Robert Triggs / Android Authority
2025 is just about winding down, and my colleague Ryan Haines had a hot take: The Pixel 11 is already the best phone of 2026. The new year hasn’t even begun, and the Pixel 11 is still over nine months away — yet, it has been crowned the winner. As it turns out, many people share the sentiment, and I do too.
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We asked our readers if they think the Pixel 11 will outperform its competitors next year, and a significant number of people believe it will. Our poll received over 8,000 votes, making it one of the most popular polls we’ve run recently. Of these, over 2,750 people, representing 34% of total votes, do believe that the Pixel 11 will absolutely outperform its competitors. Another 1,400 people, representing 17.4% of the votes, believe that it probably will, giving Pixel 11 a vote of confidence by over 51% of the votes.
As Android Authority reader Luke Vesty points out, Google is also doing a great job of incorporating actually good AI features into its phones.
Notification Organizer is a good example of one such feature, one that competitors have not copied yet. It uses AI to tackle the spam notification menace, and it’s one of those thoughtful features that actually improves the user experience instead of tacking on yet another AI summary tool.
Only 10.8% of users, approximately 870 votes, strongly disagree with the sentiment. Another 19.3% with over 1,550 votes softly disagree with the sentiment. Pixel 11 doubters thus comprise only 30.1% of the total voters, and that’s a fair number given the wide variety of competition expected in 2026.
Wrapping up the statistics, over 1,500 people, representing 18.6% of the votes, are undecided, remaining unsure how the Pixel 11 will fare against its competitors.
It’s not to say that the Pixel 11 will be perfect. As reader toacaadrian notes, the Pixel experience is underpowered and buggy, but Google is also the only one doing the “clean software” experience that many have come to love.
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