Google Pixel 10 Professional evaluation: AI, Qi2, and a spec bump too

Final 12 months, Google proved it may make a telephone that appears and looks like a real flagship, regardless of the software program feeling like an AI jumble. This 12 months, the Pixel 10 Professional begins to place AI options collectively in a method that truly is smart — and it manages to improve the {hardware} a bit, too.

Google has lastly locked in a high-end end and have set for this telephone, and it feels extra polished than ever. There’s Android’s model of MagSafe, a flagship-worthy processor, and a very good digital camera. All of the stuff you’d need from a telephone that begins at $999.

The ten Professional additionally represents a child step from AI’s celebration trick period to turning into genuinely helpful on a cellular gadget. Magic Cue, which goals to floor info out of your electronic mail and calendar contextually, lives as much as its identify for probably the most half — just like the time it supplied to place a espresso meetup with a pal on my calendar as we had been hashing out the main points over textual content. However alongside nice options like Magic Cue, you’ll nonetheless discover some that really feel extra like they’re there to fulfill an inside mandate to place AI into each out there nook and cranny.

Between the {hardware} upgrades and a barely extra cohesive software program expertise, there’s one thing fairly particular right here. The Pixel 10 Professional is a telephone with strong upgrades, although it doesn’t fairly really feel like a must-upgrade so long as your present gadget is working fantastic. It’s a glimpse of the long run, with all of the messiness of now blended in there, too.

From the skin, the Pixel 10 Professional may be very arduous to inform other than its predecessor. That’s simply fantastic; this can be a good template to maintain working from. Inside is one other story, and that story begins with Tensor G5.

I get the sense that Google’s fifth customized chipset is the one which the corporate has been ready on. Tensor G5 is the first made by TSMC, and it appears to be the important thing to unlocking quite a lot of on-device AI. Magic Cue, for instance, runs within the background on gadget. A digital camera function we’ll get to later runs a diffusion mannequin on gadget. Similar with the telephone name translator that mimics the sound of your voice. It’s extra than simply a formidable listing; working these completely on the telephone means your information is far more personal than if it had taken a visit to the cloud.

Identical to final 12 months, the Professional variant of the Pixel 10 is available in two sizes. Each the Professional and Professional XL include 16GB of RAM, and variants with 256GB or extra storage use faster UFS 4.0 memory. All of them have the brand new chip, and whereas I can’t say I discovered earlier Pixels to be laggy, this one appears snappy. It stutters a bit with dense, media-heavy internet pages like character builds on Icy Veins. Android Authority has a good rundown on the nuts and bolts of Tensor G5, and confirms that there’s no ray tracing help. For what it’s price, Diablo Immortal runs simply fantastic on the ten Professional. The telephone additionally doesn’t appear to warmth up fairly as a lot or as shortly as earlier Tensor-powered Pixels both, which have a popularity for working scorching. I used the ten Professional as a hotspot outdoors on a heat morning with out a drawback — one thing I’ve had much less success with on earlier Pixel telephones.

The ten Professional’s battery capability is somewhat greater this time round: 4870mAh versus 4700mAh, likewise 5200mAh in comparison with 5060mAh on the XL. Perhaps it’s all that on-device AI, however battery life appeared somewhat worse than typical regardless of the marginally upgraded capability. I examined it with the always-on show enabled and the best display decision out there. On a lighter day with the ten Professional, I discovered the battery working all the way down to round 50 p.c by bedtime; a heavier day with an honest chunk of hotspot use introduced it down into the 30s by evening. That’s fantastic, and throughout the realm of a contemporary flagship telephone, however not precisely stellar.

I’m nonetheless testing the ten Professional XL’s battery stamina. Given all the resource-intensive, customized AI options on board, per week simply wasn’t sufficient to attract strong conclusions about battery life on two totally different telephones. I’ll be updating this evaluation quickly (with the assistance of my colleague Dominic Preston who’s additionally testing the XL mannequin).

There’s not loads to say in regards to the Pixel 10’s different marquee addition, Qi2 help with built-in magnets, apart from it’s nice and I’m glad it’s right here. On the ten, 10 Professional, and 10 Professional Fold, you get 15W wi-fi charging, and on the Professional XL as much as 25W with the Qi2.2 normal. I throw my telephone on a wi-fi charger on the finish of the day so slower charging by no means bothers me, however the magnets certain are good to have. I by no means put a case on my telephone both, for higher and worse (largely worse), so I’m thrilled I can reap the advantages of what’s basically MagSafe on an Android telephone with out having to make use of a case such as you do with Samsung’s newest flagships. {Hardware} is tough, and it took Google a minute to get right here, however this 12 months’s Pixel telephones stand out in a method that has eluded their predecessors.

However let’s not get too carried away; Google isn’t precisely reinventing the wheel by including magnets and an up to date processor. A few of the AI options on board the ten Professional are new and truly helpful, although — beginning with Magic Cue. That is the context-aware AI that’s designed to ship useful info if you want it, with out you having to go search for it. Which may sound imprecise and unserious, nevertheless it’s the sort of factor we’ve been promised ever since firms began speaking about AI on our telephones. And it truly does work. Was it magic? Hardly, however what I’ve seen up to now makes me extra optimistic about AI than the rest I’ve seen it do on telephones.

