C. Scott Brown / Android Authority
The Google Pixel 10 series has a lot going for it, but the Android Authority team still has mixed opinions on its battery life. The smaller handsets seem to take us through a day without issue, but some of us are having a more stressful time trying to make it to the end of the day with the XL. What the team can agree on is that the phones are not always as consistent as we’d like.
To get to the bottom of why we have such mixed feelings about this year’s models, I grabbed the Pixel 10 Pro XL, last year’s 9 Pro XL, and a Galaxy S25 Ultra and peeked inside their secretive software battery power consumption data.
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For some real-world inspired tests, I picked various network-related use cases of varying intensity for a broad sample of data. I ran each test twice — once on 5GHz Wi-Fi and once on cellular data. For the cellular portion of the test, I’m located on a rural 4G+ (LTE Advanced) signal with a pretty questionable -104dBm signal strength and a miserable 4Mbps download speed, which represents probably one of the worst-case scenarios a phone might find itself in. Handset screens were also calibrated at 300-nits to ensure fairness. Here are the results.
The good news is that idle battery life is nothing untoward. All three test phones have similar power draws, regardless of whether you’re idling on Wi-Fi or cellular data. Power draw also remains similar across all three phones when streaming YouTube or downloading a medium-sized file over Wi-Fi.
However, that’s where the similarity between models ends — recent Pixel flagships often consume noticeably more power than my Galaxy. Both Pixels drained more battery in the Wi-Fi web browsing and Zoom call tests than my Galaxy S25 Ultra. However, what’s more concerning is the much higher power draw observed when using 4G data in all four of the test situations. They’re far higher than anything the Samsung flagship reaches, causing the phones to consume an average of over 2.5W compared to just over 2W for the Galaxy.
4G power draw is sometimes far higher than Wi-Fi.
Increased battery drain on cellular is normal, especially in weak signal areas like my home, where the phone compensates by pumping more power to the antennas. However, both Pixel models sometimes see a bigger percentage change in power draw when using 4G than the Galaxy. In fact, the situation seems to be even worse with the newer Pixel 10 Pro XL, which might explain why we’re finding this year’s model so temperamental.
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