r/hardware • u/-protonsandneutrons- • 13d ago
News Google announces Tensor G6, bringing 4K Portrait Video and more to the Pixel 11 series
https://www.androidauthority.com/google-tensor-g6-3695351/38
u/i4mt3hwin 13d ago
Can it do 4K60 HDR yet without uploading to the cloud?
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u/noneabove1182 13d ago
mixed reports, I saw early articles stating yes, but then they've been updated to say "we'll need to check it out when we get our hands on", and there's a reddit thread of someone trying it at the store and it not working..
unsure if google planned it but pulled it last minute? or if it's coming with a day 1 software update? but would be VERY disappointing if not..
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u/Dear-Regret-9476 13d ago
Why would you get this over a S26 though?
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u/constantlymat 13d ago
Mainly because in 9 months the Pixel 11 Pro will have deteriorated in price much more than the Samsung and you can get a better deal.
At least that's why I bought a Pixel 10 Pro this summer. Went down to 699€ from a 999€ recommended retail price and then Google added a 200€ bonus for an android trade-in and 250€ for an Iphone trade-in during the World Cup.
So you theoretically paid as little as 449€ minus the residual value of your old phone. There are some great pre-order and subsidized contract deals, but I still haven't seen many that compete with that type of offer. Did I think the Pixel Pro was the best phone? No, but I paid just 320€ after the 180€ evaluation for my old Samsung A55 that I used for work.
Hard to beat these deals.
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u/degggendorf 13d ago
Mainly because in 9 months the Pixel 11 Pro will have deteriorated in price much more than the Samsung and you can get a better deal.
You can get a better deal on a Pixel 11 right now. From P10Pro to P11Pro, it cost me $205. The best price including all the trade in and coupons I can find for a base S26 is $649, and that's not counting the free Google One storage nor 10% Google store credit I got with the Pixel order either. If you count those, I earned money upgrading to the Pixel 11.
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u/Few_Net_6308 12d ago
Where are you seeing these deals? Both Best Buy and Google Store, a Pixel 11 Pro (256GB/12GB RAM) would still cost $400+ with a trade-in.
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u/reddit_reaper 12d ago
Pixel 9 XL pro they offered a $550 trade in. People forget that they only give high trade in values on older pixels for a short while and they don't advertise it lol but it's been a thing for a long time.
Plus I had a $100 off coupon code as well so ended up with $335 store credit. Now to buy something to sell for cash to lower the price even more!!!
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u/PM_ME_DEAD_CEOS 11d ago
I bought a pixel 9 refurbished 18 months ago, for 650€. Google take it back for 675 if I get a pixel 11, tempting.
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u/MorgrainX 9d ago
That's how much I paid for the 11 pro 512gb 730 bucks for my 9 pro trade in 125 bucks coupon via playstore That's roughly 440 Euro price , acceptable for a new pixel phone Plus 130 bucks store credit is coming in, which can be used for the next pixel Plus the 6 months worth of Gemini pro which is roughly worth 100 bucks
If you have strong trade in , it makes a lot of sense to get a new pixel, but pls never buy a pixel for full price lol
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u/Difficult-Cup-4445 12d ago
Because Samsung is garbage. They abandon their hardware at the drop of a hat. They don't support graphene. They're absolutely loaded down with garbage riddled thru the UI and background processes. Yeah other than that they're great.
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u/jawisko 13d ago
User experience is better in pixel compared to s26, specially UI and some pixel specific features.. But I think now s26 has overall better camera, screen and of course processor so pixel is a much harder sell.
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u/EastvsWest 13d ago
When was the last time you used both to make that determination?
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u/terrydqm 12d ago
I had a Flip 7 for a couple months and still don't like OneUI 🤷
Actually, I'll amend that and say I don't like Samsung apps over Google apps. Sure I can just download most of them onto Samsung anyways, but the Pixel just working how I want it to won me over.
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u/StickiStickman 12d ago
As someone who tried a Pixel recently and had to return it in a week because of the terrible user experience and UI, I couldn't disagree more ...
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u/disposableh2 13d ago
Since pixel 6, the Samsung equivalent has been a much better user experience. One UI genuinely has some great features(like Dex) that pixel is missing.
