's fault because they're the ones that are consuming the memory on the other end of it, but I just Yeah, I'm shocked that Google would put this on their pro phone. I'm disappointed that this is on their pro phone. I Yeah, that's just the way it is. But here it is. First impressions of these devices, I will be testing these uh when we get them in. Hope you guys enjoyed this video.
