u/Hackedv12

At the start, I was quite sceptical about how the experience is going to be since there were a lot of reviews online that were pointing towards the phone having a lot of shortcomings in terms of its overall hardware, reduced RAM, reduced battery capacity, and a general overall consensus that the phone is not worth the amount Google is asking for it.

That said though, after almost a week of using the Pixel 11 Pro XL, here are my observations.

- Tensor G6: Of course, the chip is not as powerful as a Snapdragon or other flagship chips. That said though, day-to-day performance is smooth, the overall operating system is smooth, the UI does not have glitches or any lag that I have experienced despite going through everything like social media apps, a couple of games, as well as editing apps that are heavier on the processor.

- Gaming: I have played a few sessions of Call of Duty, and before this, I played on the S26 Ultra. Between the Ultra and the Pixel, I don't see any remarkable difference in gaming performance for that one particular game, which is of my concern. Other games may vary in performance

- Camera: For taking photos, I believe the consistency that the Pixel provides, or used to provide, is excellent and still unmatched compared to the rest of the Android ecosystem. Even when I was using the S26 Ultra, the photos were not consistent, where sometimes they were overprocessed, sometimes they were oversaturated, and sometimes they outright came blurred despite having enough light in the area. I'm a fan of how seamless the camera experience has been till now (bar video). My only gripe is that the Pixel Camera doesn't preserve exposure and other settings when relaunching the camera (I usually like shooting at -1 exposure)

- Build Quality: Before this I also had the Pixel 10 Pro XL, and in my experience, the 11 Pro XL feels a little easier to use on a day-to-day basis because there is a slight reduction in weight compared to the 10 Pro XL. In terms of its girth, it's still a big heavy phone, but I made that decision of buying the XL rather than the regular Pro beforehand knowingly. That said, the hardware feels absolutely premium and up to mark with other flagship phones.

- Battery: Honestly, the reduction in the physical battery size does not translate to bad battery performance compared to the 10 Pro XL. In fact, I'm actually getting more screen-on time compared to the previous phone, most probably due to the optimisation in the G6 processor and how it has been set up for a balance between performance and battery optimisation.

- Modem: I haven't paid much attention to the Wi-Fi speed or the 5G speeds. That said, it doesn't feel like any significant change from the previous generation phone modems.

- Overall: After a lot of speculation and seeing a lot of negative reviews which I even see today if I open YouTube, I feel that the issues of the new 11 series Pixel are over-exaggerated by most of the YouTubers and content creators to create a sort of negative hype that benefits them in getting more views rather than the actual on-ground situation.

That said though, in day-to-day life, light gaming, video and photo processing, it is not as far behind as it was in the previous generations like the Pixel 9 series and the Pixel 10 series. So overall, I feel that if somebody is actually looking for an upgrade, this is a worthy upgrade considering the Pixel ecosystem itself and the Tensor ecosystem itself, leaving the Snapdragon out of the equation... because if you compare with Snapdragon, of course the processing is still a little behind, but the gap has been significantly reduced from before where I feel that the 10 series was about 60% in comparison to the Snapdragon while the 11 series has now closed that gap to about 85% in terms of its overall performance.

I don't care a single bit about HiLight, apart from it being the dumbest name given to any hardware feature ever!

I want to remove bloatware from my 26 ultra.

My question is that after doing a ADB or UAD (or any method), will banking and payment apps still work on the phone?

Unlike other operating system iPad OS doesn't have an option to eject drive. How do you guys disconnect your external drives while ensuring it's the safest way?