It’s an on/off kind of thing: https://outflux.net/blog/archives/2023/10/26/enable-mte-on-pixel-8/
https://developer.android.com/ndk/guides/arm-mte

My understanding is that while the older Pixel phones had MTE capability, it was off by default and could only be enabled under the dev settings. Google did not enable it by default because Android depends heavily on vendor board support packages, proprietary SOC drivers, and HAL modules. Google felt that driver code quality from 3rd-parties is not clean enough to enable kernel-level MTE without risking bootloops and spontaneous reboots. Even worse for C++ apps, which often read slightly past their allocated memory blocks.

Instead, Google rewrote critical core Android system daemons using Rust. Like the keystore, Bluetooth stack, DNS resolver, and others. I believe using Rust essentially makes MTE unnecessary.

Also full synchronous MTE mode has high CPU/memory bus penalties (could be 5-10% under heavy memory loads).

Google probably decided that since hardly anyone used MTE anyway on earlier Pixel devices, they could use the space in the chip for other uses.

The point is that the post makes it sound like using a Pixel 11 under Android results in less security than before, but for most people there is no change since they never used MTE anyway.

I don’t see this in my case. All the emails that I get show the actual product.

This is going to attract more interest in using Facebook advertising to deliver malware, knowing that the attack surface will grow substantially soon.

Without ad blocking, Facebook will become a dangerous place to visit if not done so within some sort of sandboxing.

According to the Google Play Store, there are 467 reviews (4.8 stars) but “0+” downloads. Like everything else about the White House, it doesn’t add up.

And maybe most people know to keep it off their phones.