After testing out popular Android emulators on the Pixel 10 Pro XL and last year’s Pixel 9 Pro XL, I came away disappointed. Performance is notably worse on the new model, making some games far less enjoyable and others outright impossible to play. The Tensor G5 processor’s switch to an Imagination Technologies DXT-48-1536 graphics unit seems like a real step backward.
Trying to emulate classic consoles — especially the 3D ones — is always a difficult ask, but what about games built specifically for Android? Well, I tested those too, and once again, the results are a mixed bag for Google’s latest flagship.
Robert Triggs / Android Authority
For this round, I used the same two phones and ran through a few of the most popular Android titles from recent years. Call of Duty: Mobile’s Battle Royale mode supports high frame rates (up to 120fps, depending on the phone) on Medium graphics, so I loaded that up with antialiasing enabled to stress the GPU. Next, I ran Asphalt Legends for a more consistent playthrough. Neither phone supports the game’s 120fps mode, so I maxed out the graphics to see how they’d handle it.
Genshin Impact remains as popular as ever, so I booted it up to see how both phones would perform at maximum settings with the 60fps cap. A point of interest: the Pixel 9 runs Genshin via the Vulkan API, while the Pixel 10 uses OpenGL, so the comparison isn’t quite one-to-one.
You can check out some gameplay clips with performance overlays in the video above, but let’s dive into the results in more detail.
Pixel 10 Pro XL gameplay performance results
Looking at the performance overview, it’s clearly a mixed bag, with neither phone managing to lock the maximum frame rate in any of these titles. Google’s newest flagship pulls ahead in Genshin Impact but performs worse in Asphalt Legends, particularly in the lowest 5% of frames. Meanwhile, COD Mobile shows the two handsets are virtually neck and neck. In any case, the newer Pixel 10 Pro XL isn’t an outright winner, though it delivers acceptable enough performance to keep these games playable even with the settings cranked up.
We see more meaningful discrepancies in the deeper data. In Asphalt Legends, for example, the Pixel 10 Pro XL never quite reaches 60fps, while the 9 Pro XL occasionally does, which is reflected in its higher average frame rate.
Interestingly, the Pixel 10 Pro XL exhibits significantly more “jank”—frames that take longer than 100ms to render, causing noticeable microstutter. This happens most often when loading and starting races, though it drops slightly fewer frames than last year’s model during gameplay.
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