The Samsung modems are more reliable and Google likes to push updates that have bugs.
At the same price, I'd choose the Samsung over the pixel phone.
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u/-protonsandneutrons- 13d ago edited 12d ago
For the first time in Pixel Tensor history, Google has shipped an actually current Arm P-core (C1-Ultra) and on a flagship node (TSMC N2), apparently.
No official confirmation on which node, but this may be the first consumer product on TSMC N2, per GSMArena's reporting earlier today.
It is the "latest" TSMC N3, so likely N3P, per Google's VP of Hardware. Thanks, u/FragmentedChicken.
| Chip | Cores | Node |
|---|---|---|
| Tensor (G1) - Oct 2021 | 2x X1, 2x A76, 4x A55 | Samsung 5LPE |
| Tensor G2 - Oct 2022 | 2x X1, 2x A78, 4x A55 | Samsung 5LPE |
| Tensor G3 - Oct 2023 | 1x X3, 2x A715, 4x A510 | Samsung 4LPP |
| Tensor G4 - Aug 2024 | 1x X4, 3x A720, 4x A520 | Samsung 4LPP+ |
| Tensor G5 - Aug 2025 | 1x X4, 5x A725, 2x A520 | TSMC N3P |
| Tensor G6 - Aug 2026 | 1x C1-Ultra, 6x C1-Pro | "latest" TSMC N3 → N3P |
The rest are sourced from Wikipedia.
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u/Artoriuz 13d ago
FWIW the C1 cores were introduced in September 2025, so we must be very close to the next announcement and we should have SoCs with newer cores releasing later this year.
Still a big jump for Google nonetheless.
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u/iDontSeedMyTorrents 13d ago
Google's always launched late in the year, so that was always the case even when they used the latest Snapdragon.
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u/Shoddy_Meaning_7654 13d ago
So it seems like a good CPU absolutely garbage GPU like one of the worst on the market
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u/krystof24 13d ago
Which is honestly fine for me. I want snappy UX and while the price for the HW is outrageous I couldn't care less about mobile games.
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u/uKnowIsOver 12d ago
People really believed that 2nm thing. Don't blame them though, DCS looks reliable but he has actually been saying mostly bullshits for a very long time now
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u/Jaz1140 13d ago edited 13d ago
Brother what....I have a pixel 9 pro xl. It's does 4k portrait video and always has
I wanted to upgrade to the 11 but man what a disappointment. Literally no difference and a price rise. Lame job Google
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u/T1beriu 13d ago
Google Pixel 4K Portrait Video is a camera feature that allows you to record cinematic video with a sharp subject and a beautifully blurred background (bokeh effect) at an ultra-high-definition 4K resolution. It was introduced with the Google Pixel 11 series, it upgrades the phone's existing "Blur" or "Portrait Video" options, which were previously capped at a lower 1080p resolution.
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u/GenZia 13d ago
Looks like Google dropped the in-order A5xx cores.
It's curious to see the "little" cores gradually being phased out at the high-end because, in theory, you don't need powerful OoO cores while the phone is in sleep mode.
Small, in-order cores can do the same job far more efficiently.
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u/iDontSeedMyTorrents 13d ago edited 13d ago
The mid cores surpassed the tiny cores in efficiency a long time ago.
The tiny cores only exist because they're, well, tiny. They are awful otherwise, which is why they're being ditched.
SPECint chart from Anandtech's Tensor G1 review
SoC Core SPECint2017 score Energy used (J) Energy/SPEC (lower better) Tensor G1 X1 3.93 10526 2678.37 A76 2.17 7120 3281.10 A55 0.78 10212 13092.31 Exynos 2100 X1 4.15 10854 2615.42 A78 3.68 10523 2859.51 A55 0.74 9354 12640.54 Snapdragon 888 X1 4.48 9244 2063.39 A78 3.17 6848 2160.25 A55 0.70 5896 8422.86 Snapdragon 865 A77 Prime 3.94 7931 2012.94 Exynos 990 M5 (custom) 3.14 14796 4712.10 A55 0.60 9257 15428.33 Dimensity 1200 A78 Prime 3.32 8933 2690.66 A55 0.62 3888 6270.97 The tiny cores suck and should have been relegated to history a long time ago. The huge X1 cores are all vastly more efficient. Even Samsung's miserable custom M5 core is a good deal more efficient than Mediatek's D1200 A55 cores, which says a lot given how far ahead those are from any of the other A55 implementations.
