The Pixel 5 rocks the mid-range Snapdragon 765G platform, a massive compromise Google made for its flagship series last year. Reports at the time said Google chose the 765G to save money and pass those savings to the customer. The 765G can’t match the Snapdragon 865 that powers many of last year’s Android flagships, and it’s no match for the iPhone 11 and iPhone SE, let alone the iPhone 12. But the Pixel 5 is an affordable 5G phone — the Pixel 4a (5G) is even better. The good news is that Google might make everything forgotten with the Pixel 6, which is expected to feature Google’s first custom System-on-Chip (SoC) for a Pixel phone. But until then, Pixel 5 owners are in for what appears to be a significant performance boost, as an Android security update seems to deliver a fix for a GPU problem they might not have known they had.
Google just released the April 2021 update, which is available to download on a variety of Pixel phones, not just the Pixel 5. The release might bring GPU optimization for all these handsets, not just the Pixel 5. But the April 2021 update specifically mentions “performance optimizations for certain graphics-intensive apps & games” in the changelog, listing the Pixel 4a (5G) and Pixel 5 as the impacted devices.
As xda-developers explains, several Pixel owners observed that GPU benchmark numbers declined for handsets like the Pixel 4 XL and the Pixel 4a when the Android 11 dropped.
Pixel 5 launched with Android 11 pre-installed, so it wasn’t clear whether the software had a negative impact on the GPU performance. But reviewers noted at the time that the handset scored lower in GPU tests than other phones featuring the same Snapdragon 765G platform. Some believed that something in the Android 11 release might be responsible for the behavior.
Andreas Proschofsky from Der Standard has tested the GPU in 3DMark, finding that the Pixel 5 scores 30-50% better than before.
Turns out the April update for the Pixel 5 is a *much* bigger deal than expected. You might already have seen that Google touts "Performance optimization for certain graphics-intensive apps and games". This lead me to redo some benchmarks, and the results are pretty stunning. 1/
— Andreas Proschofsky (@suka_hiroaki) April 5, 2021
He said that he didn’t expect real-life performance to see a “big push,” despite those numbers. He did note that the improved GPU performance did not impact the phone’s reliability, which would be an expected behavior with such upgrades.
The stability score for the Pixel 5 in the 3DMark Wild Life Stress test now is 99,5 percent. So it's getting pretty much the same result in the 20th run that it got in the first. Which is… remarkable. Earlier it got 86,9 percent in my tests (with way lower results though)
— Andreas Proschofsky (@suka_hiroaki) April 5, 2021
Separately, Andrei Frumusanu from AnandTech confirmed that the Pixel 5 GPU performance has “essentially doubled” after the update, and the phone is now in line or better than other 765G phones.
Thanks for the ping.
I can confirm that performance has been essentially doubled from the scores published there, and in line or better than other 765G phones. Tested on Pixel 5.
The fact it took 6 months is sad though.
— Andrei F. (@andreif7) April 5, 2021
The April 2021 update is available to download right away, and you should get it as soon as your carrier makes it available for download. The release brings additional improvements, covering the camera, connectivity, and the entire operating system. Notably, the security update improves the camera quality in certain third-party apps; it fixes a VPN issue; and prevents devices from freezing on the Google logo during startup. The full changelog is available at this link.
