We may not need Jimmy Fallon to squawk “Tensor” to get a little more excited about the performance of Google’s next phone. The Tensor G6 could be the Pixel maker’s most powerful chip yet. But if you’ve been keeping track of Google’s Tensor’s performance over the last few generations, that may not be saying much.
With Samsung’s latest Galaxy S26 phones making use of a 3nm Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 CPU, Google’s answer is to craft something that’s potentially more efficient. Last week, Telegram hardware leaker Mystic Leaks shared more details about the Tensor G6 chip built for Google’s new hardware. The Tensor G6 is designed again by TSMC, and it’s built on a new 2nm process node. The Samsung Exynos 2600 was one of the first smartphone chips to offer the size of node, but we haven’t seen it featured in a device you can buy, at least not yet.
The reason why 2nm is significant is because it means you can pack more transistors onto a chip the thickness of a fingernail. This adds to energy efficiency and—hopefully—performance from Google’s next Pixel 11 series. According to the leak, the chip will run on one ARM C1-Ultra core hitting 4.11GHz clock speeds, four C1-Pro cores at 3.38GHz, and an additional two C1-Pro cores at 2.65GHz. As noted by Android Authority, these are the same cores powering a MediaTek Dimensity 9500 smartphone chip, though that chip packs three more-performant ARM C1-Premium cores.
What does all this mean? The Tensor G6 could be more performant than the Tensor G5 on the Pixel 10 series. But single-core performance will mean the device performs better with individualized tasks, like how fast web pages may load. We won’t know just how well the Pixel 11 will hit the mark with something more demanding, like gaming. Mystic Leaks suggests we’ll get performance from a PowerVR C-Series CXTP GPU, aka the graphics processing unit. We won’t know how well Google’s new phone handles real-time graphics. The Tensor G5 significantly underperformed Qualcomm’s and MediaTek’s flagships in pure frame rates.
If the MediaTek Dimensity 9500 already loses to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 in benchmark performance, what hope does Google have of hitting back against Qualcomm or even Apple’s latest A19 and A19 Pro? Google’s Pixel phones will still not be the pinnacle of performance, but Google will try to make up for it in other ways—likely with a host of Gemini AI features, improved camera sensors, and a spunky RGB pixel array akin to the Nothing Phone 3.
There’s a reason why Google’s previous Pixel 9a was a great deal in midrange smartphones. It maintained the Tensor G4 chip of its $800 Pixel 9 from 2024. This year, Google launched the Pixel 10a, which is essentially the same damn phone as the previous iteration with the same damn chip.
Google’s Tensor chips outmatch other midrange phones, but Google won’t be selling its phones for less. These leaks also suggest Google has bowed to the pressures of shrinkflation and lowered base RAM specs on its Pixel 11 Pro Fold. At the same time, if Google wants to push more Gemini AI, it will likely harp on its TPU, a tensor processing unit, built for tweaking your photos on the fly. Google again has to prove software can make up for a lower-performance, though still expensive, smartphone.
