Pixel 10 / Pixel 10 Pro / Pixel 10 XL

Zarathustra[H] said:
I don't know much about it, but I will look into it. Thanks.
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I've used the Nothing Phone 2a Plus and enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.

That was last year's budget phone, but it was fun. The hardware was surprisingly quick for the money, the screen was nice, and the battery lasted a long time. It had a take on Android that felt stylized, but not overwhelmingly so (you don't need the black-and-white icons, for example).

This year's Nothing phones have a button-activated "Essential Space" that relies on AI to analyze screenshots/notes/recordings, but they're otherwise light on AI (and of course, you don't need to hit that button). The Phone 3 isn't really a flagship in my mind, but it's definitely the pick if you want an upper-mid-range phone that has some personality.
 
cpufrost said:
I don't like the S25 Ultra - at all!
It's not that it's not a good phone. Hardware wise, it checks all the boxes. The issue is ergonomics. The damn thing feels like a freaking brick when naked! Even with a thin case like the Latercase aramid, it just feels balky. Don't care about the s-pen although bt shutter control was a niche feature that many miss.
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The BT s-pen is practically a deal breaker to me.
Because of the remote shutter. But the remote shutter is only vital because the camera app at least on my s23 ultra is regularly unreliable.

The Wi-Fi at work is slow and also unreliable so I'm on Data all day it's what scared me away from the the Pixel lineup. I have actually grown accustomed to the general purpose computer in the pocket lifestyle that these kinds of flagship phones facilitate.
The faster UFS spec doesn't hurt either.
 
I have to say I was really torn and afraid going with the smaller Pro over the XL, as almost all my smartphones have been XL's, Ultra's, Max sizes phones for years.

The last time I had a "regular" sized phone is probably back in the Nexus days when there wasn't an option.

I mostly went XL for the larger battery.

But I have been getting tired carrying these bricks in my pockets, especially with cases on these Ultra sized phones, which are like mini tablets almost LOL.

Well I activated the e-SIM today and been using this Pixel 10 Pro, and you know what?

I'm loving this smaller size and one hand friendly phone, it really is way more comfortable.

Will battery life be worse on this compared to the Pro XL? Yeah probably, but I'm around a charger so often and have several wireless chargers, and plan to pick up the PixelSnap charger soon, so not too worried.

I bought the 256GB in white color, with the official Google white silcone case. And it feels very nice. I miss the old Panda colorway options when they were white with some black on there and then maybe a funky color for the power button. I wish they would go back to that design.

I still have my Pixel 9 Pro XL, and it feels huge now in comparison. And honestly that larger phone didn't really give me anything more to see or view. I didn't put more app icons on there, or more widgets on there. It really is just a larger screen of the same screen I have on the smaller phone.

I don't game on my phone, that's what my custom built PC is for. And watching videos doesn't really matter that much from.6.8" to 6.3".

Let's see how this goes. So far so good. And I am just more comfortable with stock Android compared to OneUI or iOS. When I buy a Galaxy Ultra or iPhone Pro I always try to make it like a Pixel LOL. So I'll just stick with what feels best for me.
 
Lock and Home screens:
 

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Went to this setting screen, should I keep it default like it is?
 

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Really digging the official Google Pixel snap silicone cases for this phone.

I've had them on my Pixel 8 Pro and 9 Pro XL, but they made those phones feel too large and bulky so I never really cared for them.

But on this smaller 10 Pro they feel just so comfortable and good, plus they look cool.

I have 2 now, the Porcelain white case to match my white 10 Pro ( hope they don't yellow or get dirty down the road? ) and today picked up the Moonstone colored case.
 
Ugh.

Did anyone else just get an Android update that made the UI look all stupid?

I don't understand why they always have to keep fucking with how things look. It was fine how it was. It didn't need a makeover.

Apparently some googling tells me this is a mid-stream Android 16 UI refresh called "Material 3 Expressive" and I absolutely hate it.

Fonts are different and more rounded, icons are every color of the rainbow, there is transparency is places it didn't used to be, and the worst is probably the new status bar icons which look like utter shit.

When they do shit like this it really pisses me off. Just leave well enough alone. They should never force a change on people. That ought to be th efirst thing they teach in software engineering an UI design. To always respect that the user owns the device and should control it, and never change anyhting on it without their consent.

Just look at this reskinned nonsense now. It looks awful...

