Shadowing Practice: The Pixel 11 Pro Isn't Really a Phone - Learn English Speaking with Video

Google just built a phone that proves they've basically stopped caring about phones like at all

but it might actually be the best one they've ever made.

Everyone is saying the new Pixel 11 Pro is boring but this is quietly the best phone Google's ever shipped.

They just buried it under a mountain of other things without really talking about the hardware and why they did that?

Well that's the important part here.

It is bigger than this one phone.

Look let me get this out of the way because well

if I don't I think you'll all be in the comments about it, but the internet is right about the outside.

It's the same basic box, same basic feel in the hand, same basic phone when it comes to hardware.

It's slightly smaller and lighter.

Google redesigned the camera bar so it's one solid color now instead of matching with the phone.

I went with the fog color for this year.

It's the closest you can get to white, and I just love the way this thing looks.

And all of that, well, it changed nothing for me.

Zero.

And I've used every Pixel Google has made, so here is my problem this year.

The hardware, well, it barely changed and yet this, at least right now, might be my favorite pixel ever.

Maybe even my favorite Android phone ever.

In fact, I think this is as close as you can get to an iPhone on Android, which for someone like me is important.

That's the kind of device I'm looking for, which means everything here got better somewhere that you don't really see on a spec sheet.

So whenever I start using a new phone for the first time, I just use it as my actual phone.

So I put all my info on it and I just get going.

It's just a phone.

Text, email, camera, all the normal things you do with it, the boring stuff.

The first thing that stood out to me was the screen because it's brighter now up to 3600 nits.

Now compared to the Pixel 10 Pro, I wouldn't say it's like a night and day difference, but I always take as much brightness as I can get.

So here when you're outside, you can see the screen, no problem.

There's no squinting, no crank in the brightness or anything like that.

It is brighter and you can see it.

Last year, one of the biggest complaints about the Pixel was it running hot

and like dimming the screen when it did it.

This one though, it seems to keep up.

It stayed cool.

It stayed stable through all of that, even in these hot 100 degree Utah summer days

and the battery life here actually found to be quite good even though the battery size went down

And I've been using this thing pretty heavily It really does

keep up with everything I'm doing in my normal life

and I know that sounds I mean good battery Wow what a revolution

but really that's kind of the point I just stopped thinking about the phone

because all the basics actually they got out of the way for me It's really the small stuff

that kind of sells me on this whole experience like for

example The haptics on this phone are some of the best

I've ever felt you feel it through the whole interface almost

every tap every scroll You can feel the phone doing something

and to me

that matters It's what makes the phone feel like an experience rather than just some slap

and it makes the phone kind of feel expensive

Which this phone is so that matters and the software is kind of the same story.

It's smooth.

It's refined I really haven't hit a single bug the whole time.

I've been using it.

It really for me has been my best Android experience to date Hey, if you guys are enjoying this content First of all, I just want to say thanks for watching and

if you could subscribe

that really means a ton It actually makes a big difference into how all these videos perform

and everything like

that I've got a ton of big plans coming up for

the next few months a lot of big changes Really trying

to think about this content going deeper make better visuals make better stories Hopefully you guys can see

that see that change if you want to join me in

that Really means a ton max save for me is one of those features

that I really can't live without like for example here in

the car I've got this mount here where I could put my phone when I'm in drive.

I can point it here.

It got perfect I got my Android Auto here.

PixelSnap exists on here.

We had it last year, but I'm glad that they're using this because I just came from the Samsung phones and they still don't have those.

Hopefully next year that'll come, but I love this.

This is one of my favorite features.

And QuickShare finally talks to my Mac and iPhone now so I can move files without needing to use third-party software.

You know, not a big deal, but it just, you know, lowers that barrier to entry.

I'm going to pause on this highlight feature.

I absolutely love it.

I think it is beautiful.

I love looking at it.

When you talk to Gemini and see the animation, the swirls of all the lights going on here, I just love it.

I think it's so cool.

I love those types of features on phones like this.

Something that's just a little bit more whimsical, a little bit more interesting.

I love it.

But here's the thing.

I never use it.

I haven't really used it once for real besides just testing it because in order for it to work, you have to have your phone face down.

And I just, I don't use my phone that way.

If I'm going to have my phone face down, I might as well just have it in my pocket.

So I've never used the highlight feature once.

I love how beautiful it is, but as a feature, I really haven't used it.

Real quick though, before we continue, I want to thank this video sponsor, David.

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Look, is this phone perfect?

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No. If you're heavy into gaming for example, which I'm not, but if you are, this Tensor 6 chip just probably isn't the best option right now.

