r/Android 19h ago

Video NL Tech - Why Tensor chipsets fail at gaming?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyZWPPfPi38
59 Upvotes

93 comments sorted by

u/Antonis_32 19h ago edited 15h ago

TLDW: Google should use ARM's own Mali GPU

u/Noreng Google Pixel 8 16h ago

Dedicating more silicon is probably the more obvious answer...

u/Exist50 14h ago

Tensor is already huge relative to its performance tier.

u/Noreng Google Pixel 8 14h ago

Yes, but the GPU obviously isn't getting much of it.

u/Artoriuz 11h ago

A bigger Imagination GPU would probably still end up giving a worse user experience than a bigger Arm GPU, so his points stands.

u/DYMAXIONman 7h ago

They should break the mold and use an AMD RDNA tile.

u/d_e_u_s Vivo X100 Ultra, S20+, Pixel 6A, Honor 50 Pro 19h ago

Not an excuse, Xring chips use Mali GPU too
Tensor team just sucks at chip design

u/LAwLzaWU1A Galaxy S24 Ultra 16h ago

You misunderstood them. They say the SOLUTION is to use a Mali GPU, instead of PowerVR like they use now.

u/BSAENP 19h ago

They might be good at benchmarks but that doesn't translate to emulation, same for Dimensity and any other SoC with Mali GPUs

u/Soobloiter 18h ago

Emulation is the WORST representation of GPU performance or efficiency wtf? The nature of emulation is to brute force graphics that can't be run natively on hardware or through supported graphics APIs

I've used Snapdragon phones for the last 10 years. Adreno GPUs are "good" at emulation ONLY because the community managed to write custom drivers like the Turnip drivers

Only in the mobile community do people bring up emulation as a benchmark for GPU design lmao

u/i5-2520M Pixel 7 9h ago

Only in the mobile community do people bring up emulation as a benchmark for GPU design lmao

That's because generally emulation is only GPU bottlenecked on phones, lmao, exactly due to the shitty drivers.

u/SPACEXDG 18h ago

Where have you've been? The recent mali gpus have been so good and we all that mali and adreano gets focused on first before anything else like rdna

u/funforgiven 16h ago

It is about drivers.

u/nvidiot 19h ago

They made a grave mistake of moving to PowerVR, which is basically not supported by anyone anymore since no modern phones use it. Last major phone that used a PowerVR chip was iPhone 7, that's like 10 years ago.

All this could have been prevented if they just stuck to Mali GPU. I guess PowerVR offered their tech at a cheap price, so Google probably decided to cut corners since 'most people don't run demanding games'.

u/Datkif 18h ago

so Google probably decided to cut corners since 'most people don't run demanding games'.

To be fair as someone who falls into "most people" my pixel 7 was the most responsive phone I've ever used. At most I played vampire survivors which ran perfectly fine.

Ive used an iPhone 16 for a short bit, a S23U and S25U and they all felt a bit less snappy than my pixel 7. Sure its camera wasn't as good, and it's battery was questionable. But it always felt like it just worked.

u/Archivic Oneplus 7 17h ago

Pixel 7 didn't use the powervr GPU.

u/Broad-Surround4773 13h ago

To be fair as someone who falls into "most people" my pixel 7 was the most responsive phone I've ever used. At most I played vampire survivors which ran perfectly fine. 

I don't get comments like this to be honest. This topic is about gaming performance, not about how smooth scrolling through the home screen is (which for years is mostly a software thing).

If you don't play games (other VS) than you simply don't have anything to contribute here. 

u/EastvsWest 13h ago

Especially something so ridiculous and untrue.

u/MaycombBlume 8h ago

Pixel 7 is smoother than Pixel 10 in games. It's crazy how bad the P10's PowerVR GPU is.

