 "Google Pixel 10 Long-term Review: Some welcome additions but could have been even better")
Pros:
Premium build and finish with IP68 ingress protection
Good main and selfie cameras
Telephoto camera is a welcome addition
Sharp and vibrant 120 Hz OLED display
Smooth and clean Android experience
7 years of software updates promised
Good overall performance, faster UFS 4.0 storage
Cons:
Slow charging; no charger in the box
Questionable choice of cameras
The Tensor G5 throttles significantly at higher temperatures
Price needs to be more competitive
Rating: 3.75/5
Price: Rs 79,999
The Pixel series phones from Google over the past few generations have been rather formulaic. One can predict with a fair degree of accuracy what one can expect in the next Pixel phone. While one can still do that with the Pro variants in the 10 series, Google has changed things around a bit in the Pixel 10. After having used it for a couple of months and having witnessed a handful of updates iron out a few creases, here’s everything you need to know about it.
Google Pixel 10 Design: No change here but still good enough
The design of the phone has been left untouched this time. It looks pretty much like the Pixel 9, and no real complaints about that. The flat edges of the aluminium frame, the glass back, the pill-shaped camera island that still protrudes as much and the fairly compact body still add up to an elegant looking phone. It feels great in hand thanks to its rugged build and a premium finish void of any rough edges, though it weighs a shade over 200 grams now.
The IP68-rated dust and fluid resistance has been retained. The flat screen merges seamlessly into the frame and the bezels around the screen are narrow, including the bottom bezel. The display and the glass back are protected against scratches by Corning Gorilla Glass Victus 2. The frame and the camera island have a matte finish, while the back is glossy. Despite that, fingerprints or smudge marks were barely visible on the Lemongrass variant that we got for review. Yes, the Pixel 10 does come in some interesting shades.
The volume rocker as well as the power button are placed along the right edge. Their placement as well as that of the in-display fingerprint scanner are spot on, and one can access them without stretching the fingers much. The ultrasonic scanner is highly responsive. The SIM tray has now been moved to the top edge (there’s your design change) while the USB-C port and speaker stay at the bottom. One can use an eSIM too. A memory card slot and a 3.5 mm headphone jack remain absent.
Quick Reads
View AllGoogle Pixel 10 Display: As impressive as its predecessor’s but slightly brighter
Google has opted to continue with the 6.3-inch Full HD+ OLED display with 120 Hz refresh rate and HDR10+ compliance. It is slightly brighter now with the peak brightness going from 2700 nits to 3000 nits. You do not get granular refresh rate adjustments like in case of phones with LTPO displays and you can only choose between 60 Hz (default) and 120 Hz after enabling Smooth Display from the bottom of the display settings, something you must do.
The screen is bright and sharp with excellent colour reproduction and contrast out of the box. Pixel displays are generally tuned well, which is a good thing because you hardly get any colour adjustments. You just get two modes - Adaptive and Natural. The former makes the colours look slightly more vivid, while the latter does what the name suggests. Try both and choose one that suits your taste. An always-on display feature is also available if you prefer.
Google Pixel 10 Hardware and performance: A notable jump in performance despite the throttling
The Pixel 10 is powered by Google’s fifth generation Tensor G5 SoC that powers the entire 10 series. There has been a significant jump in overall performance as compared to the G4. In terms of raw processing power, it is still no match for Qualcomm’s flagship Snapdragon 8 Elite chip but has certainly caught up with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 SoC in synthetic benchmarks. Add to that the AI crunching capabilities of the Tensor G5 that are hard to gauge using our current set of benchmarks, and those abilities tend to get better with time.
It may not be the most powerful chip around but the G5 posts some strong scores and breezes through day-to-day tasks like accessing social media or chat apps, watching videos, browsing the internet, opening multiple tabs on a browser and switching between apps without a hiccup. The Pixel 10 comes equipped with 12 GB RAM and 256 GB internal storage. It is great to see 256 GB on the base variant itself (given its price tag), and the faster UFS 4.0 storage finally.
The phone largely stays cool but does get moderately warm after 30 minutes of gaming or if you click dozens of photos at a go. It doesn’t get alarmingly hot but the performance does throttle as the temperature rises. The performance still drops to about 60% at high temperatures even after a bunch of updates. That is significant throttling, but as we saw with the Tensor G4, the throttling reduced a lot six months down the line after more updates, and one can hope for the same for the G5 too. It does impact frame rates in gaming but isn’t noticeable in day to day tasks.
