Google Pixel 11 Series, Pixel Watch 5, Pixel Tag: Specs, Features, Price, Release Date

Google is dialing things up to 11 this year with its Pixel phones. Ahead of its annual Made by Google event in New York City, the company unwrapped the Pixel 11 smartphone family—which includes the Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro, Pixel 11 Pro XL, and Pixel 11 Pro Fold—alongside the Pixel Watch 5 smartwatch. There’s also a new hardware addition: the Pixel Tag, which seems designed to be the AirTag of the Android world.

Here’s everything you need to know about the hardware changes and software upgrades on Google’s latest devices. Preorders open today, and the phones and watches go on sale August 20.

The Pixel 11 and Pixel 11 Pro Fold

It was inevitable, but prices are up across the board for Google’s Pixel 11 series. The Pixel 11 now starts at $899, and on the highest end of the spectrum, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold is now $1,900. This means both devices got $100 price bumps. There’s some good news: Google has bumped the base storage up to 256 GB on every device, a move matching Samsung‘s and Apple’s latest handsets.

The Pixel 11 series is powered by Google’s Tensor G6 chipset, which the company says is 20 percent more power efficient, 25 percent faster for browsing, and 15 percent faster when loading apps. Many of the camera improvements in the new devices are thanks to an improved imaging signal processor on the chip and a 50 percent more powerful tensor processing unit.

One big design change across the entire Pixel 11 series is on the oval camera bar on the back—it’s now an all-glass surface, as opposed to a mix of metal and glass on its predecessors. Google says the camera bar on the Pixel 11 is more than 40 percent thinner, and when you pop on Google’s case, the camera bar disappears and is completely flush. The Pixel 11 has the most striking color of the lot—Hibiscus—joined by more muted Pistachio, Frost, and Obsidian.

The Pixel 11 and Pixel 11 Pro Fold share more in common than you’d expect. They now have the same primary 48-megapixel camera, upgraded this year with a larger sensor that can capture up to 56 percent more light for brighter low-light images. The 10.8-megapixel telephoto camera, which has a 5X optical zoom, can now digitally zoom up to 30X. At these higher digital zoom levels, Google’s machine learning algorithm puts in the work to clean up the digital noise and deliver an enhanced photo.

Google’s folding phone is now 10 percent lighter and 1 mm thinner than the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, with slimmer bezels around the screen, though the phone is still heftier and thicker than Samsung’s new Galaxy Z Fold8 Ultra. It maintains its IP68 dust- and water-resistance rating, but there’s a new glass-fiber composite back cover that Google says is “nearly impossible to crack” and an upgraded hinge that better protects the inner display from accidental drops. All of this, Google claims, makes the device three times more durable than its predecessor. Bold words.

The Fold features HiLight, a glowing LED on the back (excluded on the Pixel 11 but available on the Pixel 11 Pro phones). It lights up when you talk to Gemini, much like the glowing lights on the new Google Home Speaker. You can set it to light up in specific colors when you receive phone calls from your favorite contacts. Google says it’s exploring the same capability for text messages, but didn’t comment on whether it will enable HiLight for other notifications.

Both phones have been upgraded to 25-watt wireless charging speeds for faster Qi2 charging.

The Pixel 11 Pro and Pro XL

Even if the Pixel 11 Pro Fold has “Pro” in its name, a few extra upgrades in the candybar Pixel 11 Pro and Pixel 11 Pro XL elevate them to be the best hardware and software from Google. Both share the same specs outside of screen size, battery size, and charging speeds. They also are seeing $100 price bumps to $1,100 and $1,300, respectively.

The new colors this year are Canyon, Olive, and Fog, but the standard Obsidian (aka black) now has an all-matte finish. The same HiLight glowing LED as on the Fold is on the all-glass camera bar (Google is also bringing back the “Glowbar” on its upcoming Googlebook laptops later this year, so these glowing lights are a big theme for 2026). There’s a new anti-scratch display coating that purportedly delivers more than double the scratch resistance of the Pixel 10 Pro.

Google says the main camera for the Pixel 11 Pro and 11 Pro XL has been upgraded to a new 50-megapixel sensor, and there’s a new 48-megapixel telephoto camera that Google claims has 30 percent better light sensitivity. The Pro line now uses this camera for its Pro Zoom feature, which uses generative AI to fill in the gaps of ultra-zoomed-in photos, allowing you to zoom up to 120X compared to 100X on last year’s devices.

Thanks to the Tensor G6 chip, there’s a big upgrade to Night Sight, Google’s low-light photo mode. Exclusive to these two devices, it’s now 4.5 times faster and dubbed “Instant Night Sight.” That means your subject won’t have to stay super still in dim conditions while the phone captures the shot—it’s a little more forgiving. That upgraded image signal processor on the chip also unlocks 4K portrait video for the first time. (It was capped at 1080p before.)