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You can get better performance from other phones.

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That's probably the biggest gripe I've seen many people have about this.

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And yes, it does have a smaller battery.

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It has a more expensive price.

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It has less RAM.

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But in my actual use, those things kind of fall to the wayside and the actual issues I have are relatively minor.

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And there's a pattern worth noticing here because everything that actually makes this phone better, well, it's kind of invisible.

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The battery, the heat, the screen, the haptics, the way the software just flows, I mean, none of it really shows up in a picture or a phone or whatever you're doing.

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And the one new thing Google actually built into the hardware, that glowing light, well, it's the one thing I'll never actually use.

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And so after using this, the phone everyone's calling boring is actually the nicest Android experience I think I've had to date.

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Okay, but it's not quite fair to say nothing changed because there are some changes here.

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Like in the camera, we actually have new hardware this year and it's basically just one thing.

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The new telephoto camera.

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Google put a bigger sensor in here for the 5x zoom so it pulls in more light and it's sharp.

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It really looks great.

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The main camera, the one that you're going to be shooting with most of the time, technically it does have a new sensor but it's the same size, same performance, everything, so you'll never notice a difference there.

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But that one upgrade that they did put is coming to the sensor that most people don't really use.

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Although the zoom performance here is pretty impressive.

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But the software side of the camera is where this gets a little bit more interesting.

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Like this feature called Magic Capture.

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You basically just hit one button, it starts recording, you point it wherever you'd like, and instead of thinking about what you should capture, it captures everything, and then later AI will pick the best frames for you.

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You can even grab photos and videos at the same time.

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And it's actually pretty good.

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For something you don't want to be fully paying attention to, this can actually help you quite a bit.

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I used it more than I expected to.

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And that is the camera AI actually helping out.

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There's also the camera looks feature

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which seems to be a bit of a trend in photography right now where you're making your photos look less perfect, look more stylized.

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The only problem I have with this feature is not that it exists.

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I think it's cool and I think a lot of people will like it.

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I just don't like that it's destructive when you use this feature.

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There's no going back or taking off this filter because it's actually changing how it's taking a photo, which is good in certain ways, but I don't like that.

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I want the most information I can get.

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I don't find myself using this at all, but if you're kind of in that Digicam world, I can see why this would matter to you.

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And then there's the zoom which goes now up to 120x.

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This is where it gets kind of interesting.

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So you can see here I'm zooming way into this emblem

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and when I take a picture it's really hard to see what this is

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but then it's gonna do all its processing and well here's what it gave me.

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This is the Porsche emblem and well this is not the Porsche emblem.

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It does a pretty bad job when it comes to words and all that.

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Basically what it's doing is guessing what your photo is supposed to be and using AI to enhance it.

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This is a mixed Sometimes it works pretty well, but if you have any words or anything that matters, this is a this is pretty bad If you're using this 120x mode,

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you're really not taking a picture You're just capturing what's in front of you

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and then you're letting Google think what the best representation of

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that is And look the thing

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that the camera does handing you Google's version instead of like the real thing That's not just a camera trick.

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That's kind of the whole company in one big feature Here's what everyone I think is missing

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because they're all arguing about whether this hardware has changed enough year over year year, I think that's the wrong argument.

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Google isn't really trying to sell hardware anymore.

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I mean look what they did this year.

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They raised the price to hundred bucks, gave you less RAM than last year on the base model

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to make you pay for more to get back to where you already were, and that really I think beautiful highlight, the one feature I said I'd really never use, well they shipped it half-finished anyway.

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You can't even use it for text, it barely does anything.

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Less RAM, more money, half-baked features.

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If this is just a phone, that's kind of a bad deal, at least it seems like it is.

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And I think you'd be right to to kind of be upset about that, but look at what they give you for free instead.

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It says a lot.

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Six months of Google's Pro AI subscription.

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Gemini gets baked into everything.

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It reads your emails, it can dig through your drive, it can pull your flight info before you even ask, or at least it's supposed to.

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The upgrade this year really isn't in your hand.

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It's in the cloud and it's on a subscription.

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You're not really buying a phone anymore.

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You're just buying a subscription that has a really nice screen attached to it.

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And this really isn't about the Pixel.

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It's about the corner that Google's kind of backed into right now.

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Because here's some quick history.

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Back in 2017, Google invented the transformer, which is what the T in ChatGPT, that's what it stands for.

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Google, that's their idea.

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And then, well, they watched all these companies, especially one big startup, basically take that idea and win with it.

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For years, when people heard the word AI, they basically thought of ChatGPT.

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And Google was the company that lost the race it basically started.

