Robert Triggs / Android Authority
At first, I wasn’t sure how to feel about the iPhone 17. To me, all of the leaks pointed towards another year of the same old, same old. But then, Apple unveiled its base-level flagship, and it had some tricks up its sleeve. It gave the base iPhone 17 a 120Hz refresh rate, an updated chipset, and doubled its base storage — not to mention a 48MP ultrawide camera.
And you know what? Those are all significant upgrades. They’ll make the iPhone 17 Apple’s best yet. But for me, the Pixel 10 is still the way to go for everyday usage. Switch to iOS if you want, but the grass won’t be greener.
Gemini beats Apple Intelligence any day
Dhruv Bhutani / Android Authority
If we’re being honest, making a great phone isn’t really about hardware at this point. Sure, the A19 chip inside the iPhone 17 will probably put up better benchmarking numbers than Google’s Tensor G5 — that’s nothing new. Apple’s chips have run benchmarking circles around the best Android chips for a while, thanks to the top-to-bottom optimization. Google, though, has never really made a fuss about that.
The reason why I don’t think that matters is because Google’s Pixel 10 features, especially those that center around Gemini, are miles ahead of Apple Intelligence. To see what I mean, you don’t have to do much more than try to edit a photo in your phone’s native Photos app. Google’s Pixel 10 supports a powerful Magic Editor that lets you resize, reshape, or remove elements, or you can ask for some editing help with Help Me Edit. Both work brilliantly, and they’ve reached a point where there aren’t many odd artifacts — if any.
Over on the iPhone 17, I expect Clean Up to work just like it has since Apple introduced it. Whenever I’ve tried to erase an extra person or a piece of trash from a cityscape, I’ve found that Apple simply doesn’t know how to fill the space in a way that makes sense. I hope it improves this year, but I don’t have high hopes given Google’s head start over Apple.
Clean Up Camera Coach
And then there’s the fact that Google keeps adding features while Apple is trying to clean up the basics. The Pixel 10 introduces several new wrinkles, like the Magic Cue, which pulls information from texts and emails right when it thinks you’ll need it, and the Camera Coach, which helps you compose more interesting images that make the most of Google’s exclusive camera features.
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