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God, is there really no way to make my phone look the way it did 10-15 minutes ago? 🙄

This really sucks.
 
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The signal icons have finally been updated!
Yes! Those stupid filled in icons for the past ten years made me want to root and install custom roms!
Now just give us the option to display actual signal (-dBm) for cell signals! ;-)
 
Material 3 new design has been pretty well received overall.

Yeah certain parts look too bubbly and silly, but once you use it for a couple days, you'll see it looks and feels alive and has a cool vibe.
 
Zorachus said:
Material 3 new design has been pretty well received overall.

Yeah certain parts look too bubbly and silly, but once you use it for a couple days, you'll see it looks and feels alive and has a cool vibe.
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Whether it is a positive update or not is almost beside the point.

They should never pushthis type of change to users. By all means, have a "theme" setting, and offer a new "theme" when you want to update things, but don't ever remove the old ones that people are actually using. If a user does nothing, their device should never under any circumstance just change on its own.

Whose phone is it? Do I own the phone or not? If it is mine, YOU should not be allowed to make ANY changes to it
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Also, I have to take back that I hate the new status bar icons the most. The new volume bar on the right when you increase and decrease volume is atrocious.

I always love things with fine detail in them. This is drawn with thick lines like some childrens picture book. It is the absolute worst. It looks like you accidentally zoomed in on something too much, but you can't zoom out!

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Who the hell thought that was a good idea? The crudely drawn thick lines are awful. That line across the volume bar is 9 freaking pixels wide. And the black spaces above and below aren't even equal, with an insane 12 pixels wide on the bottom, and 14 pixels wide on the top.

It's like someone phoned in a crudely drawn mockup with a wide paintbrush, instead of providing beautiful fine detail.

I already view most pages on the internet zoomed out to 90% or less because the UI's are too clunky and large and the fonts are too big. That is bad enough, but on the phone I can't even change it. I already have both display size and font size at their smallest.

It feels like with every generation since 2007 when the iPhone came out, interface elements just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger, when all I want for them is to be as small as possible with as fine lines as possible. Preferably no more than 1px wide ever.

I'll also never understand what the obsession is with wasted dead space in modern UI design either. Like why make a 125px thick status bar up top, only to put tiny little 26px tall icons and text in it. If that's all they need to put up there, the status bar could have been only ~32px thick, and given me back 93 extra pixels of usable space!

Why waste space? It's so stupid. Screen real estate is a very precious resource, it should be used as sparingly as possible, leaving as much of it as possible for actual useful content. Big blank empty spaces are the dumbest shit ever. I want everything to be as information dense as possible.

It is my firm belief that UI's should be as fine detailed, small and information dense as possible, and every goddamn time they change anything they go in the opposite direction, IMHO making the devices less and less usable every time.

Pretty soon if we continue in this direction the screen will be full of all UI elements, with no space left for actual content. It already feels like we are headed to the "modern windows at 640x480" experience:

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Or maybe, trying to fix mother in laws phone, with everything set so large that there is no space, and you feel like you can't see shit, because nothing fits on a single screen...

If they made it optional, as one of many different themes, I'd be fine with it. Having this bullshit forced on me makes me furious. I cannot express how much I hate it.

I wonder if I can get rid of this shit by installing LineageOS, or if they will be applying this bullshit too...
 
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What cool Qi2 stuff are you getting or have for your Pixel 10?

Power bank chargers that magnetically clip on the back of the phone?

Are pop sockets or the things that help hold the phone with a little ring or rope on it helpful? Or not?

How bout for your car? A magnetic holder that charges the phone and also holds the phone in place?
 
Zorachus said:
How bout for your car? A magnetic holder that charges the phone and also holds the phone in place?
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Both my better halfs VW and my Audi came with some little spring loaded phone clip thingies that hold your phone and wirelessly charge it while it is in there. Neither of us use them, preferring to just plug in the USB-C cables 😅
 
For anyone with a Pixel 10 pro. Is the volume on recorded video using the camera app very low? I have to increase volume to near max to hear any recorded video audio clearly.
 
iPhone 17.. 256GB default storage.. Google, you got played.
 