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And for a minute, I mean, it looked like Google fixed this because at the end of last year, Gemini 3 dropped and it topped the charts.

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And then OpenAI panicked so hard that they declared a company-wide code red, but that lead for Google, it didn't hold because the model race, the thing that all these companies are in on,

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well, that changes every few weeks.

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And right now, Google is not wearing it and it's not really close.

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And it's worse than that because the people who built this stuff, they're leaving the company.

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The guy who co-wrote the paper that started all of this, well, he left for OpenAI.

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A Nobel Prize winner left for Anthropic.

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Their longtime chief scientist left to start his own company.

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The co-founder who ran DeepMind got moved out of the CEO seat.

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When two of these high prominent people walked out in the same week, Google's stock dropped 5%, and Wall Street knows what that means.

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And to add on top of that, their next model is reportedly months behind schedule.

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So when it comes to just raw model quality, Google just is not winning right now.

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And it's not obvious that they're going to catch up.

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But it might not matter at all

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because at least it seems maybe there's some shift here that Google isn't really playing the model game right now.

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They're playing kind of two games that nobody else can.

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And the first is distribution because Gemini is already in front of two billion people whether they ask for it or not.

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Search, Gmail, Android, this phone.

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The second game I think most people miss completely, because Google is the only one of the old tech giants that actually built real AI.

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Apple couldn't do it, they had to go borrow it from Google.

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Amazon and Microsoft basically resell other people's.

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Meta lit north of $100 billion on fire and still basically have nothing to show for it.

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The only names at the top of this whole thing are pure AI labs, so OpenAI and Anthropic.

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But then we also have Google.

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Google is the only old world company sitting at the table right now.

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So, a phone that shoves Gemini in your face and hands you a free subscription isn't exactly Google failing.

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It just might be the plan or the plan they're moving to.

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They might not have the smartest model right now, but they can make sure that it's the one that's in your pocket that you're actually going to use.

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And there's a reason that they need this to work.

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Because, well, AI is also the thing that could entirely kill Google.

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I mean, every question the AI answers for you is a question you didn't search.

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And no search means no ads.

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And ads are basically the whole company.

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That's where all the money comes from.

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So they're basically racing to make AI itself pay before it eats the business that funds it entirely.

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That free six months that you're getting with this phone, it's not really a gift.

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It's just the first hit in that cycle.

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And look, none of this is new at all.

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Google's been doing this same play for a couple of years now with a few generations of phone, but the Pixel 11 just makes it really obvious

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and impossible to miss because it's basically the same phone as last year with less RAM, more money, and it still gives you that free trial of the thing they kind of actually want to sell you.

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And here's the thing, it's not just Google.

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Apple's building its own version, Samsung too.

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The spec sheet really here seems to be dying, not because specs stopped mattering entirely, but because the spec sheet just isn't really the product anymore.

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The product seems to be the platform, the axis, the thing that keeps you from changing after you've paid for the phone.

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So the question everyone's asking here is, did the hardware change enough on this phone to upgrade?

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But I think that's the wrong question.

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The real question rather is, do you want to live inside Google's platform?

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Do you trust where it's going?

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That's kind of what you're buying right now.

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And so where I land here isn't exactly like super clean.

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Because this is the best Pixel I've used in years.

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It gets out of the way for all the normal stuff.

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The camera's really good, great even.

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The thing just works.

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And I liked living with it more than I even expected to.

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But it's hard to judge because it's not exactly a phone.

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That part is just one segment of what you're using here.

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And I don't exactly know how to feel about that.

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Google might not have the best AI by the time you're holding this phone.

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Their best people are leaving, their models are late, but it doesn't matter.

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It'll be the one already in your pocket, and most people never switch once that happens.

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That's kind of the whole bet here.

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Not necessarily the best product, but the closest one to you.

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So, should you buy this?

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Well, if you're on an old Pixel a few years old, I think this is an easy yes.

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I love this device.

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It's great.

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If you're on an iPhone and you've just been curious about what Android would be like, This is the one I would steer you towards because it's the most iPhone-like experience.

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If you're already on the Pixel 10, then no, there's nothing here for you, but that's kind of a small question.

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The real question I want you to ask yourself is what's

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the last piece of tech you bought where the hardware was actually exciting to you, that actually made you feel something?

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I can think of a few off the top of my head, but they're getting fewer and farther between because I think that era is quietly ending,

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and I want to know if you can feel it too.

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Okay.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing Practice: The Pixel 11 Pro Isn't Really a Phone - Learn English Speaking with Video

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Grammar & Expressions in Context

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What is the Shadowing Technique?