The Pixel 11 Pro is a great phone, no thanks to its flashiest new features

Pixel 11 Pro 是一款出色的手机，但这并非归功于其最炫酷的新功能

Forget HiLight and Proactive Assistance. The Pixel 11 Pro is at its best with focused new tools that actually work. 忘掉 HiLight 和“主动式辅助”（Proactive Assistance）吧。Pixel 11 Pro 最棒的地方在于那些真正好用的专注型新工具。

Google is trying to get you off your phone. The Pixel 11 Pro is “A Phone Designed to Help You Use It Less,” the company promises. It can proactively help you book restaurant reservations, take the best frames from a video, and help you voice-text significantly faster. The pitch is that the new features bundled with the Pixel 11 series of phones can help fix your relationship with technology — one that Google knows has badly degraded in recent years. 谷歌正试图让你减少使用手机的时间。该公司承诺，Pixel 11 Pro 是“一款旨在帮助你减少使用频率的手机”。它可以主动帮你预订餐厅、从视频中截取最佳帧，并显著加快语音转文字的速度。其核心卖点在于，Pixel 11 系列手机搭载的新功能可以帮助你改善与科技产品的关系——谷歌深知这种关系近年来已严重恶化。

But the hardware of the Pixel 11 Pro and 11 Pro XL is very similar to last year’s models — and in at least one case, a downgrade — so those software features are pretty much the entire pitch. 然而，Pixel 11 Pro 和 11 Pro XL 的硬件与去年的机型非常相似——甚至在某些方面出现了降级——因此，这些软件功能几乎成了该机型的全部卖点。

Over the last week testing the 11 Pro, I’ve been trying them all to see how much they can help me put my phone down. Like many experiences with Google software, when they work, they are genuinely helpful. But getting them to work often requires a very narrow set of circumstances that some Google engineer probably dreamed up in the “society if” utopia lab. 在过去一周测试 11 Pro 的过程中，我一直在尝试所有这些功能，看看它们能在多大程度上帮我放下手机。和许多谷歌软件的使用体验一样，当它们正常工作时，确实非常有帮助。但要让它们发挥作用，往往需要极其苛刻的条件，这些条件很可能是某位谷歌工程师在“如果社会是这样”的乌托邦实验室里构想出来的。

The Pixel 11 Pro and 11 Pro XL are minor hardware updates compared to last year’s Pixel 10 Pro and 10 Pro XL. They both get brighter 3,600-nit screens. Their charging has been upgraded, with faster wired speeds and Qi2.2 for up to 25W when wireless. The 5x optical telephoto camera has a bigger sensor that Google says enables 30 percent more light intake. Storage now starts at 256GB, instead of 128GB. And there’s also a fancy new “notification light,” which I’ll get to in a bit. 与去年的 Pixel 10 Pro 和 10 Pro XL 相比，Pixel 11 Pro 和 11 Pro XL 的硬件升级幅度很小。两款机型都配备了亮度更高的 3600 尼特屏幕。充电性能得到了提升，有线充电速度更快，并支持最高 25W 的 Qi2.2 无线充电。5 倍光学长焦镜头采用了更大的传感器，谷歌称其进光量增加了 30%。存储空间现在从 256GB 起步，而非 128GB。此外，还有一个新颖的“通知灯”，我稍后会详细介绍。

Unfortunately, these upgrades come with a downgrade too, for the base model at least. The 11 Pro and 11 Pro XL now start with less RAM: 12GB compared to the 16GB that came standard last year, the same amount as the regular Pixel 11. I’m testing the 16GB / 512GB model, so unfortunately I can’t tell you if the RAM decrease is noticeable. That base model is also $100 more expensive than last year, too, at $1,099. 遗憾的是，这些升级也伴随着降级，至少对于基础款而言是这样。11 Pro 和 11 Pro XL 的起始运行内存（RAM）减少了：从去年的标配 16GB 降至 12GB，与普通版 Pixel 11 持平。我测试的是 16GB/512GB 版本，所以很遗憾，我无法告诉你内存减少是否会有明显感知。此外，基础款的价格也比去年贵了 100 美元，达到了 1099 美元。