These two Pro Pixels are still the only ones in the lineup to support Google’s Video Boost technology. If enabled, your video clips are uploaded and processed on Google’s servers to improve brightness and colors, reduce noise, and upgrade stabilization. This year, they’ll now be treated to “Pro Stable Video” as well. It will automatically activate for shaky scenes and deliver super-stable footage. Samsung and Apple have been delivering on that front largely through hardware, but it’s no surprise that Google’s leveraging its software expertise instead.

Pixel Software Smarts

There are a handful of fresh camera features available on all of these phones, from Magic Capture—which lets you hold the phone up while Gemini snap pics and video on your behalf so you can be in the moment—to Camera Looks and even a built-in teleprompter. You can read more about them in this story, where we also interview Google’s Pixel camera chief.

These Pixel phones will receive the Gemini Intelligence features that debuted in Android 17, like Rambler, the AI speech-to-text feature. But Google is also highlighting Gemini’s “proactive assistance,” which comes in the form of glowing cards that primarily pop up in the messaging app. If someone texts you about dinner plans and suggests a restaurant, Gemini will offer a button that displays a card of the Google Maps listing, giving you a quick look at the star rating and some pictures, and the option to switch to the Google Maps app if you want. It’ll do similar tricks for scheduling with Google Calendar, too.

Those kinds of proactive assistance features play nicely into Google’s task automation features that it introduced earlier this year. So if a friend asks about booking a table at a restaurant, you’ll see a button you can press to hand the job off to Gemini to make the booking on your behalf. (You’ll need to confirm it at the end, but Gemini does all but the last step.) One new experience launching in beta will even proactively put a restaurant’s name on your lock screen when you’re seated—tap it, and you’ll be able to glance at Gemini-generated insights from reviews, photos, and top-recommended dishes.

Another feature available on all devices but uniquely more helpful on the Pixel 11 Pro Fold thanks to its folding design: the ability to translate American Sign Language. Using the camera, it can view a person using sign language and translate it into text for faster interactions.

In a similar vein, Google says the Tensor G6 chip allows it to translate any media you watch and listen to on YouTube and select other video and podcast apps, using generative AI to automatically dub audio in real time (much like Meta’s AI audio dub feature in Instagram), bringing us one step closer to the universal translator from Star Trek.

The big new feature with Google’s Pixel Watch 5 isn’t actually specific to the new smartwatch. Google is introducing the ability to track blood pressure and insulin resistance trends in the Google Health app. These features aren’t FDA-approved or cleared (more details here), and Google does not recommend using them for diagnosis or treatment. However, Google plans to get the seal of approval. The new tracking abilities will be available for the Pixel Watch 3, Pixel Watch 4, Pixel Watch 5, and Fitbit Air in September.

As for the hardware itself, much of Google’s efforts this year seem to revolve around speeding things up and improving performance. Powered by Qualcomm’s Snapdragon W5 Gen 2 Accelerated chip with a Cortex-M55 co-processor, Google says the Pixel Watch 5 offers 20 percent faster processing. The dual-band GPS is also twice as accurate at route mapping in tough environments like cities, and Google is so confident that it claims the Pixel Watch 5’s GPS outperforms the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and the Garmin Fenix 8 Pro. The screen can hit a peak brightness of 3,000 nits too, matching the Apple Watch Ultra 3.

Part of the speed improvements also mean surfacing helpful information when you need it, and Google says its At a Glance feature will bring up relevant details, like Gate information when you’re at the airport, or how many stops are left on your bus route home. Also, you can finally use Gemini even when the watch is not connected to the internet to manage certain tasks, like timers, alarms, and workouts, with your voice.

Also new is Sleep Breathing Quality, which monitors minute-by-minute variations in your blood oxygen levels, which could help you understand how your quality of sleep is affecting your overall energy, recovery, and heart health. And then there’s Breathing Emergency Detection, which can place an emergency call on your behalf if you’re unresponsive and it detects a persistent drop in oxygen levels, like with drug toxicity accidents, pneumonia, or choking (though, once again, this feature is not cleared by the FDA). Google says this feature is launching first in select European countries.

The 41-mm Pixel Watch 5 costs $399, or $429 for the 45-mm size, and you’ll have to pay more for the models with cellular connectivity. There’s also a Stephen Curry Edition for $579 launching on September 3, with an exclusive sweat-wicking performance loop band.

The Pixel Tag

Google has made concerted efforts to upgrade its Find Hub network over the last year to bring it on par with Apple’s Find My, and the icing on the cake is its very own tracker: the $29 Pixel Tag. It’s made with a mix of plastic and metal, is rated IP67, supports ultra-wideband for precise tracking, and weighs 0.4 ounces. It’s powered by a user-replaceable CR2032 coin cell battery that lasts more than a year.

Pair the tag with your Android device (it only supports devices running Android 9 or newer), and it’ll use the massive Android network to relay your lost item’s location, whether the tag is on your keychain or in your wallet or backpack. Google says you can locate and ring the tag not just through phones but through WearOS smartwatches with the Find Hub app, or ask Gemini through your Pixel Buds. Unlike the rest of the hardware on show today, the Pixel Tag won’t be available right away; it shows up on November 11.