Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
One of the perks of doing this job is that some brand-new phones land on my doorstep a few days before they become available to everyone. That was the case with the Google Pixel 10 Pro, which dropped at Casa El Khoury a week ago in its sexy Moonstone color. After sliding it into a cheap magnetic case I bought from Amazon to avoid the disaster of my perpetually slippery hands, I set up the phone and applied all the available updates. Then I opened up the Google doc I’ve been keeping for a few weeks to check the list of everything I wanted to try. And there was a lot to dig into!
I knew some features may not be available on my Pixel 10 Pro in France. Google often announces some US-only options, and it’s always a toss-up as to whether that means US English (i.e., they’ll work anywhere if your phone, like mine, is set to US English), a Google account based in the US, or your phone’s location being set in the US. After playing Google’s location lottery, I realized that Magic Cue, Ask Photos, and Help me Edit in Photos, and the impressive new voice translation were all nowhere to be found.
So, with the caveat that I can’t try those, here are the first 10 features I had to immediately check out on my Google Pixel 10 Pro.
Qi2 charging and built-in magnets: Finally!
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
I’ve been personally championing MagSafe and the ease of magnet accessories for years on Android Authority. As a matter of fact, my colleague Robert and I were together at MWC 2023, where the Wireless Power Consortium was showing off Qi2 in a small booth, and we verified for the first time that the new Qi2 standard was backwards compatible with MagSafe accessories. So you can imagine how excited I was to try this on my Pixel 10 Pro.
My Baseus and Anker MagSafe power banks work perfectly with the Pixel 10 Pro, without a case, sticking, aligning, and charging as intended. So does my MagSafe PopSocket and my Moment tripod mount. I’ve also purchased Google’s Pixelsnap charger with stand, and I can’t wait to try it on my secondary Pixel 10 Pro XL for the 25W Qi2 charging when it ships on September 3. I’m even more excited about the world of magnet-compatible accessories that’ll open up to my Pixel 10 Pro, from the plethora of magnetic case choices to camera accessories, wallets, and more. Bring it on.
New screen savers while charging: A nice addition
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
The Pixel 10 series comes with brand new screen saver options that show up when the phones are charging, like the iPhone’s Standby Mode, but a little less advanced. They’re made for stands like the new Pixelsnap charger, but they can also show up any time the phone is charging. In settings, I discovered that I could restrict them to only appear when wirelessly charging and/or when the phone is upright and charging. That’s neat because I don’t need them to drain my battery when I plug my Pixel into a power bank while out and about. Plus, there’s a new fallback to a dark clock screen saver in low-light situations.
I tested all the options, from the new digital clock and analog clock to the Pixel Weather screen saver, smart home controls, and Google Photos. The analog clock reminds me too much of an old school hand watch that my dad used to wear, so I’ve dismissed it for now. The digital clock is one of my favorites, and I love that it has three different layouts with an option to force a dark theme all the time. Google Home controls aren’t new, but they’re still an option if you like your phone to be a smart home panel. Neither is Google Photos, but the interface to pick albums has been upgraded and resembles that of setting up the photo album feature on a Nest Hub or Chromecast.
Pixel Weather will find a lot of fans, I’m sure. It displays the current conditions, a scrollable 24-hour hourly forecast, and a 10-day forecast below it. It’s limited to your current location with no option to pick another city manually, but most people won’t need that.
Pro Res Zoom at 100x: Better than expected
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
Since I first held the Pixel 6, zooming has been one of my favorite camera tricks on the Pixel lineup. It’s perfect for concerts, sports events, travel, hikes, city walks, and many other activities. I can’t wait to see what going from 30x to 100x on the Pixel 10 Pro allows me to capture, but for now, I’ve only had time for a few early tests.
The early leaked results weren’t too encouraging, but my personal experience with the feature has been more positive, while my colleague Ryan Haines found 100x zoom to be more of a mixed bag. For one, the non-AI embellished image that the sensor is capturing is quite impressive to begin with. Given how near-useless 30x is on current Pixels, I expected 100x to be very, very bad. But it’s a workable start, and Google is applying AI with restraint on top of it to smooth out details, add sharpness, and make it nicer. I’m especially in awe of the restraint Google is showing in most situations; it’s not over-processing or creating details and tree branches out of nothing like the HONOR Magic 7 Pro, for example.
