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Flying under the radar yesterday was the April Security Update for Pixel owners. At first glance, the update didn’t seem to add too much in terms of functionality, but it would appear that was because there were some major under-the-hood improvements. But there was one listing in the changelog that has Pixel 4a 5G and Pixel 5 owners rejoicing: “Performance optimizations for certain graphics-intensive apps & games”.
After it was avaialble for a few hours, folks started diving in to see what potential changes had arrived with the latest update. Andreas Proschofsky from Der Standard revealed that the update was providing up to 50% better performance in GPU-intensive benchmarks, like 3DMark, compared to before the update.
Turns out the Pixel 5 is now getting way better results in 3DMark. Like in 30-50 percent better compared to a P5 w March patch level. Even the results in general benchmarks like PCMark Work are a bit better (even though in this case really only just a bit). 2/ pic.twitter.com/58Ze5qFE6d
— Andreas Proschofsky (@suka_hiroaki) April 5, 2021
While we haven’t been experiencing many (if any) slowdowns with our Pixel 5, it’s great to see that Google seemingly unlocked the true power of the Snadpragon 765G when paired with stock Android. The odd thing about the change is that why would Google wait more than six months after the device’s were launched before providing users with the amount of power they expected to see? Only Google can answer that question, but the truth remains that it’s great to see.
It’s only a matter of time before we get word of the Pixel 5a, but that is likely to be a pretty boring and small launch. The real story will arrive later this year as rumors of the Google ditches Qualcomm for the Pixel 6 is said to power the Pixel 6. It likely won’t compete with the likes of the Snapdragon 888, but this will be Google’s first venture into creating its own processors. I don’t know about you, but this could be huge as we’ve already seen the same moves made by Apple, Samsung, and Huawei.
The biggest benefit for Google using its own in-house processor is that it would have complete control over everything. We’ve seen what Apple can do with its amazing M1-chips for the Mac Mini and MacBook Air, not to mention the iPad Pro and iPhone. Samsung finally seems to have the kinks worked out with its Exynos chipsets, which bodes well for Google, as the two companies reportedly worked together on the Whitechapel chip.
2021 is going to be an exciting year for Google fans, provided that we don’t see anymore hiccups or delays.
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