Pixel 10 Review: The AI obsession is leading Google astray

Google is still a minor player in the global smartphone market with its Pixel phones. But they have major ambitions. The launch of the Pixel 10 series featured appearances from Jimmy Fallon, the Jonas brothers and Steph Curry (none of whom I’d wager use a Pixel themselves). This sets out a clear indication that Google wants to take the fight to Apple and make a dent in its domination in America, and the elite segment of the smartphone market the world over.

The most potent weapon that Google has in its armoury is its AI prowess, and it’s aware that this is where Apple is the weakest (so much so that Apple may turn to Google for help). What this means is the Pixel 10 series is the most AI-heavy smartphone ever, and the marketing around it reflects this amply. 

I have had this Pixel 10 with me for a few weeks now and I must say that in chasing AI supremacy on the smartphone, it does appear that Google appears to be losing their grip on the basics. To know more, read on. 

Variants and hardware

The Pixel 10 comes in a single variant with 12 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage which sells for Rs 79,999. It is available in four colours including Indigo (the blue one, which I have), Lemongrass (green), Frost (white) and Obsidian (black). 

The Pixel 10 looks virtually indistinguishable from its predecessor, the Pixel 9, until you peer closely and notice that the new one comes with three cameras and not two. The addition of a 5X telephoto camera is the biggest upgrade that Google has delivered in the Pixel 10, and it’s an exciting one, on paper. This brings it on par with Samsung’s S25 line in offering three cameras, and gives it a leg up over Apple’s two-camera base iPhone models.

The rest of the camera system is completely revamped and the main and ultrawide cameras have in fact been downgraded, compared to last year’s Pixel 10. The sensors are smaller in size, with the ultrawide getting a downgrade in aperture size as well. Is that an okay trade-off to get a telephoto? We’ll find out.   

The rest of the Pixel 10 is all Gorilla Glass Victus 2 with aluminium rails. The glass is truly impressive, as I’ll get to in a bit. Of course as with all glass phones the Pixel 10 is incredibly slippery and you’d be well advised to use it with a case. 

The Pixel 10 comes with Google’s latest and greatest Tensor 5 chipset, and sports a 6.3” 120Hz LTPO OLED display with a peak brightness of 3000 nits. The 6.3” screen size keeps it in line with the compact flagship category, and one-handed use is convenient, as long as you can navigate the slippery surface. 

The battery is 4970 mAH which is a good size, in and of itself, but in this era when the Chinese competition is cramming in higher capacity silicon carbon batteries in similar-sized chassis, it’s starting to fall behind. 

In use

If you remember my Pixel 9a review, I had talked about how it was a very buggy device.The good news is that the Pixel 10 does not seem to suffer from the bugs that plagued the 9a. The bad news is that it has some annoyances all of its own. The primary one is that the operation of it never feels perfectly smooth. Animations work in such a way that some elements (icons, or touch indicators) linger on the screen a split second longer than they should, giving the impression of a device that is slower than it really is. 

I kept waiting for an update to come and fix this but nothing of the sort happened. Of course it does not happen all the time, but it happens often enough that it has become a defining feature of my experience with the Pixel 10, detracting from the ‘flagship feel’ of the phone. It is otherwise a fast and fluid device to use, but this specific foible regularly crops its head up to jolt you out of the fluidity. 

While this is probably unrelated it does remind you that the Tensor G5 chipset in this phone is a long way behind both the Qualcomm and Mediatek flagships in other Android phones, and the latest iPhone chipsets, in pretty much every performance metric.  

The display is superb and even outdoors during the daytime, in the sun, it was perfectly usable. Indoors it’s excellent for watching video content, and the speakers on the Pixel 10 are also very good. All of these elements are very much flagship grade and you are likely to be very happy with them.

The phone itself is slippery and I have dropped it countless times including from great distances (peer closely at the photos and you’ll see the dings in the aluminium frame), but the Gorilla Glass Victus 2 has held up flawlessly. 

As with other comparable phones, the apps open fast, multitasking is smooth, and there is no major complaint with the day to day use of the phone apart from the lingering animation glitch. Android 16 with its Material 3 Expressive design is a superbly designed OS – the experience of using it, and all the little design touches that have been incorporated, is a real joy. I wouldn’t be surprised if more and more Android OEMs pick up these elements in their interface designs.

