I’ve just tested the new Google Pixel 10 phones and I’m a little bit worried by what I’ve seen. So, there’s four new devices. The $799 Pixel 10, the $999 Pixel 10 Pro, the 119910 Pro XL, and then finally the 1799 Pixel 10 Pro Fold. And it really feels like Google is doubling down here on what makes the Pixel different, but that’s both in a good way and a bad way. The good is that in classic Google fashion, there are a sprinkle of new software features here that actually do feel just a little bit magical, like Camera Coach. So, when you’re about to take a photo on a Pixel 10, you can tap here and your phone will analyze your scene and your subject and guide you towards taking your final shot. It does need internet, but when you use it, you can kind of see why. Because first, it suggests a number of different directions that you could go in with your photo. And these, by the way, are not always real images. Your phone will literally be AI generating expressions and poses on this person in your frame that haven’t even happened yet. They’re fabricated just to inspire ideas while you’re shooting. And once you decide on one you like, it opens up this multi-step process that involves suggestions on all kinds of things. Everything from which mode and which zoom level to use to how you should step to the side to avoid shadows being cast on what you’re shooting. It even told me to try pulling a different face while I was in the shot. Would I use it? No, probably not. Photos are very subjective and I don’t really trust that my phone’s AI has a better idea of what I want to shoot than I do. But could I see this helping my parents to take better photos and then also start to teach them what makes those better photos? Actually, yeah. Magic Q is another pretty instant hit. It means the AI on these phones can pop up relevant information when it thinks you need it. And you’ll know it’s doing it when you see these colorful little outlines around things. So, let’s say, for example, someone asks you when you’re coming home from a trip. Your phone can retrieve your flight details from your email and put them right in front of you so you can just tap to send them immediately. Which if you think about what it would take to do that manually, that is saving you quite a bit of just messing around inside your apps. Or even if you’re calling, say a restaurant, your phone should be able to pick up which restaurant you’re calling and then actually surface up details that are relevant. Like for example, what time the reservation is that you’ve currently booked. In practice, the feature is pretty limited right now. There’s a lot of asterisks about what kinds of situations it does and doesn’t work in, but what an insane idea. It really makes you feel like Google’s attention is focused on fixing real life user issues and making the phone experience feel proactive, not just reactive. And then it’s also cool to see just how much the company has squeezed out of their zoom camera with ProRes zoom. So, Google Pixels for a while now have had super res zoom, which when you capture can take lots of not so great quality shots and merge them together to make one pretty great looking shot at either 20 times or 30 time zoom. And this is what the base Pixel 10 still has. It can do 20 times. But this year, for just the Pro phones, Google is also sprinkling a little bit of AI into the mix to let you go all the way to 100 times. And this is not something that we haven’t seen before from other phones, but it’s executed well. The results look polished, pretty crispy for a 100 time zoom photo and less AI like than I was expecting given how much AI is clearly being used. And I also like the fact that if you then decide afterwards that you actually want nothing to do with the AI, you’ll also get the unprocessed version along with it. There’s a couple of entirely new Google apps like Ask Photos, which is yet another chatbot that you can ask to now edit your photos in whatever way that you want. It sounds like an interesting idea, but I do feel like whether or not this is useful completely hinges on how much it gets you and your preferences. Cuz I feel like actually having to spell out how much extra brightness I want to add to an image or exactly which people I want to get rid of in the background, it sounds to me like exhausting, like way more effort than it’s worth. And then secondly is Pixel Journal, which is basically Google’s equivalent to the Apple Journal app that we got a few years ago, but it’s for Europe and in English only apparently. And then it’s all packaged together with some improvements to the hardware on these phones. Every Pixel 10 generation phone has a bigger battery than last gen. And this is great with all four of these phones very closely clustered around that healthy 5,000 mAh capacity mark. There’s better speakers, especially on the pros. Brighter screens and G2 wireless charging with magnets, which I have just one thing to say about. Finally, flipping. Finally, Mags Safe for Android is here. The magnetic connection is every bit as strong as it is on my iPhone, and that’s going to give all four of these phones full compatibility with any MagSafe charger and a lot of Mags Safe accessories. And then for some reason only on the 10 Pro XL, this phone is using the fastest wireless charging standard available, like the very latest version of this, which is Chi 2.2, so it can charge with a zippy 25 W of power wirelessly. And then the actual devices themselves, while very similar looking to last year’s phones, they’re wellb built and classy. They feel like proper flagships in the hand, which is not something I’ve always been able to say about Google Pixel phones. with some kind of interesting color options, too, including this ultramarine blue on the base Pixel 10 that they say is inspired by the blue color from the first Pixel. But I would be very surprised if this didn’t have something to do with the fact that it makes the thing look almost identical to an iPhone 16. But yeah, this feels like a pretty solid, if not slightly safe upgrade to last year’s phones. So, what is there to complain about? Well, first up, while most of the new software features seem at least like they are heading in the right direction, one of the key ones, voice translate, worked pretty terribly in my experience, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. The idea is that you should be able to have a real-time phone call with someone who is talking another language. And your phone will then live translate so that you can both hear each other’s voices in your own language. But I had five different phone calls while using this. And for one reason or another, four of those five phone calls it completely butchered in some pretty major way. Just persistent misunderstandings. Like we say, I want to go to the Louver. It thinks I want to go to the L. Or like for another example, what do you think of the weather today? Um, I still