Thinking of a Pixel 11 when it reaches Portugal on 20 August? Start with the footnotes
Google has confirmed Portuguese prices and a 20 August release date for the Pixel 11, Pro and Pro XL. The AI features doing most of the selling are marked in Google's own announcement as limited to selected countries and languages, and no language list has been published.
Google unveiled the Pixel 11 in New York on 12 August, and Portugal is in the first wave. All three phones, Pixel 11, Pixel 11 Pro and Pixel 11 Pro XL, go on sale on Thursday 20 August. We covered the event back in July, when all there was to report was a date. Now there are numbers.
The Pixel 11 starts at 1,019 euros with 256 GB, the 128 GB tier having been dropped entirely. The 512 GB version is 1,149 euros. The Pro starts at 1,219 euros, the Pro XL at 1,429 euros, and a 1 TB Pro XL will take 1,819 euros off you. Buy either Pro and six months of Google AI Pro come with it.
One word on the comparison you are going to see everywhere. Google’s US starting price is 899 dollars, quoted before sales tax. The Portuguese 1,019 euros already contains 23% VAT, which works out at roughly 828 euros before tax. There is a gap. It is a good deal smaller than putting the two stickers side by side suggests.
The hardware
Tensor G6 does the work, with a TPU Google says is 50% more capable on the Pro models and efficiency gains of about 20%. Security moves to a Titan M3 chip with post-quantum encryption. Cameras are the year’s real pitch: a rebuilt main sensor, 5x optical zoom on the Pro, Night Sight up to 4.5 times faster, and a new Magic Capture mode that sifts around 400 frames to pick the moment for you.
The Pro models also get HiLight, a set of LEDs beside the flash that glow when the phone is face down, either for calls from favourite contacts or to show that Gemini is listening.
Now the part in small type
Nearly every AI feature that carries the launch comes with an asterisk attached. In Google’s own announcement, Gemini’s multi-step tasks, the filler-removing voice input, the assisted writing tools in Gboard, sign-to-text and real-time Live Translate are each flagged as available in selected countries and languages, with availability varying and some features needing a subscription for heavier use.
Google did not publish a per-feature language list alongside the launch. Buying a Pixel 11 in Portugal on 20 August gets you the phone, the chip and the cameras with certainty. It does not, on day one, get you a guarantee that Live Translate speaks Portuguese, or a date when it will.
That matters more here than in a monolingual market, and it is worth weighing against what Samsung showed on its foldables this year, which sit in a different price bracket with the same always-on-assistant sales pitch. In both cases the question to ask a salesperson is the same one: in which language.
By Oliver Grant
Image: Google