Google raised the price of the base Pixel 11 to $899, a $100 jump over the Pixel 10, and quietly dropped the 128GB tier that had anchored the entry-level Android buyer for years. The rest of Wednesday’s Made by Google 2026 event in New York explained why the company thinks it can charge more: an aggressive bid to make Gemini, not the phone, the product.

The lineup runs four devices, Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro at $1,099, Pixel 11 Pro XL at $1,299 with a 6.8-inch screen, and the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, all on the new Tensor G6, which Google claims runs on-device AI tasks 3.5 times faster and with 3.5 times less energy than its predecessor, with 50% more TPU compute. Preorders opened Wednesday; the phones and the Pixel Watch 5 (at $399 for the 41mm and $429 for the 45mm) ship Aug. 20.

The AirTag rival, Pixel Tag, arrives Nov. 11 at $29 apiece or $99 for four.

The strategic pitch came from devices chief Rick Osterloh, who framed the expanded Gemini Intelligence suite, running on the Gemini Nano 4 model and threading through Gboard, Live Transcribe, a DeepMind-built Sign Language to Text engine, and a voice-input feature called Rambler, as “a totally new way to interact with a computer.” “For the last 10 to 15 years, not a lot has changed in how you use laptops and mobile phones. But we think that’s about to change dramatically,” he said.

It’s the same wager Apple has been slower to place: that the phone as glass slab is done, and the interface layer is where the next decade’s margin lives.

Sources