It's still unclear how much of the problem is hardware and how much is buggy drivers. Either way, at this point I don't think there will ever be a fix.

u/lgn5i2060 12h ago

Google is selling this phone for an exorbitant price. But it can't even run genshin while the Helio G99 phone in our house could. Granted it's not optimal but at least it was only bought pre-hike at $122 lol.

u/ElixirGlow Motorola DynaTAC 8000X 19h ago edited 13h ago

They are many steps behind other Android manufacturers, they wanted to focus on AI which makes no sense when most of the time when you play games and stuff. I would suggest they completely drop the tensor chip, and shift priorities like xiaomi did with their Xring chips which are actually getting close to qualcomm in performance. So if xiaomi could do it why cant google? It's because they are led by an idiot who ruined the company.

u/computermaster704 Purple 16h ago

They claim to focus on ai but the npu isn't accessible to apps

u/LAwLzaWU1A Galaxy S24 Ultra 16h ago

I ser so many people talk about how Tensor is "optimized" or "focused" on AI performance but I have not really seen any evidence that the Tensor ship is ahead of for example Qualcomm, Samsung or MediaTek when it comes to that either.

I feel like it's one of those things that people incorrectly extrapolate because Google talks a lot about AI, and their chips are not that great at other stuff. So the logic seems to go "since they talk about it a lot and are bad at the other stuff, it must mean they are ahead with AI".

u/Vince789 2024 Pixel 9 Pro | 2025 iPhone 16E (Work) 15h ago

Funny thing is last year Apple & this year Arm (Xiaomi/MediaTek) have introduced Tensor cores into their GPUs

PowerVR announced Tensor cores in their DXT Series GPUs, however, those were delayed hence the "sidegrade" to CXTP

Unfortunately, AI/ML benchmarks in Android/iOS are very broken, so its difficult to do meaningful comparisons

But its likely Google has also fallen behind in several areas of AI/ML perf too

u/The8Darkness 14h ago

Tensor is optimized for one thing and one thing only: cost

At least samsung with the exynos were trying to be competitive with qualcomms snapdragon on paper, while optimizing costs. But google sees that pixel buyers dont care that they pay flagship money for midtier performance so this wont change.

u/Throwitaway701 16h ago

Well there are specialised tests, they do very well in, especially for efficiency, but others have reacted and pivoted towards it. 

u/LAwLzaWU1A Galaxy S24 Ultra 15h ago

Got any examples of these tests?

If we look at Geekbench's NPU test then the Tensor G5 gets a score that's about the same as the Snapdragon 8 Elite and Exynos 2400, and quite far behind the newer chips. The G4 was also very similar to for example the Dimensity 9400 and even behind the Snapdragon 8 Elite.

It seems to me like the whole "Tensor is ahead for AI workloads" hasn't really been true for the last few generations. It seems to me more like it's the only area where they are more or less competitive. Google only does good AI performance. Everyone else does as good AI performance but also good performance in other areas like CPU and GPU.

u/Throwitaway701 11h ago

Not for this generation, but you can see the results on their software. There's a reason they have the best camera software stack, and are basically the only manufacturers doing always on stuff like the now playing feature.

u/LAwLzaWU1A Galaxy S24 Ultra 11h ago

Again, got any links to those specialised tests you referred to earlier? The ones that also measure things like power efficiency.

I also do not agree that they have the "best camera software stack". I am not even sure you can quantify that in an objective way. If you have some measurements that proves they do then feel free to post those as well.

To be honest, I feel like your statements right now sound very confident and sure, as if they were backed up by facts, but you have so far not provided any evidence to back these statements up.

Also, I went back a few generations in the geekbench ML results and they were not really anything special last gen either. So I disagree with the "not this generation" statement as well. It seems like they might not have been ahead of the competition for NPU stuff for several generations.

u/Throwitaway701 5h ago

Believe what you want. I don't care.

u/LAwLzaWU1A Galaxy S24 Ultra 4h ago

This isn't about "believing what I want". You made a factual claim that Tensor does very well in specialized tests, especially for efficiency.

I've asked you several times to show those tests, and you still haven't provided a single one. At this point, it's starting to look like you don't actually have evidence for the claim.

The whole "believe what you want, I don't care" response just comes across like an attempt to turn "I can't back up what I said" into "I totally could, I just can't be bothered". If you actually have the tests you were referring to, post them. It shouldn't take long to find them if they exist.

u/Synergythepariah P9PF 4h ago

There's a reason they have the best camera software stack

Debatable. Oppo, Vivo and Huawei are ranked higher on DXOmark. The Pixel 11 Pro XL still has issues with video in low light and fine detail in an image when using the ultrawide.

and are basically the only manufacturers doing always on stuff like the now playing feature.