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hmz said:
iPhone 17.. 256GB default storage.. Google, you got played.
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It's crazy how cheap Google is on storage; putting 128GB on a "Pro" phone, while also using 5+ year old UFS 3.1 NAND chips for it. I just searched and see this is STILL the case on the P10 and 10 Pro (on the 128GB variants at least, 256GB+ gets UFS 4.0 chips finally, which is only 3 years old at this point and came on the base S23 phones). Apparently they don't even make 128GB chips for UFS 4.0 because I'm sure it would be cost prohibitive just in material needed, lol.
 
the volume line thing is way better imo. A stupidly fat bubble that takes up 15% of the bar was confusing because you couldn't tell if things were at 100% or not.
Now the transparency crap... hmm... which thing should I focus on? Why not both? which is actually neither.
There's a reason books aren't printed on clear material.
 
Got an email from Google about sending 10% discount referral code to friends. If anyone wants or needs one send me a PM with email address.

If this is frowned upon then let me know and I'll delete this post.
 
Curious those of you that got the Pixel 10 which one did he go with the regular Pro or the larger XL?
 
I held both in store and went with the normal pro- better to pocket, and I didn't think the screen was big enough to be worth it. But the big screen did look nice.

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I'm so torn on returning my Pixel 10 Pro at the official Google Store I bought it from, in exchange for the Pro XL larger size.

I've had the larger XL size Pixel's from day one, the 2 XL, 3 XL, 4 XL, 6 Pro, 7 Pro, 8 Pro, 9 Pro XL.

But this time I wanted to go smaller, for easier use, comfortability, better one handed use, nicer fit in pockets, etc...and this 10 Pro checks all these boxes, but now 10 days with it, this phone just feels small, and seeing the screen I feel I could see a bit more or read easier on the XL size. I even turned the font size up larger but then that makes everything too weird and not right sometimes.

On one hand I like the smaller Pro to lift and pick up and go, text easier one handed, not as many "hand gymnastics" needed.

On the other hand it feels cramped, shrunk and like a squished down XL. But on the flipside sometimes with the XL I felt there was just large extra unused space for no real gain if that makes sense? Like yeah the phone is bigger, but I'm not gaining more info or stuff on the screen, and it's WIDER which is the tough part on big phones.

I think the return / exchange policy in store is 15 days? So I have to decide soon what to do

Opinions?
 
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One interesting thing on the size of a Pro vs. Pro XL are cases.

On the Pro XL's a case made an already large phone feel even bigger or bulkier. Where with this smaller Pro a case actually feels good, like more comfortable, it doesn't impact the overall size as much it seems.

The official Google silicone case on my 9 Pro XL makes that phone feel extra large like a huge thing in your hand or pocket. But the Google PixelSnap silicone case on my regular 10 Pro feels comfortable and easy to hold, and doesn't seem to make the phone feel a lot bigger or heavier or anything.
 
Zorachus said:
I'm so torn on returning my Pixel 10 Pro at the official Google Store I bought it from, in exchange for the Pro XL larger size.

I've had the larger XL size Pixel's from day one, the 2 XL, 3 XL, 4 XL, 6 Pro, 7 Pro, 8 Pro, 9 Pro XL.

But this time I wanted to go smaller, for easier use, comfortability, better one handed use, nicer fit in pockets, etc...and this 10 Pro checks all these boxes, but now 10 days with it, this phone just feels small, and seeing the screen I feel I could see a bit more or read easier on the XL size. I even turned the font size up larger but then that makes everything too weird and not right sometimes.

On one hand I like the smaller Pro to lift and pick up and go, text easier one handed, not as many "hand gymnastics" needed.

On the other hand it feels cramped, shrunk and like a squished down XL. But on the flipside sometimes with the XL I felt there was just large extra unused space for no real gain if that makes sense? Like yeah the phone is bigger, but I'm not gaining more info or stuff on the screen, and it's WIDER which is the tough part on big phones.

I think the return / exchange policy in store is 15 days? So I have to decide soon what to do

Opinions?
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So the dilemma is portability versus quick readability?
Less mass in the pocket can certainly be refreshing, but I think any opportunity to decrease the amount of time that you need to squint at something is always good thing.
Especially since Google has had history of shoddy text scaling.
 
Zorachus said:
I'm so so on wanting it now. Only way I'd get one is with a killer deal and trade-in where it'd cost me like fifty bucks at most out of pocket, but seems that's just not happening this year.

