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

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. 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. 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. The Pixel 11 Pro and 11 Pro XL are minor hardware updates compared to last year’s Pixel…