Google is dropping Samsung modems for the Pixel 11, and it's the only upgrade I actually care about

August 2026 is still months away, but the Google Pixel 11 rollout is taking shape.

When the time comes, executives will step onto the stage and spend far too much time talking about AI.

They’ll almost certainly demo some camera tricks and features meant to make the phone feel smarter than it really is. I don’t care.

None of that means much if the phone is dead by 3 p.m. because it spent half the day fighting to keep a signal in a concrete parking garage.

After years of testing Pixel phones, I’ve become pretty good at ignoring the software hype and paying attention to what the phone is actually like to live with.

That’s why this rumor matters. Leaks suggest Google may finally drop Samsung’s modem for the Pixel 11 and switch to MediaTek’s M90 instead.

If that leak holds up, it could be one of the more meaningful hardware upgrades the Pixel line has seen in a while.

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The culprit behind Pixel’s signal and heat issues

When Google moved the Pixel 6 to its in-house Tensor chips, it relied on Samsung Foundry to build the processors and used Samsung’s Exynos modems for cellular connectivity.

Fair or not, that modem choice has become part of the Pixel’s reputation for bad battery life and thermals, from the Exynos 5123 in the Pixel 6 through the Exynos 5400 in the Pixel 9 and 10.

The issue is the 5G hunt. Essentially, cellular radios are always checking the signal-to-noise ratio of nearby towers.

In areas with weak coverage, some Pixel phones cling to 5G instead of settling onto a more stable LTE connection and push transmit power to keep the 5G alive.

That kind of behavior can increase power draw. More radio activity means more heat, and more heat usually means worse battery health and thermal throttling.

MediaTek M90 could fix the problems Pixel never solved

MediaTek isn’t the budget option people still assume it is.

The M90 is a flagship-level baseband, and it goes right at some of the Pixel’s longest-running weak spots. I’m going to get a bit technical here.

If you read the press materials, MediaTek leads with claims like 12Gbps peak downlink speeds and 6CC carrier aggregation. You can ignore most of that. Nobody needs a 12-gigabit connection.

The real day-to-day advantage of the M90 is efficiency. The key feature here is Rel-17 Paging Early Indication, or PEI.

In normal 5G use, your phone periodically wakes to check whether the network has data waiting. Those wake-up cycles chip away at battery life.

With PEI, the network sends a small alert to the modem before the scheduled wake-up. If nothing is waiting, the modem can skip that wake-up call. MediaTek claims this cuts idle power use by 15%.

The M90 also includes the company’s UltraSave 4.0 architecture, which MediaTek says can reduce average power use by up to 18%.

Satellite support also looks more promising. The MediaTek M90 supports both 3GPP IoT-NTN for low-data messaging and NR-NTN for higher-data services.

That doesn’t mean the Pixel 11 will definitely ship with full two-way satellite texting or voice support, but at least the hardware foundation for better satellite features is there.

The modem change can also improve Pixel’s security

Most of the tech press will probably miss what may be Google’s most important security upgrade in five years.

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Cellular modems are still one of the least transparent parts of a smartphone. They run proprietary real-time operating systems and handle incoming radio traffic before Android is even fully up and running.

So a serious modem flaw is never a minor issue. Samsung’s Exynos modems have a rough history here.

Google’s Project Zero disclosed multiple Exynos modem vulnerabilities in 2023, including internet-to-baseband remote code execution bugs.

The risk gets worse when the modem is built into the same die as the main processor, which is the setup Samsung used in its Exynos-based Tensor chips.

If Google really does move to a discrete MediaTek modem, that could also improve separation between the modem and the rest of the platform. This also lines up with rumors that Google could introduce a Titan M3 security chip.

You will likely pay more for the Pixel 11

All of that engineering is going to cost you. Leaving Samsung Foundry for TSMC’s 2-nanometer process is expensive. Adding a flagship-level MediaTek modem drives up the bill of materials.

I would not be surprised if Google pushes some of those costs onto buyers. If current pricing trends hold, the Pixel 11 could start around $100 higher.