The battery life on the Pixel 10 is adequate. You will consistently get about six hours of screen-on time, and I hardly ever had to put it for charge before going to bed. That said, this kind of battery life has become the bare minimum currently, with other phones offering much better endurance. A feature of the Pixel 10 I could not try out was PixelSnap, Google’s take on MagSafe, but by all accounts this seems like it would be valuable, especially if you already possess MagSafe accessories. 

The headline aspect of the Pixel 10, of course, is all the AI wizardry that it packs in. Magic cue is supposed to pull up stuff from your device when you’re on a call with someone, for example. It popped up some stuff a few times, but nothing especially useful for me. But I can imagine this being useful for some people, especially as it improves. There is also Gemini Live which is the on-device AI assistant, and of course a whole host of AI features in the photo editing suite. I imagine there are people for whom these things are compelling, but to me they are still, at best, icing on a sub-par cake.

Camera

The camera has traditionally been the Pixel line-up’s USP and in many ways that remains the case with the Pixel 10. It takes excellent photographs with mostly accurate colours and still some of the best skin-tones that you can get from a smartphone. 

While the main and ultrawide cameras have been downgraded compared to the Pixel 9, the differences are quite minor, and the Pixel 10 offers very strong, flagship-grade performance overall. Colours are accurate and a refreshing change from many phones that offer unrealistic saturation and contrast. If anything the Pixels err on the side of producing a duller frame, which works well for me. Colour reproduction is also consistent across all three sensors. 

But even the camera department is not without complaints. The preview image before you take the shot is very different from the final photograph both in terms of brightness and colours, which makes the pre-capture adjustments a crapshoot. 

Is the photo going to be as bright as it looks? Should I drag down the exposure? How much should I drag it down by? All of this becomes pure guesswork with the Pixel 10, because the final result can often be far removed from what you see prior to capture.

This is a major failing for any kind of camera and while average users who don’t fiddle with their images may not even notice this as an issue, unfortunately I am particular about my photographs and this aspect remains an enduring frustration. Add to this the fact that adjusted settings cannot be retained from shot to shot and too often I often find myself having to fight with the camera to get the pictures I want. 

These may be complaints of a picky photographer, and most people will be very happy with the photographs that the Pixel 10 delivers, but I do think these are areas that Google must focus on improving. 

This brings us to the headline camera feature of the Pixel 10, the 5X telephoto. At the outset this is a decidedly inferior unit compared to what was on the Pixel 9 Pro XL that we reviewed last year. It has a smaller sensor and produces softer, less detailed images. It is definitely nice to have, and will easily exceed the performance of devices without a dedicated telephoto, when it comes to zooming into far away objects, but I do wish it was a properly good camera, and not merely a passable one.

In sum, the pictures you get from the Pixel 10 are mostly excellent, but using the camera can be frustrating. Videos are also as excellent as always, with a somewhat flat colour profile that allows for colour adjustments in post. Of course, it’s not the level of the iPhone, but I don’t foresee that gap being bridged at least until Google has a more powerful processor to work with. 

Should I buy it?

Before I pronounce my verdict, there’s one important factor we need to consider. One major advantage the Pixel traditionally held against its main rival, the base iPhone, was that it featured a 120Hz screen at the same price. The 60Hz screen on the base iPhone always felt janky and cut-price, a deal-breaker for me. But the latest iPhone 17 comes with a 120Hz display! And that too a top-of-the-line LTPO affair. 

Now personally, I am an Android loyalist because I really prefer the way it works over iOS, especially with Material 3 Expressive. But for the first time since I started using smartphones, I’ve actually seriously deliberated about whether some of the compromises on iOS might be worth living with. 

With Google paying too much attention to the AI gimmickry and not enough to the baseline experience of using their phone, it is hard for me to make a case for buying the Pixel 10 to most people. 

If you are OS-agnostic, then I would suggest you buy the iPhone 17 – it costs roughly the same but exceeds the Pixel 10 in many significant ways, apart from the telephoto camera. It offers far better performance and is likely to last you longer, with a smoother and more consistent user experience, and an excellent camera. 

Even if you are an Android loyalist you have to weigh how much you want the great photos and skintones of the Pixel 10 vs all the advantages you’d get from its Chinese or Korean rivals, such as better performance, battery life, faster charging, and so on. With a gun to my head, I might still pick the Pixel 10 because photos are my number one priority, but I would not recommend it to everyone. 

Contact the author on X at @vinayaravind.

This Google Pixel 10 was sent to the reviewer as a loaner unit for review purposes. The unit will be returned on completion of the review. Google has been given no advance information about the content of this review and exercises no copy approval.

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