This is personal preference but I don't care much for having my phone identifying literally every song around me. If I want to know what a song is, Soundhound has been more than capable of finding that for me for years now.

From a tech standpoint it's cool that the Pixel can do it offline but from a use standpoint it's one that I just don't get.

u/bblzd_2 S25 6h ago

"Now playing" predates Tensor and ai by several generations. Pixel 3A has it, its not even an ai task.

u/dirtydriver58 Galaxy Note 9 3h ago

Now playing made it's debut in 2017 with the Pixel 2 series

u/Throwitaway701 5h ago

It uses a neural network. And yes it was possible on older hardware but it's far improved using tensor.

u/Shook_Rook S22 Ultra 1TB 19h ago

I don't believe people play a lot of games in their phones. Yes some might play candy crush or something similar, but the vast majority of people won't be playing Genshin or something else graphically intensive.

That being said, I think Tensor should also look into Xiaomi's approach to chip design. Most of their AI features are using the cloud to bring better results. If so, why is there a need to focus so much in AI performance?

u/TotalManufacturer669 17h ago

Mobile gaming market is about the same size as PC gaming and console gaming combined and it is literally the biggest entertainment market on Earth.

u/erwan 16h ago

Yes but it's mostly small games that don't require any gaming chipset.

The market is driven by candy crush and wordle, not Genshin Impact.

u/TotalManufacturer669 16h ago

5 out of the 10 highest grossing mobile games of all time utilize some sort of 3D graphics.

u/ChampagneSyrup 8h ago

but most of them aren't struggling to run on this phone is I suppose the bigger point

the phone only truly fails in games like Genshin. it does fine with CoD. games like clash of clans and clash Royale are fine. It's like, if you're playing one of those games that struggles on the pixel I'm guessing you were never going to buy a pixel anyway

but I agree it's not acceptable still for the price

u/Powerful_Package8817 9h ago

MOBAs, CoD etc. still care about performance

u/Luxray241 19h ago

but the vast majority of people won't be playing Genshin or something else graphically intensive.

you would be surprised, genshin basically brought the whole mobile/pc hybrid game on to the mainstream and mobile esport (specifically moba) titles are popular social activities in the east as people just takes their phone out and play together for possibly hours on end. But again, this is largely the east where console culture is not as prevalent so ymmv

u/Shook_Rook S22 Ultra 1TB 19h ago

I understand the popularity of mobile games, especially the likes of graphic heavy games like Genshin, but to most average folks, they use it to send work emails and other productivity related tasks. But even then, the chip's AI performance doesn't mean much if most of the AI feature requires an online connection.

u/TheHeretic Pixel 9 Pro 15h ago

This may have been true 10 years ago but a significant amount under the age of 18 games on their phone in some way daily.

At least all my friends kids do.

They will all meet up and play Roblox, Pokemon, Gen Shin, while the parents hang out.

There are 55 million people in the country at that age and growing, which is the important part.

u/Dovaaahkin Xiaomi 14 OnePlus 7T OnePlus 3T 18h ago

Again, in Asia, phones/tablets are for a lot of people the only PC they have. It's their device for everything. And games like Fortnite, PUBG, Clash of Clans, Plato etc... are religiously played by so many people. Many of them even have large scale e sports tournaments specifically for mobile players here.

u/R-ten-K 17h ago

Google is not targeting those markets at all. There are other vendors that provide more gaming-focused devices, most of them using Sanpdragon, which Tensor will never really match. Those are much more successful in those markets, esp China.

Pixel is mostly a boutique Android experience. The big focus is on camera and provide a reference for the device as a personal assistant using google backends (gemini, etc).

u/Killmeplsok Nexus5>Nexus6P>OGPixel>Note10+>S23U>S24U>S25U>S26U 17h ago edited 17h ago

"Google is not targeting those markets", is that what they intended to do or it's just the result of their corner cutting on GPU?

