I’m not sure what to make of Google’s Pixel 10 Pro

It’s been almost three years since I reviewed my then-new Google Pixel 7 Pro on this website. I wasn’t very positive about it back then, but after a major software update or two, most of my issues went away. I’ve been using the Pixel 7 Pro as my daily driver to this day. The screen has got a few scratches over the years (side note: Either from falling out of my pocket, or from sliding it screen-down across the floor to pick it up.), but other than that, the phone still feels as snappy as it was (or rather, should have been) on day 1.

My dad has been using a mid-range Motorola Moto G60 from 2021, which was starting to show its age. Given how much he likes to take pictures of things and how Pixel phones tend to make the best-looking photos, I bought him a Google Pixel 10 Pro.

He’s not entirely happy with it. And neither am I.

The Google Pixel 10 Pro still feels like a nice phone while you’re using it. It feels snappy. Everything’s easy to use. Photos taken with the Pixel 10 Pro look great (side note: As long as you stay away from the Pixel’s Pro Res Zoom, which tends to conjure up details out of thin air.), and videos made with the Pixel 10 Pro look better than on my Pixel 7 Pro. There’s also no bloatware and no barrage of popups urging you to install apps or create accounts that you will never use. Moreover, many of the Pixel-exclusive apps are genuinely useful.

On the hardware side, the phone is a clear improvement over my Pixel 7 Pro. The materials look and feel more premium. The camera bump looked like it might wobble at first, but it hasn’t turned out to be a real problem in practice, especially with a case around it.

The Pixel 10 Pro is also pleasantly compact. It’s much smaller than most other flagship phones, making it easier to hold and fit in pockets. The obvious downside is a smaller screen, which may be an issue if you use large text or UI elements (like my dad).

My main complaint about the Pixel 10 Pro concerns its battery life, which already wasn’t great to start with, but has become quite awful since April. We all charge our phones at the end of the day rather than overnight. By morning, the Pixel 10 Pro will have lost close to 10% of its charge, whereas our other (five-year-old!) phones have lost only half of that at most.

The Pixel’s software is generally pleasant to use, but I still ran into two major issues that shouldn’t happen with such a high-end device.

The first happened during initial setup when I tried to add an eSIM to the Pixel 10 Pro. This should normally take a few minutes at most, but in the Pixel 10 Pro’s case, Android got stuck on a screen saying Checking network info… and Some device information that’s needed for setup will be sent to Google, your operator or their respective partners. It took well over four hours. Not only was my dad unreachable during all those hours, but it also meant that I had to postpone setting up apps that rely on phone numbers as a second factor.

The second issue is with Gemini Live, Google’s real-time voice assistant. I don’t use AI on phones very often myself, but since Google presents this as one of Pixel’s unique selling points, I was curious to give it a try.

I find Gemini Live to be laughably bad.

For context, Cantonese is our native language. It’s a Chinese language that has about 80 million speakers, which places it below Turkish and Tagalog but well above languages like Persian and Italian.

Not all software provides support for Cantonese – most companies only implement Mandarin and call it a day – but Android and Gemini explicitly do. I configured Gemini to only use Cantonese and Dutch. In “normal” mode, where you send voice messages to Gemini, this works fine.

As soon as I try out Gemini Live, some strange things happen. Gemini Live appears to be capable of understanding and synthesising spoken Cantonese sometimes, but most of the time it interprets what I say as Korean and replies in Korean, ignoring the language settings entirely. Mandarin yields slightly better results. Curiously enough, when I manage to get Gemini to speak Cantonese and Mandarin, it’s always with an American accent, which I think is another funny example of US defaultism.

On its own, the Pixel isn’t necessarily a bad phone. It can be genuinely nice to use and the Pixel still takes very good-looking pictures. In theory, the Pixel should be the best way to experience Android, given that Google produces both the hardware and the software. But too often, it feels as if you’re more of a beta tester for Google’s software, on a device that is sold for flagship prices.