Why I wish Pixel phones would just go back to Snapdragon chips

I’ve had a love/hate relationship with Google’s own Pixel phones over the years. Well, maybe love/hate is too strong a sentiment. Let’s go with love/don’t prefer instead. There’s nothing I inherently hate about Pixel phones and there’s a ton about the overall experience I truly do love and miss every time I choose to go with another device instead. For me, the decision to lay down the Pixel and walk away always comes down to one thing: speed.

Since moving to their own Tensor SoCs beginning with Pixel 6, Google has been well behind the curve when talking about sheer processing power in modern smartphones. Each year, Qualcomm pushes their Snapdragon SoCs farther and faster, MediaTek is now beginning to keep pace with them, and Apple is still leading the way in ARM-based silicon with their M-series chips in Macbook Pros and A-series chips in iPhone. From a speed perspective, Tensor is quite literally years behind.

And for me, that shows itself most blatantly when playing games. Mobile gaming has become a pretty robust space, and newer games continue taking advantage of all the processing power we now carry around in our pockets. That means developers are leaning on the latest technology available to build better environments, larger worlds, and more pristine graphics.

And Tensor can’t keep up. Simpler games are fine, but playing something a bit newer, a bit more intensive like Call of Duty: Warzone really highlights the trouble Tensor has going blow-for-blow with the latest silicon from Qualcomm or MediaTek. With Warzone specifically, I can’t push the settings past medium even if I wanted to try, and it’s a frustrating limitation on a phone that is otherwise pretty fantastic.

The reason for Tensor is no longer clear

But there’s more to our smartphones than gaming, and as Google would argue over the past few years, more vertical integration from hardware to software is super-important when it comes to new and existing AI features the Pixel phones are known for. A few years ago with Pixel 6, I was totally on board with this idea and there were likely things Google did with Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 (and maybe Pixel 8) that they wouldn’t have been able to pull off without Tensor under the hood.

But after the AI barrage we saw at Samsung’s latest Upacked event, I’m left wondering if Tensor has any sort of advantage left. More than ever, the Galaxy S lineup of phones is leveraging not just random AI tricks, but Google’s own AI abilities across the board. The S25 launch felt reminiscent of a Pixel launch with all the teamwork now happening between Google and Samsung, and that’s not a bad thing.

But with all this AI prowess now available in the latest Snapdragon 8 Elite that is tailored for the Galaxy phones and Gemini, one has to wonder what advantage Google now has left with the Tensor line of processors. If the fastest, most-capable mobile processors in the world are tweaked to do awesome AI stuff with Gemini, what is really needed on Google’s end that Tensor will still be more proficient at?

A Pixel 10 Pro with a Gemini-tailored Snapdragon processor inside would be insanely attractive. And its not just about games. Think about video editing, photo editing, 3D modeling, and other advanced applications coming to mobile devices left and right. Those developers tend to make cool stuff for iPhone first because the ecosystem is smaller and the available computing power is higher. When we do get great apps on Android, you can guess which processor developers benchmark against: that’s right, it’s always going to be Snapdragon.

And that’s why I wish Google would be happy with the overall effect Tensor had on the market, take a bow, and go back to using the best SoCs for mobile phones you can buy. With MediaTek right there in the race as well, there are options and I’m sure these companies would love to tweak their silicon to work well with Pixel. But I suppose its all a bit too little, too late for now. It seems there are at least a couple years worth of Tensor chips already in development; still I can’t help but dream about a Pixel flagship with no compromises whatsoever.