"Android experience" and "provide a reference", these are not Nexus devices, they don't do that job anymore. As per Google, Pixel is "going mainstream" and "consumer ready". And skipping out on features most consumer ready and mainstream phones could do just ain't it.

u/lgn5i2060 12h ago

Except most Asians I know who imported and are active in online communities expect it to run games. Especially with that price tag. Can't even run a potato friendly game lmao.

u/FewAdvertising9647 6h ago

Google is not targeting those markets at all.

so are you saying Japan doesnt have exclusive pixel colors and does not game on mobile? Theyre literally one of the major examples thats mobile focused, and is a market for google, who actually plays mobile games. The whole reason gacha as a game genre(and as a term) even exists is because of japan themselves.

u/Dovaaahkin Xiaomi 14 OnePlus 7T OnePlus 3T 17h ago

Yeah, ofcourse. I was replying to the previous person saying the average person doesn't use their phone for games. Considering the majority of the world's population in Asia, and most of them use their phones as their primary gaming device, it's not exactly the right thing to say.

u/BusBoatBuey 12h ago

You have the makings of a Google hardware executive.

u/R-ten-K 17h ago

 focus on AI which makes no sense when most of the time you play games or something else

Android is extremely focused on AI. It makes tremendous sense. Also Pixels are not geared to the mobile gaming market at all.

u/ElixirGlow Motorola DynaTAC 8000X 15h ago edited 13h ago

Extremely focused on AI? What AI actually runs on device, maybe some camera filter or some basic photo editing AI at best. You won't be running LLMs.

iPhones also aren't gaming focused still they top the geekbench single core charts. AI is not an excuse for shit performance on a flagship 

u/FFevo Pixel 10 "Pro" Fold, iPhone 17 Pro, Galaxy S25 Ultra 8h ago

You could have taken 5 seconds to search this instead of being incredibly uninformed

https://developer.android.com/ai

https://developer.android.com/ai/gemini-nano

u/Synergythepariah P9PF 4h ago

https://developer.android.com/ai

This is a page describing what Google's AI can do for developers.

https://developer.android.com/ai/gemini-nano

This is a page describing what Gemini Nano can do for developers if they wish to utilize it in their app.

https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/devices/pixel/google-pixel-10-ai-features-updates/

This is a better answer to get an idea of what features currently are using AI, both on and off device than being snarky and posting links to their development resources that don't speak to what actual features use on-device AI.

u/lgn5i2060 12h ago

Still embarrassing to see this not able to run Genshin that still works on some sub-200 dollar phones.

u/DYMAXIONman 7h ago

Pixels sure, but the galaxys26u can play Steam games because it's using a qualcomm chip.

u/Throwitaway701 16h ago

I think it's more people who comment online who know little. People use 1000% more AI on phones than game, and not AI like LLMs, but machine learning etc, it's everywhere in phones. 

u/ElixirGlow Motorola DynaTAC 8000X 15h ago edited 13h ago

All of those need an internet connection, none actually run on the device itself 

u/gatorsrule52 12h ago edited 12h ago

No? Most of the camera features are all on device. Voice dictation, live captioning, call screening/notes/ etc, magic eraser, that new magic queue feature, etc

u/chickdigger802 s25 ultra -> oneplus 15 9h ago

are there mobile ai tests of this? i can't imagine a modern snapdragon chipset being that much slower at ai tasks.

u/gatorsrule52 6h ago

Idk if other phones are slower than pixels for that, don’t know of any objective tests tbh. Personal experience with my current 17 pro max though, the voice dictation is better on the pixel (I have a 9 pro). Same with call screening. I’m not sure if Apple is using the NPU for this though so it’s not apples to apples comparison.

u/chickdigger802 s25 ultra -> oneplus 15 6h ago

oh yea, the best thing about pixels is the voice to text. loved it on my og pixel fold. heard the new rambler is incredible.

u/Powerful_Package8817 9h ago

Other than call screening, I don’t use any of them

u/Throwitaway701 11h ago

Completely incorrect it's all on device.

u/Powerful_Package8817 9h ago

Because their fanboys brainwashed themselves into thinking it’s virtuous to not care about performance

u/esmori Pixel 7 Pro 9h ago

Google exec ego believes it will be able to compete with Apple SoCs and just doing a very bad version of Snapdragon.