We ran a few synthetic benchmarks to gauge its performance and compare it with that of its predecessor’s as well as the last two generations of Qualcomm’s flagship chips, the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 and Elite. You can check the exact scores of the Pixel 10 in the image below, while I discuss its relative performance. In Geekbench 6, the Tensor G5 managed to outscore the G4 on the Pixel 9 by nearly 30% in single-core performance and an even better 40% in multi-core. This is a significant jump and quite commendable.
The scores are in the same ballpark as a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 with a 4 to 5% variance. However, the Snapdragon 8 Elite remains way ahead, with a 25% and 43% lead in single-core and multi-core benchmarks respectively. In the PCMark Work 3.0 benchmark, the Pixel 10 manages to score 28% and 6% higher than the Pixel 9 and the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 on OnePlus phones but falls just short of the Elite by about 6%.
Moving on to 3DMark to gauge its gaming performance, the Tensor G5 improves on its predecessor but is still no match for the two Qualcomm chips. In the Wild Life Extreme benchmark, the Pixel 10 scored almost 25% higher than the Pixel 9 with 19.28 average FPS while lagging behind the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 by a big margin of 55%. The Elite manages to score double that of the Tensor G5. Still a lot of work to do in the gaming department for the Google SoCs. While it isn’t advertised as a phone for gamers, the real world gaming performance of the Pixel 10 is perfectly acceptable. You can play most of the games on it but may have to lower the graphics setting in some cases for good frame rates.
Moving on to other aspects, the two speakers on the phone produce a loud and punchy sound output with good stereo separation. The phone is Bluetooth 6.0 compliant and has dual-band WiFi with support for a/b/g/n/ac/6e standards; a drop from tri-band WiFi on the Pixel 9, though it won’t matter to most. The call quality and reception on this 5G compliant phone were perfectly fine during the course of our testing.
Google Pixel 10 Battery backup: Average battery capacity, outdated charging speed
The battery capacity sees a marginal increment from 4700 mAh on the Pixel 9 to 4970 mAh here, but the actual battery life is quite similar. The battery lasts well over a day of moderate use, and closer to a day and a half if there is no gaming or lots of photography involved. The charging speed also sees a tiny jump on paper from 27W to 30W using USB-PD 3.0 chargers. Google still does not include a charger in the bundle but you get a USB-C cable.
We tried a bunch of third party 30W USB-PD chargers all the way up to those with 65W output. We eventually settled on the Stuffcool Zeno, a neat little 30W GaN charger with built-in retractable USB-C cable as well as another USB-C port that can provide 30W USB-PD output too (not if you use both outputs simultaneously though). The retractable cable option is damn cool and the charger weighs less than 100 grams, making it a great travel companion. It also provided the joint fastest time we clocked for charging the Pixel 10 from 1% to 100%, which was a whole 96 minutes.
That is not only 8 minutes slower than the Pixel 9 but also makes it one of the slowest charging phones around. Yes, the Pixel 10 has a slightly higher capacity battery than the 9 but it also supports faster charging in theory. Honestly, it wouldn’t have made a difference had it taken 10 less minutes to get there. The fact remains that Google is still stuck with ancient charging tech while a vast majority of phones selling at half its price have been getting the job done in half the time, and for a few years now. A faster charging solution is long overdue for the Pixels. We say that every year but who’s listening?
Google Pixel 10 Camera performance: A Pixel non-Pro finally gets a telephoto camera but…
Unlike Pixel phones from the past few generations without the Pro suffix, this one has three rear cameras. Finally the Pixel 10 gets a telephoto camera that users have been demanding for a while and usually reserved for the Pro models. It is a welcome addition and the 10.8MP unit with optical image stabilisation (OIS) offers up to 5X optical zoom. However, it comes at a price! The primary and ultra-wide cameras have been downgraded from those on the Pixel 9, and not just in terms of megapixels but they also use smaller sensors.
It seems, Google has used both the rear cameras from the Pixel 9a here while retaining only the front camera from the Pixel 9. In addition to the aforementioned telephoto, the Google Pixel 10 has a 48MP main camera with dual-pixel PDAF and OIS and a 13MP ultra-wide camera with 120-degrees FOV and autofocus (missing in the 9a). The 48MP ultra-wide unit from its predecessor is dearly missed here; we will come to that shortly. Lastly, you get a 10.5MP front camera with auto-focus and 95-degree FOV.
Numbers and specs aside, let’s see how the cameras actually perform in different conditions. The main camera captures some excellent shots in bright conditions with fairly accurate colours and good dynamic range and contrast. The captured images have ample detail but not as good as those captured with the Pixel 9, thought not too far behind. However, the difference is more pronounced in low light where the smaller sensor holds it back. While the images are very usable, you expect better from a phone in this price bracket.
