google just doubled the Pixel's storage — and quietly used the RAM crisis to explain it away

Google's Pixel 11 lineup went official on August 12 — Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro and Pixel 11 Pro XL, all running the new Tensor G6 chip, all shipping with 256GB of storage as the floor instead of the 128GB every Pixel before it started with. The base Pixel 11 still costs $899 in the US, the same number the Pixel 10 launched at, so on paper nothing changed. Look one level deeper and Google told reporters directly at its media briefing why the minimum tier doubled this year: the same memory shortage that's been driving up GPU and PC prices all year finally caught up to phones too.

The 256GB sleight of hand

To be fair to Google, this isn't pure spin. Compare the Pixel 11's 256GB base configuration against last year's 256GB Pixel 10 — not the 128GB entry model — and the price is genuinely identical at $899. Google's argument is that it simply moved the goalposts: rather than sell a 128GB phone most buyers would outgrow within two years anyway, it made the storage tier people actually want the new default. That's a defensible product decision. It's also, unmistakably, a way to absorb a component cost increase without printing a bigger number on the box in the US — because the actual bill of materials for a phone with double the flash storage did not stay flat, and somebody paid that difference. In the UK, where Google didn't hold pricing steady, that same story reads much more plainly as a hike: £799 to £879, an £80 jump with no new option to dodge it.

What's actually new besides the chip

The Tensor G6 itself is the real headline for anyone who cares about performance rather than pricing footnotes — it's Google's first phone chip built on a 2nm process, and Google claims 25% faster web browsing and 15% faster app launches over the Tensor G5, alongside 50% more dedicated TPU compute for on-device AI processing at lower power draw. That last part matters more than it sounds: it's what's powering new features like 'Magic Capture' and conversational photo editing through 'Edit with Ask Photos,' both of which run inference locally rather than round-tripping to a server. The Pro models' camera bump — a 50MP main sensor and a proper 48MP 5x telephoto with 120x digital 'Pro Zoom' — is a real upgrade over the outgoing generation, not a marketing rename of the same hardware.

Watch for two things from here: whether Samsung and other Android makers follow Google's lead and quietly bump their own base storage tiers to absorb the same memory cost pressure, and whether that £80 UK increase turns out to be the honest preview of where US pricing goes next year once Google can't hide the hike inside a storage upgrade anymore.