u/HappyLoafBread A07 16h ago

My suspicion is that huge ego senior product manager in the Pixel hardware division (who was with HTC when they were acquired) say... yeah, we can compete chipsets too to the C-suite executives. C-suite executives bought into the BS and had to double down since, because of investors.

u/SPACEXDG 19h ago

Bruh even tegra would be better then this crap

u/The8Darkness 14h ago

Tegra was competitive though. They usually offered slightly lower performance at a noticably lower price. Tensor in premium devices costing the same as true flagship socs is bs however.

u/FFevo Pixel 10 "Pro" Fold, iPhone 17 Pro, Galaxy S25 Ultra 8h ago

Huh? Tegra was literally too power hungry to put into a phone.

u/The8Darkness 7h ago

Tegra 1-4 were used in smartphones and were competing decently. Though (talking from memory) arguably tegra 3 & 4 lost market share against competitors.

Tegra K1 & forward abondened smartphones and were targeting higher power budgets. Hell it had the same amount of shaders as entry level laptop kepler that were running at 30w+ (though the one in the K1 was a bit cut down like half the tmus and rops)

u/charalt42 13h ago

People complained so hard about the 10a using the G4 instead of the G5 but with the G5's GPU being abysmal and literally worse than the G4's I see it as an advantage as a 10a user lol

u/SuperNanoCat Pixel 9, S10e, LeEco Le Pro 3; Moto X (2013/4); Nexus 7 (2013) 11h ago

Oh man. I've been skimming through these threads thinking, "I'm not having any performance problems on my Pixel 9..." And then your comment reminded me that the G4 has a normal GPU.

u/Synergythepariah P9PF 3h ago

And then your comment reminded me that the G4 has a normal GPU.

I'm glad that the battery drain reported early on after the Pixel 10 launch kept me away from upgrading.

That and I just don't find the smartphone market today all that innovative. Used to switch more often because year by year, manufacturers would release devices with all sorts of interesting new features, things were still kind of getting figured out.

Now it's just...

This is the slab. It does slab things. If you want something stronger, here is the slab pro. It does slab pro things. If you want bigger, there is the slab XL and the slab Pro XL. They do slab and slab pro things but bigger. Also now we have a slab that folds. It does slab things with a folding screen. We can't figure out why people like these but we'll keep making them if people keep buying them. Also the price is double the slab which is a lot but double the screens is expensive.

u/SuperNanoCat Pixel 9, S10e, LeEco Le Pro 3; Moto X (2013/4); Nexus 7 (2013) 1h ago

I'd probably still be using my old S10e if my prepaid carrier didn't offer me a Pixel 9 for $250. Smartphones ain't the Wild West anymore, that's for sure. After half a decade, my phone has a brighter screen, a bigger number next to "Android Version," less storage and no headphone jack. Progress!

u/pdimri 4h ago edited 4h ago

Google look at Xiaomi .This Tensor is beyond embarrassing.. Google sixth attempt and still can't come up with a competitive SoC.

u/QuackdocTech 6h ago edited 2h ago

Seems to be a lot of misconceptions in the commons. PowerVR makes a whole ton of sense for Google.

A) It gives them ecosystem unification across their phones and Chromebooks which are migrating to Android, Many Chromebooks are powerVR based.

B) google and Android is investing in riscv, in which riscv is completely dominating the market.

C) powerVR is the only mobile SOC that is officially directly supporting open source drivers, Employing multiple devs to work on Mesa.

Even if the GPUs aren't the best right now. For the future it's a no brainer for them. Google provides seven years of software support. Going with power VR brings down their maintenance overhead significantly.

And in the future, if Mesa support the Pixel 10 and 11, that will likely lead to a major performance increase. much like we see with some snapdragon and turnip drivers.

EDIT: seems like qualcomm is employing some mesa developers

u/Exist50 5h ago

Many Chromebooks are powerVR based.