The phone automatically switches to Night Sight mode when the light is low or you can do so manually. It brightens up the dark areas in the image just enough without going overboard but the details in parts of the images are average at best. Like prior Pixel phones, the Pixel 10 is quite good at portrait photography with fairly accurate edge detection and a near perfect background separation. It works best with humans and does reasonably well with other things like flowers and animals too.
The 48MP ultra-wide camera in the Pixel 9 was one of the best in the segment then. The 13MP unit here is rather disappointing. While it is acceptable on the Pixel 9a which has a sub-50K price tag, we can’t let that slide on a phone priced at 80K. The camera is usable in good light with accurate colours and dynamic range comparable to the main camera but the resolved detail in images is underwhelming. The images look perfectly fine until you zoom in on them. The lack of detail is even more conspicuous in low light captures.
The 10.8MP dedicated telephoto camera here, though understandably not as good as that on the Pro variants, is a great addition and provides 5X optical zoom. A combination of OIS and reasonably steady hands can produce some quality zoomed shots, especially in good lighting. Low light results are a mixed bag, and it’s best to click a few extra shots for safety. It is a great option for clicking some macro shots too from a little farther without obstructing the light. While compromising the main and ultra-wide shooter to accommodate a telephoto camera is questionable on Google’s part, the addition of the latter is most welcome.
The 10.5MP selfie camera clicks some real good selfies with natural skin tones. It has a fairly broad FOV for group selfies and is good at portraits too. The rear cameras can record 4K videos at 24, 30 and 60 fps and slow-mo 1080p videos up to 240 fps. OIS and gyro-EIS lend stability to the captured footage. A 10-bit HDR option is also available. The recorded videos from the rear cameras are sharp and stabilised and pretty good for general use. The front camera can also record 4K videos at 30 and 60 fps.
Click here for camera samples shot on the Google Pixel 10:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/pxFzCp7ZDRJR73pS8Google Pixel 10 OS and user interface: As good as its gets on Android, now with more AI tricks
As one expects from a Pixel phone, you get the latest and pure Android experience without any bloatware or ads, and now with the Material 3 Expressive design language. The user interface is fluid, totally lag free and void of any major bugs. The Pixel 10 runs Android 16 out of the box, and Google has promised 7 major OS updates and 7 years of security updates for this device, which will keep the phone secure and relevant for a long time.
The buzzword since the Pixel 9 series has been AI, and the Pixel 10 takes the Gemini integration further. You get more than a handful of tools on this phone to play around with, along with the popular Google apps that are seamlessly integrated. You also get a super-charged virtual assistant that is capable of doing a lot more than the older Google assistant.
Features like object recognition using Google Lens or speech recognition or translation have been available for a while, along with things like ‘circle to search’ wherein you circle an object on the screen and Google gives you more information about it. In addition to the popular Magic Eraser and Camouflage options to play with your photos, you also get the Magic Editor to enhance your images in various ways. Google also bundles Pixel Studio to make use of generative AI and let your creativity run wild and create images ranging from awesome to abstract.
Android 16 also provides better security and multitasking along with more accessibility options and support for LE audio. There are a lot more things I can keep going on about and more that will get added every month through Pixel Drop. But I will stop here as this review has already been a long read for you. We highly advise checking Pixel Tips on the phone from time to time to explore new or enhanced features made available in your region.
Google Pixel 10: Price, verdict and alternatives
The Google Pixel 10 is priced at Rs 79,999 for the 256 GB internal storage variant with a one year warranty. The pricing is exactly the same as that of the Pixel 9 at launch but it could have been more competitive right away rather than in the festive sales next year. Is it a worthy successor to the Pixel 9? I would say yes, just about. The performance bump for the Tensor G5 is quite impressive and the telephoto camera is a welcome addition. However, had Google not scaled down the other two cameras, the Pixel 10 would have been an even better phone.
We understand the company needed enough differentiators between this and the Pro models to justify the price difference, but holding one phone back to make the other look better is not the best way of going about it. Having said that, the Google Pixel 10 is a good all-round phone, and barring its outdated charging speeds, there is a lot to like about it. If you spot it closer to 65K after all the discounts and cashback, feel free to jump on the deal.
As for alternatives, there are quite a few to choose from. You have its obvious competitors from Apple and Samsung with a choice between the iPhone 16 and 17 as well as the Samsung Galaxy S24 and S25 models if you are looking for compact phones. The Pixel 9 isn’t a bad buy either if you spot it under 60K. If you want something more powerful with an even better camera setup, you can strongly consider the Vivo X200 Pro that now sells for less than 80K and offers twice the storage.
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