So, sure, you won’t be able to zoom at a teeny tiny sign from a million miles away and see all the text and details like the early leaked results expected, but you will get a decent shot out of the Pixel 10 Pro’s sensor as a start, and Google will use its AI to make it more usable. Plus, in my early tests, I immediately realized that the 30x-50x range is where this will be the most impressive because you’re starting with a clearer image, and the AI doesn’t have to do too much to make it work.
5x panoramas: More useful than you think
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
There was a time when the Pixel series had one of the worst panorama capabilities of any flagship camera, but Google redeemed itself with the Pixel 9 series. With the Pixel 10, the panorama mode is getting even more love with 5x telephoto and manual controls. Google also says panoramas can now go up in size to 100MP, allowing for really high-res results.
Now I know what you’re thinking: zooming in for a panorama feels counterintuitive, but for me, that opens up a whole world of horizon photography, especially with flat landscapes where there’s too much sky and ground. Instead of wasting a lot of the shot and then cropping on small details, I can immediately zoom in and capture exactly the parts that matter, stitching them in a larger panorama. I haven’t had a lot of time to test this out, but the first results are really encouraging. Plus, now I can control the shadows, exposure, white balance, and manually force the focus plane. Expect more samples and a deeper dive later.
All the video improvements: Not enough, yet
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
Google is promising more stable videos on the Pixel 10 Pro and a new AV1 video codec that can store videos in a smaller size without compressing them. I also discovered that Night Sight video can now go all the way from ultrawide 0.5x to 20x zoom, instead of being locked to 1x or 5x with no other options. All of these are excellent additions on paper, and they work exactly as expected.
I grabbed my Pixel 9 Pro XL with one hand, the Pixel 10 Pro with another, and shot the same 4K60 video while shaking a bit. The resulting video is less jittery on the newer phone; it’s also consistently smaller in size when using the AV1 codec. Expect a 10% or so smaller size compared to HEVC (48MB vs 52MB, or 133MB vs 148MB, for example), and around 20% versus AVC. All of this, though, is still not enough to propel the Pixel’s video to where I’d like it to be. Apple still has the upper hand here, sadly, at least for video with the primary lens, while Google beats it for zoomed video.
Gemini Live with app access and visual overlays: Game-changer
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
It’s been months since Google announced that Gemini Live would be getting access to apps, or in other words, that it would communicate with my personal Keep, Gmail, Drive, and Calendar instead of acting like a siloed AI agent. The feature isn’t live on my Pixel 9 Pro yet, but it is on my Pixel 10 Pro. I can’t tell you how awesome it is to chat with Gemini about recipe ideas, then tell it to add the ingredients to my shopping list on Keep, or how nice it is to talk about upcoming Real Madrid games, then ask if I’m busy on that day. (I’m still annoyed that Gemini is limited to one account and can’t see multiple calendars, but that’s a rant I’ve already ranted.)
Gemini Live also gives visual cues now when you share your camera to point out specific things you’re looking at. I asked it about some weeds in my garden, the brand of the robot mower I’m testing, and told it to pinpoint basil in a sea of green, and it helped with all of that. I keep finding ways for Gemini Live to help me in my everyday life, and I expect this will soon be another handy addition. Over the following weeks, I’ll test it more to see if it can highlight the cheese with the lowest salt level at the supermarket or how to fix the small hole in my bathroom wall.
Daily Hub: Not the Google Now rebirth I wanted
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
Daily Hub wasn’t available on my Pixel 10 Pro out of the box, but I figured out how to sideload it and… yeah, uh, I was immediately disappointed. This isn’t the Google Now reincarnation we’ve wanted for years, and somehow, Google has figured out a way to make it worse than the short-lived Assistant Snapshot and Samsung’s new Now Brief.
All I’ve seen it give me is the weather, some calendar events, a few Pocket Casts podcast episodes, and some iffy recommendations from YouTube, including things I’ve never shown interest in and some… questionable… videos like in the photo at the top. I don’t think anyone wants to open Daily Hub to see what to watch or listen to; we can open YouTube or PocketCasts directly for that, or even just check Discover. Why cram recommendations in one more screen instead of keeping the hub clean and collecting recommendations in Discover is beyond me.
