Pixel 11 Pro's New Modem Delivers Faster Speeds and Better Battery Life

Google's Pixel 11 series has been met with some skepticism due to its minor upgrades and higher price tag. However, one significant change this year is the new modem used in these devices. The Pixel 11 series now uses a MediaTek modem instead of Samsung's Exynos modem, which was previously used. Google claims that the new modem is more reliable, faster, and power-efficient.

To test the performance of the new modem, I compared the Pixel 11 Pro to last year's Pixel 10 Pro in various tests. The first test was signal strength, where both phones were tested under similar conditions with the same SIM card. The results showed that the Pixel 11 Pro had slightly stronger reception at indoor locations, but the Pixel 10 Pro had a stronger signal outdoors.

The next test was speed, where I ran three speed tests on each phone using cellular data. The results showed that the Pixel 11 Pro averaged an impressive 671 Mbps download speed, compared to around 593 Mbps on the Pixel 10 Pro, which is roughly a 13% improvement. However, upload speeds were slower on the Pixel 11 Pro, with around 99 Mbps compared to the Pixel 10 Pro's 106 Mbps.

For the final test, I played the same YouTube video on both phones over cellular data for 30 minutes and measured battery usage. The results showed that the Pixel 11 Pro used less battery than the Pixel 10 Pro during this time, with a loss of just 3% compared to the Pixel 10 Pro's 5% loss.

Based on these tests, I believe that the new MediaTek modem is a step in the right direction for Google. The areas where it improved are likely to be most noticeable to users, such as faster download speeds and better battery life during video streaming.