With such minor spec changes, Google has gone all in on software this year. And this time, that software’s primary purpose is to get you off your phone, or at least get tedious tasks done faster so you can get back to your life. 由于规格变化如此之小，谷歌今年将重心完全放在了软件上。而这一次，这些软件的主要目的就是让你放下手机，或者至少能更快地完成繁琐的任务，让你回归现实生活。

Perhaps the largest push in this direction is the Pixel 11’s new “Proactive Assistance” feature. This is a set of dynamic chips that appear when certain interactions happen on your phone, like a friend asking what your schedule looks like next week or if you booked that table at a restaurant yet. 在这方面，最大的举措或许是 Pixel 11 的新功能“主动式辅助”。这是一组动态卡片，当你手机上发生特定交互时会出现，例如朋友询问你下周的日程安排，或者询问你是否已经预订了餐厅的座位。

For the most basic interactions, like checking availability or adding an event to my calendar, I found Proactive Assistance really helpful. I practically live inside my calendar, and text conversations about scheduling are common. When my friend Marc texted me asking when I was available next week, Gemini popped up and suggested checking my calendar for times. Outside of simple scenarios like that, though, Proactive Assistance gets less reliable. One of Google’s key examples is letting Gemini book a dinner reservation for you if you’re chatting about heading out to eat, but I had to receive a text with an extremely specific string of information to get it to work — and even then it only worked sometimes. 对于最基本的交互，比如查看空闲时间或向日历添加事件，我发现“主动式辅助”确实很有帮助。我几乎离不开日历，关于日程安排的短信对话也很常见。当我的朋友 Marc 发短信问我下周什么时候有空时，Gemini 弹了出来，建议我查看日历上的时间。然而，在这些简单场景之外，“主动式辅助”的可靠性就大打折扣了。谷歌的一个核心示例是，如果你在聊天中提到外出就餐，Gemini 可以帮你预订餐厅，但我必须收到一条包含极其特定信息字符串的短信才能触发该功能——即便如此，它也只是偶尔奏效。

It’s odd that explicit keywords are necessary to get so much of Proactive Assistance to work. For example, receiving the text “Can you make a reservation at Frankie Spuntino next Saturday at 7pm?” surfaced a chip to agentically try to make the reservation. But if the message doesn’t include the date or time, it won’t invoke anything at all. Most of the time when the chip does show up, it disappears the moment I reply. Occasionally it will stick around if the AI thinks we’re still talking about the restaurant, but those instances were few and far between. I wish Google would keep the chip around for at least a few messages, or have it float around the messages in some way. 令人奇怪的是，要让“主动式辅助”的大部分功能生效，竟然需要明确的关键词。例如，收到“你能帮我在下周六晚上 7 点预订 Frankie Spuntino 吗？”这条短信时，会弹出一个卡片，尝试代理完成预订。但如果短信中不包含日期或时间，它就不会触发任何操作。大多数情况下，当卡片出现时，我一回复它就会消失。偶尔，如果 AI 认为我们还在讨论餐厅，它会保留下来，但这种情况非常少见。我希望谷歌能让这个卡片至少保留几条消息的时间，或者以某种方式让它悬浮在消息界面上。

One promise of large language models is the ability to understand what you mean and remove the requirements for smart keywords, so it’s odd that explicit keywords are still necessary to get so much of Proactive Assistance to work. I can see what Google is trying to do with this and I can maybe see a future where it gets refined, but as it stands, it’s simply too inconsistent. 大语言模型的一个承诺是能够理解你的意图，并消除对智能关键词的需求，因此，要让“主动式辅助”的大部分功能生效，仍然需要明确的关键词，这确实很奇怪。我能看出谷歌在这方面的意图，也许未来它会得到完善，但就目前而言，它实在太不稳定了。