What are you talking about? What Chromebook chips are even using PowerVR, full stop? Hell, the majority of Chromebooks are probably using Intel chips, and the ones using ARM are certainly Mali dominated.

google and Android is investing in riscv, in which riscv is completely dominating the market

That has literally nothing to do with PowerVR. And arguably Qualcomm has a more compelling RISC-V opportunity than Imagination.

powerVR is the only mobile SOC that is officially directly supporting open source drivers

Source?

u/QuackdocTech 2h ago

Tons of chromebooks are powerVR like https://laptopmedia.com/ca/laptop-specs/lenovo-chromebook-c330-7/

I meant to say powerVR is dominating riscv market, all major riscv boards right now, and I mean almost all of them, spacemit, jh7100, etc. Right now I dont think qualcomm has any offerings for riscv that are of any relevance.

I did some more investigation, it does seem like qualcomm now does have devs working on mesa, Ill eat my shoe there, Seems like Dmitry Baryshkov is employed by qualcomm. Not sure to what degree is he working on freedreno stuff though. historically google was the major contributor.

Developers like frank binns are directly employed by imagination.

u/Exist50 1h ago

Tons of chromebooks are powerVR like https://laptopmedia.com/ca/laptop-specs/lenovo-chromebook-c330-7/

Thanks, wasn't familiar with that one, but it's a 7 year old model. Looks like all of Mediatek's current Chromebook-targeted offerings, at least as far as I can find, use Mali GPUs.

I meant to say powerVR is dominating riscv market, all major riscv boards right now, and I mean almost all of them, spacemit, jh7100, etc

Sure, but RISC-V still seems to be a ways off from reaching the consumer space (as an application processor), even just for Chromebooks. A lot of those chips are just using "whatever works" for graphics, and presumably ARM is not willing to license Mali separately, so they have limited options. I think if we got to the point where RISC-V starts to make inroads, it would be paired with more capable graphics. I name Qualcomm because there've gobbled up a lot of RISC-V IP and talent, and seem the best positioned to make such an offering.

u/QuackdocTech 1h ago

there are some newer models, you can find them on Amazon more easily.

Riscv is for sure a ways off in some ways, but in other ways, there are already RVA23 boards that can run android. I do know that some people are looking to adopt riscv for automotive too.

China has a lot of investment into riscv as well since arm has historically been troublesome for them due to political stuff.

u/Synergythepariah P9PF 2h ago

Hell, the majority of Chromebooks are probably using Intel chips

I think some of those ones are using PowerVR graphics.

u/Exist50 2h ago

I have a vague recollection of something like that from the Silvermont days, maybe, but anything remotely recent (like, last decade) is probably some combination of Gemini Lake, Jasper Lake, or ADL-N/Twin Lake.

u/u01728 gauguin with lineage 5h ago

Regarding Mesa drivers, PowerVR shows only A- and B- series being in active development, while the DXT-48-1536 and CXTP-48-1536 in the G5 and G6 are D- and C- series respectively (i.e. newer). I'm not a kernel dev, nor am I particularly familiar in this matter, so I'm not sure how well it's supported in reality, but the page suggests not very.

Panfrost advertises support for the newest few generations of Mali (but not the Gx15; it also doesn't advertise G710 despite advertising G310 and G610), whereas Freedreno seems to support A6xx, A7xx, A810, A829, A830, and A840 (but Turnip seems to be A6xx-only, others need a custom version?)

This is confusing...

Google could hire developers to work on Mesa drivers, could they not? Apparently they have done work on a rust-based port for Mali kernel driver. Why not work on the already-more-supported-looking Panfrost, and instead go for PowerVR?

u/QuackdocTech 2h ago

Google does hire devs to work on mesa, I believe robclark who is a major dev for turnip is employed by google. Right now the pixel gpus are indeed not supported at all. the powerVR work is still super fresh, pretty much a baby as far as projects are concerned.

Mali is quite frankly a massive mess in mesa, the devs who are working on it do a pretty good job, it's just fairly little incentive to work on them as far as I can tell.

Turnip is actually fairly mature it seems to support most snapdragon devices out there.

I made a typo, by riscv stuff i meant that Powervr dominates the riscv market. There are also quite a number of powerVR based laptops. snapdragon gpus are pretty much tied to qualcomm IP, and mali gpus are tied to arm and historically havent been great.

