The Pixel 11 hasn't even arrived yet, but the majority of you are already against buying it

Google is now less than a week away from unveiling the Pixel 11 series, with the launch event scheduled for August 12. We’re expecting four phones, plenty of new software tricks, and perhaps a few surprises that haven’t already escaped through the usual leak-shaped holes. Despite all that, it seems most of our readers don’t currently have solid plans to buy one.

How do we know this? Well, we ran a poll in a recent opinion piece by my colleague Joe Maring, who explained why the Motorola Razr Fold has him questioning his long-standing Pixel loyalty. His argument focused on the Motorola foldable’s cameras, performance, battery life, and charging, but the question we put to you wasn’t related to whether you agreed with his comparisons. We asked more broadly, do you plan on getting any of the new Pixel 11 phones? They haven’t launched yet, so the question was really around your position based on leaks and propensity to upgrade.

More than 9,000 of you responded, and the results are below.

The results won’t exactly buoy the spirits of any Google execs reading. Nearly half of respondents said they’re happy sticking with their current Pixel, while 27% are keeping an open mind until Google makes the Pixel 11 series official. Another 16.3% aren’t interested in Pixel phones at all, and just 8% have already seen enough from the leaks and rumors to be sold on them.

That final 8% is an interesting data point. On the one hand, it’s perfectly understandable that many people would want to wait until the launch to firm up their upgrade plans. Conversely, you might expect there would be enough Google stans who upgrade religiously every year or two to boost that number. But the more concerning figure from a sales perspective is that the proportion of readers who are waiting for the launch isn’t as high as you might expect, at only 27%. Combining that with the people who are ready to upgrade, only a little over a third of readers have any inclination to buy the Pixel 11, and plenty of those people are still on the fence.

Having said that, we could make the picture look slightly rosier for Google by excluding votes from those who aren’t interested in Pixels. We needed that option in the poll, but it also suppresses the other figures to a degree. When you consider only voters who are interested in Pixels, the proportion of people who aren’t upgrading because they’re happy with their current device increases to 58%, while those waiting for the launch and those already planning to upgrade jump to 32% and 9.6%, respectively. It’s still not the market research Google would be hoping for, but it does mean that over 40% of fans are open to buying the latest device.

There are also a couple of reasons not to read too much into the numbers. The poll appeared in an article about Joe questioning his Pixel loyalty after using a Motorola foldable, which may have attracted a more Pixel-skeptical audience than a neutral Pixel 11 post would have. And to be clear, the biggest group isn’t rejecting Google’s new phones outright; they’re simply happy with the Pixel they already own, which may say as much about longer upgrade cycles as it does about Pixel 11 enthusiasm.

The recent battery debacle due to March update was the end of the road for me. Traded in and moved on! — comment by Deanirwn

A whole bunch of you wanted to give more feedback than the poll allows, and the comments section of Joe’s article was noticeably more down on the upcoming Pixel range than the poll itself. Issues such as battery problems, weak year-on-year upgrades, Tensor performance, and Google’s growing AI focus came up repeatedly. Some readers said they were done with the brand altogether, while others were simply planning to keep their current Pixel for longer. As Bluestew99 put it, “At this point, why stay with Pixel? The camera isn’t enough to keep me,” while GrapTops said, “I don’t think I’ll be moving off my 9XL until I physically have to.”

There was still a smaller wait-and-see camp, especially among readers who like Pixel software but aren’t convinced by the rumored hardware changes. Umairzaidee said they would “wait for the official launch and see what benefits I get for pre-order,” while Otto36n was leaning toward the Pixel 11 Pro XL but added, “I think I will get one, but once they go on sale.”