I want useful, relevant information from a “daily hub.” Shipping notifications and tracking, sports scores for my teams, my Fitbit stats and important health updates, reminders for urgent emails I haven’t replied to yet, and so on. Google knows so much about me, and the fact that it only chooses to surface silly things like YouTube recommendations is sad. The feature is still marked as a Preview, though, so I hope it’ll get better with time.
Better speakers? Yes, with bass, volume, and clarity improvements
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
I like listening to podcasts when I shower, but the Pixel 9 Pro XL’s sound just isn’t loud enough to overtake the water, so I gave up on it and grabbed a cheap $10 waterproof speaker from Ikea months ago. I was eager to see if the upgraded speakers on the Pixel 10 series make it a better shower buddy, but while the sound is indeed clearer on both phones compared to the Pixel 9 Pro XL, it’s not much louder.
What I noticed was that both the Pixel 10 Pro and Pixel 10 Pro XL have improved the top earpiece speakers from last year. They’re louder and so much clearer, with much less distortion at the highest volume. Bass is significantly improved on both models, too; it’s more defined and punchier. Like the Pixel 8 and previous Pixels, both Pixel 10 Pro models also have two speaker grilles at the bottom, but the sound clearly comes out of one grille, while the other acts as a secondary outlet.
I did a rapid and unscientific test with a sound meter and the YouTube app playing the same song on all phones, and I noticed that the Pixel 10 Pro XL was on average 1dB louder than the 10 Pro and 9 Pro XL, so a 7% increase in perceived loudness if you want an exact number. If you ask me, though, the Pixel 10 Pro XL sounds a little wider / hollower than the 10 Pro, and I prefer the latter, even if it’s not exactly as loud.
Camera Coach: Patience is key
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
Having taken more than 10,000 photos with my Pixel phones over the years, I could’ve easily dismissed Camera Coach as something that I don’t need, but I think it’s my love for photography that makes it an intriguing addition. I’m eager to see if it can actually help me capture better photos or if it can’t teach me anything anymore. I have more thorough tests in the pipeline, but my early hands-on says it does suggest interesting new angles and ideas, but you have to be really, really, extremely patient with it.
This isn’t the kind of tool you’ll use when you have kids — or even adults — waiting and smiling at the camera… unless they’re angels or influencers. It’s more adapted for those times when you can take your time and tap through the various options, reframe, check the result, and continue until you have the perfect shot.
Audio sharing: Not as simple as I imagined
Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
I’ve been hearing my colleague Mishaal Rahman go on about Audio Sharing on Android for months, if not years, and I was so excited when I saw the option under Settings > Connected Devices > Connection preferences > Audio sharing on my Pixel 10 Pro. I expected it to work out of the box, but unlike Samsung, which has figured out a way to make Galaxy phones play the same audio stream on any two pairs of earbuds or headphones, Google’s implementation is very restrictive.
At first, it wouldn’t work with my Nothing Ear (the 2024 model). Turns out Nothing hasn’t enabled LE Audio on its buds, and that’s a requirement of Audio Sharing on the Pixel 10. So I grabbed my Pixel Buds Pro 2, which have LE Audio, connected them, and even then, I couldn’t start a share. My Pixel 10 Pro tells me I need LE Audio headphones first, even though I’m listening on the compatible Pixel Buds Pro 2. So for now, audio sharing is a big mess, especially since I also have to make sure the other person has a phone and a pair of earbuds that support LE Audio, too. It’ll be a couple of years before this is a given and my husband and I can share audio on a plane or in the bus without checking the exact specs of our phones and buds.
And there you have it — the first 10 features I was so eager to check out on my Pixel 10 Pro. There’s still so much else that’s new on the phone, from a bunch of Pixel Studio upgrades to new music creation in Recorder, all the Android 16 features like expressive wallpapers and customizable quick settings, and more. If you’ve ordered a Google Pixel 10 phone, you won’t be bored for a while, exploring all of these. Meanwhile, I’m going to deep-dive into a bunch of new features and thoroughly test them to let you know how they work over the next few weeks.
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