One year of updates couldn’t save the Pixel 10’s GPU — and now the Pixel 11 is at risk

The Pixel 10 series may be Google’s best phones yet, but gamers got the short end of the stick. The Tensor G5 marked Google’s switch away from Arm’s Mali GPUs in favor of Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR architecture — specifically the mid-range, already aging DXT-48-1536.

With the Pixel 11 launch approaching, one question keeps nagging at me: will history repeat itself? Rumors suggest the Tensor G6 will use another modest PowerVR GPU, the CXTP-48-1536. If Google’s recent trajectory is anything to go by, the Pixel 11 could fall even further behind rival flagship GPUs.