Android Circuit: Pixel 11 Pro Benchmarks, Galaxy S26 FE Launch, Falling Smartphone Sales

Taking a look back at this week’s news and headlines across the Android world, including Pixel 11 Pro performance, Galaxy S26 FE launched, Galaxy Buds Pro award, Galaxy S27 Ultra specs leak, Poco F9 Pro launch date, falling smartphone sales, and Android’s motion assist arrives.

Android Circuit is here to remind you of a few of the many discussions around Android in the last seven days. You can also read my weekly digest of Apple news here on Forbes.

Google may push its decision to focus the Tensor chipset in the Pixels on AI and smooth UI over raw performance, but there’s still an interest in which silicon has the best raw performance that can be unlocked by consumers. The Pixel 11 Pro, stacked against a raft of Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5-powered competitors, is no different. Victor Hristov runs the numbers:

“In both single-core and multi-core CPU performance, we see the Tensor G6 is 20% faster than the G5. However, it is nearly 35% slower than the Galaxy S26 Ultra and iPhone 17 Pro Max chips in single core performance, so a massive gap remains. The Quantized AI score also shows that the Tensor is actually slower in machine learning tasks than the Galaxy and the iPhone.”

Samsung has announced the fourth S26 model, the long-awaited Fan Edition. The FE brand targets the upper reaches of the mid-range market, bringing as much functionality as possible while keeping the budget under strict control. That means the Qualcomm chipset is out, and Samsung’s homegrown Exynos is in. GSM Arena takes a look at the new hardware:

"The funny thing is that when Samsung unveiled the S26 FE, it didn’t mention the chipset – we're quite certain that it is the Exynos 2500. This 3nm chip was only featured on the Galaxy Z Flip7 until now and it is the biggest upgrade over the Galaxy S25 FE, which used the Exynos 2400. The 2500 was the first chipset to be fabbed on Samsung’s Gate All Around (GAA) node. It uses newer CPU cores than the 2400, it has a beefed up AMD RDNA 3-based GPU with 33% more work groups and an NPU with 40% more compute hardware."

The latest EISA Awards have decided on the Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro as the winners in the ‘In-ear Headphones 2026/27’ award, with the wide range of support playing a key role.

“Employing a two-way speaker with individual amplifiers dedicated to the woofer and tweeter, Samsung’s IP57-rated Galaxy Buds4 Pro yields clean, musical detail and limits distortion across the frequency range. Complementing this acoustic hardware, Samsung’s proprietary Seamless Codec, via Bluetooth 6.1, enables 96kHz/24-bit Hi-Res audio playback when paired with a compatible Galaxy device.”

Further out on the South Korean horizon is the presumptively-named Galaxy S27 Ultra. Samsung’s flagship has settled into its late-January launch date, allowing it to set the tone for the calendar year. New details on the model's potential reveal an upgraded camera, a slimmer design, and a 7,000 mAh battery. Forbes contributor Janhoi McGregor has more:

“[This] would be a significant improvement on the Galaxy S26 Ultra's 5,000mAh. But a 700mAh increase in the same-sized device strongly suggests silicon-carbon technology, which stores more energy without adding bulk. That is a genuine win for Samsung buyers and will likely become a major marketing point against the iPhone 18, which I do not expect to use silicon-carbon in its main flagship lineup this year."

Xiaomi’s Poco brand has confirmed the launch of the Poco F9 Pro and F9 Ultra will take place on September 1st. The heavily leaked handset marks itself as a flagship smartphone from Poco, one that pushed the envelope to match Xiaomi’s top-tier models. 91mobiles’’ Ramneek Singh looks over what we can expect and the major difference between the two handsets:

“...the POCO F9 Ultra is confirmed to be powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, the same processor that runs on the Xiaomi 17 series, while the POCO F9 Pro will rock the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 V series processor. The key difference between the standard Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 and the 8 Elite Gen 5 V series is that the latter carries fewer GPU slices and less High Performance Memory (HPM), resulting in slightly less graphics throughput."

The latest numbers from Counterpoint Research show a fall in Global smartphone sales of 11 percent, following on from last year’s 4 percent fall. It’s broken out into operating system, and Google is falling behind its long-time rival Apple, but also Huawei’s HarmonyOS is impacting Android in China:

"Android's sales share fell 4% YoY in Q2 2026 to 75%, as competition from iOS and HarmonyOS intensified. The Samsung Galaxy S26 series performed better than its predecessor, mitigating the overall decline in Android's share. Chinese Android OEMs are shifting their focus to higher-value devices and scaling back activity in the entry-level segment to navigate RAM shortages and rising costs."

Google is quietly and slowly rolling out Motion Assist for Android 17. Initially appearing in updates to the Pixel 11 family before a wider release, the assistive technology adds subtle on-screen markers that shift with the environment to help reduce motion sickness. Android Authority has a deep dive on the code behind the feature:

“The idea behind Motion Assist is to display moving visual cues around the edges of the screen that correspond with the motion of the vehicle. The current implementation is also better than what we initially spotted in how it handles Android’s system-level restrictions on screen overlays.”