technically cancel. Sorry, I don’t really understand that now. You can please say it again. And bear in mind, this is what was happening when we were on the phone with someone who understood both German and English, so could kind of recover it when it went off track. there’s a lot more room for it to go very wrong when you’re talking to someone who say only spoke German. I will say it does a good job of keeping your accent. So if I say, “Hey, how are you?” in English, they will hear the German translation of that, but as if it was me saying it. And also bear in mind this testing happened about 3 weeks before launch. So there is some time for it to improve. But I don’t think this is much of an excuse cuz I mean this is the version of the product that media has been specifically invited to test. And then the other thing with Google phones, right, is in my experience, they never really feel finished. And that’s exactly the same case here, too. It is fantastic that you get 7 years of software updates and new features via Google’s pixel drops. But it does feel like Google uses this as a bit of a veil. It makes them happy to release things in their very simple, very beta stages, like Magic U. It makes them feel comfortable telling you how if a feature doesn’t work well, like voice translate, well, that’s just because you’re testing it early and that it’ll get better later. Or that key features are coming to some regions before others, if your region gets them at all, like the journal app, and it allows Google to reduce their accountability for things feeling unpolished. You know, like the camera app when you’re zooming in. It’s been laggy on all previous Pixel phones. Doesn’t look like it’s any better here. Or portrait mode. Google has tumbled from genuinely king of the hill to frankly C-tier when it comes to portraits in recent years. And so this year they’ve bumped the resolution. This new Pixel 10 Pro can take 50 megapixel portraits, which is great. But they haven’t actually fixed the issue, which is their edge detection. This phone still managed to chop off not one, but both my ears. And that’s the one time it worked. The first two times we tried it, it bugged out and got me completely out of focus. But here’s the crux of it. all of this stuff, you know, the odd feature being buggy, bits and pieces coming soon, or features limited to specific areas, it’s nitpicky, and it wouldn’t matter nearly as much if the hardware of the phones was stellar. The issue with Pixel phones, and I would argue more so with the Pixel 10s than ever before, is that the software features have to be incredible because the hardware is pretty lacking for what you’re paying. The biggest thing is performance. Google’s previous few flagship phones with their Google Tensor chips have not been at all close to their peers. Like last year, phones with Snapdragon chips had about a 60% performance lead over Google phones. 60%. That makes the Pixels effectively mid-ranges. And so this time around, we have a new chip, the Tensor G5. And these are of course Google’s fastest ever Pixel devices. I mean, credit where credit’s due, it does seem a solid amount better in terms of AI and also CPU performance. They say about 34% quicker than last year. And this chip is also now being made by TSMC instead of Samsung for the first time, which makes me expect some efficiency improvements. Expect this to pair very well with the slightly bigger batteries this time around for just much better endurance. But Google needed like an 80% performance improvement on this chip to start closing the gap with Snapdragon. This G5 is is just maintaining it. And the fact that they didn’t even once mention the graphics performance of this Tensor G5 makes it seem pretty likely that it is falling even further behind the competition when it comes to gaming prowess. But that’s not all. I find it absolutely crazy that the Pixel 10 and 10 Pro start at 128 GB of storage. Still, Pixel 10, okay, fine, whatever. But the $999 Pro, I mean, 128 GB stopped being Pro about 5 years ago. That’s about 80 GB of actual space for your music, photos, videos for maybe the next four years of your use once you factor in the size of the operating system and your very very basic starter apps. Plus, while it is good that the 10 Pro XL at least does start with 256 gigs, they’re just copying what the iPhone does now where you’re not actually getting more storage for the money. You just can’t buy the lower storage model anymore, which makes this phone start at $100 more than last year’s. They called the Pixel 10 Pro’s cameras award-winning in our briefing, which my first reaction was like, that’s very strange. This product isn’t even out yet. But then I realized the reason they can say that is because it is basically identical to the cameras on the Pixel 9 Pro. The image stabilization is a little better, but every single camera sensor is the same. And if we’re being honest, now on the smaller side, especially considering the top tier pricing. And just to reiterate, Google’s camera tuning used to be so far ahead of other companies that it didn’t matter. But because Google’s software processing lead isn’t what it used to be, you notice the hardware more. And then for the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, while it’s awesome that it has an IP68 water and dust protection rating for the first time on a foldable, by the way, the actual body of the phone, the bezels on the front, the thickness of the thing, they’re not in line with what other companies are offering now. especially when you factor in the slower chip and the fact that the thing’s cameras are almost the same as a Pixel 10, a $799 phone. Thankfully, what does feel a lot more finished is the Opera browser, our sponsor. Like, it has a music player built into the sidebar, and it is perfect cuz it means you’re not fumbling around your tabs like, “Where the hell is this music playing from?” I’ve just set mine to be always here because the browser is so modular, as well as your other stuff like WhatsApp and Messenger. But it is also smart. Like the second you hit play on a YouTube video in any of your tabs, the music player knows that and it will actually slowly fade out what it’s playing. Plus, it then fades back in as soon as you stop playing that video. So, you don’t even need to control it. But if you wanted to, then all you have to do is to hover over it, and you have your full media controls, but in like the least distracting way possible. Or for another example, the other day I decided I was a little bit bored of the way my browser looked, so I switched my theme over to Interstellar. And it changes everything. It changes your home screen wallpaper, the color of your search bar, your sidebar, but also what you’re doing on your browser instantly just goes dark mode. There’s even sound effects that change, like listen to what happens when I open and close my tabs. link below to download the Opera browser for