Oh well...my 9 Pro XL works just fine.
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Zorachus said:
I bought the 256GB in white color, with the official Google white silcone case.
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This is so funny.. I hope you just bought it outright with no trade-in too, lol. I wish I got half the dopamine hit you get when I buy new phones like when they were actual upgrades and not side-grades with trade-offs (no SIM, huge GPU downgrade, same mediocre battery life) these days.

It's crazy that every since Google went to Tensor on the P6, everyone has been waiting for them to dump the Exynos-based chips and move to TSMC for better battery life and performance. And now that they do it, the efficiency and performance improvement is just as marginally improved (or less) as all the previous gens and thus still disappointing. If Google actually dumps side-loading next year as well, I'll prolly be jumping off the Google bandwagon for our next phones.
 
I have an official Google Store 15 minutes away.

I used an old Pixel 6 Pro I had sitting in a drawer they gave me $400 for it. I had an email promotion from Google for $200 off. And a guy on another forum had a $100 coupon code. All told that's $700 towards the new phone. And after buying the phone I got an immediate $200 gift coupon to use in store only towards accessories.

My son's old Pixel 5 was having major issues lately, literally the screen pealing off and charging issues. So he needed a newer phone, I gave him my Pixel 9 Pro XL and got the Pixel 10 XL Pro for myself.

I'm liking it, not much of an "upgrade" as the performance on my 9 Pro XL was great, really no issues with that phone. Only noticable difference is battery life is improved, I feel like I'm getting 25% more battery life now. And the screen brightness is better outdoors. Other than that basically the same phone. Oh yeah something I wasn't expecting or thought I'd care about, the speakers. The sound is loud but also very crisp and sharp, they must've improved the speaker system a lot.

But my son desperately needed a new phone, and I was happy to oblige 😁
 
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Zorachus said:
I have an official Google Store 15 minutes away.

I used an old Pixel 6 Pro I had sitting in a drawer they gave me $400 for it. I had an email promotion from Google for $200 off. And a guy on another forum had a $100 coupon code. All told that's $700 towards the new phone. And after buying the phone I got an immediate $200 gift coupon to use in store only towards accessories.

My son's old Pixel 5 was having major issues lately, literally the screen pealing off and charging issues. So he needed a newer phone, I gave him my Pixel 9 Pro XL and got the Pixel 10 XL Pro for myself.

I'm liking it, not much of an "upgrade" as the performance on my 9 Pro XL was great, really no issues with that phone. Only noticable difference is battery life is improved, I feel like I'm getting 25% more battery life now. And the screen brightness is better outdoors. Other than that basically the same phone. Oh yeah something I wasn't expecting or thought I'd care about, the speakers. The sound is loud but also very crisp and sharp, they must've improved the speaker system a lot.

But my son desperately needed a new phone, and I was happy to oblige 😁
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One of those times where the upgrade is less about you and more about family!

Also, how cool is it that your son will have what's still an extremely powerful phone. Most kids with phones are happy if their device is even two or three years old.
 
Aurelius said:
One of those times where the upgrade is less about you and more about family!

Also, how cool is it that your son will have what's still an extremely powerful phone. Most kids with phones are happy if their device is even two or three years old.
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Totally, my son has had that Pixel 5 for YEARS, well since we allowed him to have a smartphone which was 2 or 3 years ago, it was my Wife's phone originally.
 
For those on a Pro XL, what resolution are you running? High or Max? If Max does that eat up more battery or strain the phone more and make it laggy compared to High?
 
In case nobody pipes up- no battery life change noted on the normal size.
 
I've read on another tech forum in even my own experience. The 10 Pro XL is given pretty darn good battery life

I haven't had mine terribly long but I will say it's noticeably better than the 9 Pro XL

And this other Tech form that are pretty critical of pixel phones have all said it's close to on par with their 16 promax or s25 Ultra battery life
 
What is this patch today?
 

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Aurelius said:
I use 4x4. I like a sense of space and clarity. I have full respect to folks who like 5x5 — I just find it too cluttered.
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Here's a simple 4x4 home screen of mine that was made real popular by Google themselves I think. Or one of the big Android sites back around the 6 Pro or 7 Pro launch
 

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Do you enable Adaptive tone?
 

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I use a static (well live, but non color palette changing) background so I don't think it would matter. But I'll try it tomorrow and see if it's actually keying on ambient light!

Oh- I just noticed it's been on by default. Weird!
 
Found this phone box in my collection of Pixel boxes over the years.

This was such a classic at the time. Peak early Pixel
 

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