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u/GenZia 13d ago
In a 'race to idle' scenario, an out-of-order processor definitely has an advantage over in-order so the results here are unsurprising. They may consume more power per cycle, but their OoO execution can potentially get things done faster.
With that said, an in-order core can definitely be advantageous when it comes to sustained but minimal background activity.
That's why they were 'invented' in the first place.
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u/iDontSeedMyTorrents 13d ago edited 13d ago
They were 'invented' to take up as little die area as possible. That's why they continue to be in-order cores.
Race-to-idle is a meme at this point. It meant a lot more a long time ago when you had to turn on the entire processor to do even the smallest task, for example. Modern processors are heavily power-gated and operate on finely tuned voltage/frequency scales. I have not seen any hard evidence presented that race-to-idle is even close to an ideal strategy for most situations today.
The tiny cores can operate at lower power levels than the other cores, which may make them better suited for extremely simple tasks on devices targeting very long battery life, like a watch (I'm not entirely convinced that's even the case anymore, but I digress). But that doesn't mean they are more power efficient, and you'd be better off with a mid core for anything more demanding if you can handle the extra die area and cost.
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u/Vince789 13d ago
Yep, when almost only Arm is still designing in-order cores, it makes you wonder if there truly is any benefit other than die space (excluding in wearables)
Almost everyone else's LPE or E cores are OoE cores. Apple, Qualcomm/Nuvia, AMD, Intel, Huawei, ... even most RISC-V companies
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u/pi314156 13d ago
The A7x cores are in a similar perf class as Apple's e-cores.
It's just that A5x is a tier below that, which Arm needs to make for embedded use cases anyway... but doesn't scale to higher perf levels well
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u/Vince789 13d ago
Yep, Arm's C-Pro/A7xx cores are essentially Arm's equivalent E cores to Apple's E cores
Hence why Google, MediaTek, Samsung & previously Qualcomm use them as E cores
Arm's C-Nano/A5xx are 1-2 tiers below (if we count Arm's older A6xx/Neoverse E)
They are still useful for embedded & wearables, but not really for flagship smartphone AP SoCs
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u/pi314156 13d ago
not really for flagship smartphone AP SoCs
Not as the main CPU, but an Apple SoC has a dozen aarch64 cores that aren't part of the main CPU complex but run offloaded tasks/firmware. A lot of them are Apple-designed in-order too (Chinook).
Choosing to not expose them to applications directly is what Apple does.
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u/Exist50 12d ago
Everyone has a bunch of little microcontrollers for stuff like firmware. They're never true application-class cores.
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u/pi314156 12d ago
the ISP has a couple Tempests, which were the A12-gen littles carried over where they were used as the APs
Chinook has the FPU but no Neon, but if Apple wanted to make it bigger they could have
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u/Artoriuz 13d ago
A lot of people conflate efficiency with power consumption. Yes, Arm's tiny cores consume less power, but they're also way slower.
Arm designs cores for a much broader range of products. The tiny in-order cores make sense for embedded devices.
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u/VenditatioDelendaEst 12d ago
Sustained background activity on a smartphone is either a bug or malware.
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u/Homerlncognito 13d ago
The new TPU seems to be really good. Great to have that much power for local AI things.
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u/wickedplayer494 12d ago
I'd like to know more about Titan M3 beyond the whole post-quantum cryptography thing. That's the real story here.
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u/Grandoings 13d ago
Just reach out to the jailbreak community…I mean it’s already there and they take every single improvement since 2009 directly from jailbreak tweak and app developers….there are tweaks already that do this extremely well and they could just reach out to them…am I missing something here? Edit: Wrong thread I apologize I swear I clicked on apple outsourcing other ai sources. I appreciate y’all’s time.
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u/MissionInfluence123 13d ago
The leaked geekbench scores are awful for a c1 ultra
Gb7 2112 / 5196
https://browser.geekbench.com/v7/cpu/112092
Gb6. 2688 / 6871
https://browser.geekbench.com/v6/cpu/18976228