Google's tenth generation of Pixel smartphones recently went on sale. It wouldn't be wrong to say that the look and feel of the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro and Pixel 10 Pro XL haven't been changed from last year, with more refinements done underneath.
I have been using the base Pixel 10 model for a few days—priced at Rs 79,990, which also includes six months of Google One Premium plan and three months of YouTube Premium bundled. Let's see what it really offers for the price tag:
Featuring a 6.3-inch display, the phone isn't lightweight and feels a little heavier (204 grams) than you might think just as you're about to hold it for the first time. It has more weight towards the top half than the bottom half.
The phone is made of aluminium with a metal side railing and Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on top for some added protection. It has curved edges and not very thick bezels, though they aren't among the thinnest; they are symmetrical.
The right side carries the power/lock button and the volume buttons near the middle; the top has the SIM card tray slot and secondary mic; and the bottom has one outlet for the loudspeakers, USB Type-C port and the primary mic.
The glossy back has that familiar big island at the top that houses the triple camera setup, and the Google logo bang in the middle. This IP78 dust and water-resistant phone, though a bit heavy, is generally comfortable to hold and carry around. It comes in Indigo (the one I tried), Frost, Obsidian, and Lemongrass colour options.
The phone's 6.3-inch Full HD+ (1080x2424) OLED Actua Display is a really nice and plenty bright display. It supports refresh rates from 60Hz to 120Hz, but not lower, which the Pro models have. You get vibrant and poppy colours, though I preferred to use it in the Natural mode for a little more accurate colour set.
The triple camera system on the back—a 48MP (f/1.7) main camera, a 13MP (f/2.2) ultra-wide camera, and a 10.8MP (f/3.1) telephoto camera—remains one of the talking points about the Pixel.
There's a lot of AI stuff going on here under Magic Cue, which sits inside both Settings and the camera app. I found the camera performance to be generally really good with accurate skin tones and detailed shots with good contrasty images, as expected from a Pixel phone.
The front-facing 10.5MP (f/2.2) camera is also more than good enough for selfies in decent light, but it can have a bit of shutter lag even in medium lighting conditions indoors, though results came out satisfactory more often than not.
The bits and pieces under the camera app to toggle and the analysing screen pop-up when taking a shot—this is still very much a Pixel experience, and there's no denying the AI effect in post-processing here—some on device, some from the cloud.
Google has at last shifted its Tensor chipset to TSMC (away from Samsung), which you could argue should have been done by now. The new Tensor G5 chipset (up to 3.78GHz octa-core processor, PowerVR DXT 48 1536 GPU), 12GB of LPDDR5x RAM and 256GB UFS4.0 internal storage.
It comes with Android 16 out of the box, with what Google would like its own version of Android to look and feel like. There's a new Material Expressive 3 in place that feels more colourful and more customisable in terms of theming and iconography.
There are some odd bits, too, like the Google search widget at the bottom of your home screen, which cannot be moved to another position. When it comes to day-to-day performance, the Pixel 10 is smooth and stutter-free, as you'd like.
The new animations in some places work well, as does scrolling inside social media apps or when moving something from, say, YouTube to WhatsApp. Gaming, though, doesn't quite seem like its biggest strength. You can play a game like BGMI or CoD at medium settings with smooth playback, but not much more. It does heat up a little, but not enough to be a complaint point.
The phone supports a single SIM card, but you can add one more with eSIM. The dual stereo speakers on the device are quite loud and clear, with decent depth to them for watching videos or listening to music indoors.
Call quality, Wi-Fi, and GPS performance of the phone are top-notch, and 5G reception also seems improved over last year's phones for working on the go, though there's definitely some room for improvement in terms of consistently latching on to the 5G bands compared to Qualcomm and Apple here.
Powered by a 4,970mAh battery, battery life on the phone is decent at best. At times, with moderate use, it might last one whole day, but other times it would require another charge.
You can charge it using a fast charger at 30 watts max—taking a little under two hours to charge from 1 per cent to full.
Overall, the Pixel 10 brings a host of meaningful improvements to the Pixel line-up, but all may not be huge on the face of it. There's a much better chipset in place now, but it still has a long way to go in terms of gaming performance. On the other hand, general day-to-day performance, responsive software and seven years of OS and security updates make this a standout on the Android side. If you're looking for your first high-end Google smartphone without going up to the Pro budget, the Pixel 10 is worth your consideration.