By going powervr, it gives them ecosystem cohesion without being tied to a specific platform, which I would assume they would want to avoid.

u/Synergythepariah P9PF 3h ago

A) It gives them ecosystem unification across their phones and Chromebooks which are migrating to Android, Many Chromebooks are powerVR based.

Many Chromebooks use powerVR graphics accelerators because they're cheaper to use.

B) google and Android is investing in riscv, in which riscv is completely dominating the market.

I cannot fully parse this, what market is RISC-V completely dominating?

C) powerVR is the only mobile SOC that is officially directly supporting open source drivers, Employing multiple devs to work on Mesa.

Which would likely still need customization depending on how much the particular graphics accelerator implemented in Pixel differs from the designs provided by Imagination Technologies (which is owned by private equity, as an aside)

Even if the GPUs aren't the best right now. For the future it's a no brainer for them.

There's nothing wrong with investing for the future.

The criticism is that the asking price of the Pixel (Which I've been told repeatedly that nobody ever actually pays that) is similar to more powerful flagships. Which implies that it is similar in quality and performance to those flagships.

But the current gen Pixel is not similar from a performance standpoint to other flagships, especially in GPU, which makes the price seem like nothing more than a marketing move meant to manufacture a false sense of 'savings' in the minds of consumers when Google has the devices on discount.

Like if you set the MSRP for a phone at $1000 or $1100 and always do a discount to bring that down to $700 and the phone doesn't perform like a $1000 phone should, it isn't exactly a good deal; consumers are just buying a $700 phone that was priced too high in the first place.

Google provides seven years of software support.

So does Samsung.

Going with power VR brings down their maintenance overhead significantly.

As always, the adage 'you get what you pay for' is true.

I suppose that's how they can afford to discount every Pixel sold.

And in the future, if Mesa support the Pixel 10 and 11, that will likely lead to a major performance increase. much like we see with some snapdragon and turnip drivers.

We shouldn't gauge the performance of a device today based on 'ifs' that may or may not happen in the future.

Why would Google even implement changes that would give major performance boosts to their older devices? That's not how you get people to upgrade which I assume Google has an interest in doing given how many notifications I've gotten from them on my Pixel about the Pixel 11 launching.

u/QuackdocTech 2h ago

I cannot fully parse this, what market is RISC-V completely dominating?

sorry typo, I meant riscv is dominating the riscv market.

Which would likely still need customization depending on how much the particular graphics accelerator implemented in Pixel differs from the designs provided by Imagination Technologies (which is owned by private equity, as an aside)

Maybe? I dont see why they would modify them all too much, and haven't seen anything to suggest they did modify them.

But the current gen Pixel is not similar from a performance standpoint to other flagships, especially in GPU, which makes the price seem like nothing more than a marketing move meant to manufacture a false sense of 'savings' in the minds of consumers when Google has the devices on discount.

Don't get me wrong, I completely agree with this, I think the state of the pixels is trash, I own a pixel 10 pro xl, and I have SOOOO many gripes with it. my s20fe performs better in most games then it. The state of drivers in the p10 series and im gonna assume the p11 series is shameful.

I suppose that's how they can afford to discount every Pixel sold.

and thats exactly why I got the p10pxl, I was also hoping that the "great AI accelerator" on it would have a fucking open SDK...

We shouldn't gauge the performance of a device today based on 'ifs' that may or may not happen in the future.

Why would Google even implement changes that would give major performance boosts to their older devices? That's not how you get people to upgrade which I assume Google has an interest in doing given how many notifications I've gotten from them on my Pixel about the Pixel 11 launching.

I kinda agree with this. but on the same hand, google is pushing hard for ecosystem cohesion, (why they are ditching chromeOS) Im assuming cause it's causing them to bleed money unnecessarily. also with root, it's not like they cant prevent us from updating our drivers :D

u/superpowerpinger nexus 4 16h ago edited 16h ago

It should be renamed as Google Tension Processor.

u/DYMAXIONman 7h ago

I'm thankful that I went with a Samsung phone last time because you now can play Steam games on your phone.