Magic Cue is, by its nature, simply sort of floating round within the background whilst you do stuff in your telephone. It runs utterly on gadget — it’s not offloading something to the cloud — and solely works in a handful of Google apps. However they’re vital ones, together with Gmail, Messages, Calendar, and the telephone app in addition to final 12 months’s addition: Screenshots. If somebody messages you and asks for details about a date or reservation, Magic Cue will verify your calendar or your inbox and also you’ll see the main points pop up above the keyboard as a suggestion. You may lengthy press to verify the place Magic Cue obtained the data or simply faucet to drop it into the dialog. I attempted it out in a fast staged-but-plausible check with my colleague Vee Track by having her ask a few live performance I’d already placed on my calendar and it was truthfully cool as heck.

Magic Cue can also be supposed that will help you seek for stuff. It does this by taking note of what’s in your display, detecting the sort of app you’re opening up — it is aware of Amazon is a purchasing app, for instance — and suggesting textual content may wish to paste into the search bar, just like the identify of a product you had been simply taking a look at in Chrome. Not fairly as thrilling as saving me a visit to my calendar, however I can see it being one thing I’d get used to utilizing. Is the concept that my telephone is monitoring what’s on my display somewhat bizarre? For certain. However the truth that this info doesn’t go away the gadget makes me really feel higher, or no less than pretty much as good as I can really feel, figuring out that Google is aware of every thing about me anyway.

I noticed Magic Cue most frequently provide to avoid wasting calendar occasions based mostly on my conversations. As I used to be determining a time to satisfy for espresso, Magic Cue supplied a hyperlink to verify the suitable day on my calendar. After we landed on a time, it let me add the occasion with a faucet. None of that is life-changing, and “magic” looks as if a robust descriptor, although I’ll enable it. Principally, this looks as if a extremely useful function that may take just a bit little bit of the friction out of utilizing your telephone. Keep in mind the primary time you noticed your telephone autofill a one-time 2FA code from a textual content? It’s like that. Finally, I believe that’s what AI on our telephones will develop into. One thing that simply occurs, saving us somewhat time right here and there, that fades into the background when you get used to it. I suppose there’s a little magic to that.

The on-device AI extends all the way in which to the telephone app the place it gives real-time voice translations on calls — a well-known function, this time with a twist: it mimics the voice of the speaker. I as soon as once more referred to as on my colleague Vee Track (actually) who was additionally utilizing a Pixel 10. She enabled voice translations on her aspect and spoke in Japanese. I heard the translations in English — and in a voice that sort of seemed like Vee. In response to Vee, the function’s translation of my English into Japanese was fairly good, although it struggled a bit with what she calls her textbook Japanese. It obtained the purpose throughout, and I suppose it was nicer than listening to a neutral-sounding robotic.

However as Vee noticed, this function would doubtless work greatest for a vacationer abroad making an attempt to make a dinner reservation, not for relations making an attempt to catch up. And if that’s the case, the personalization of the spoken voice feels sort of pointless. It makes for a cool celebration trick, although.

If voice translation is midway between a useful function and a gimmick, then Day by day Hub leans even additional into gimmick territory. It’s loads just like the Now Temporary Samsung launched on its S25 telephones, and it’s alleged to act as a fast digest on your day in addition to a spot to seek out some inspiration based mostly in your latest exercise. It does the primary a part of that job simply fantastic; it’s perhaps a extra longwinded model of Google’s At a Look widget, which supplies you a heads up on the climate and upcoming calendar occasions. But it surely additionally misconstrued a few of my latest Google search historical past in puzzling and hilarious methods. I seemed up the schedule for our recycling service, offered by Waste Administration, and it took that to imply that I’m thinking about studying extra about waste administration typically. Uh, not fairly.

I had an identical expertise with the brand new Journal app, which makes use of on-device AI to generate prompts and reflections based mostly on what you write. In a single entry I discussed that my child was unhappy as a result of it was his pal’s final day at college. The app reassured me that it was okay to really feel unhappy about her passing. To be clear, she was simply transferring to a different college.

Perhaps figuring out that you simply’re going to get some sort of suggestions on the finish is motivation for individuals to journal after they wouldn’t have in any other case? And I suppose I did make some extent to put in writing an entry each evening earlier than mattress, which isn’t a behavior I’m in at present. However apart from that, I can’t say I discovered the prompts or bits of reflection useful.

AI exhibits up in yet one more place: the digital camera app. And never simply as a device for including wild stuff to your images — it’s within the precise digital camera. On the ten Professional and 10 Professional XL, there’s a brand new function referred to as Professional Res Zoom that goals to make digitally zoomed images look rather less like rubbish. When you get previous 30x zoom and as much as the utmost of 100x, Professional Res Zoom will kick in and use a diffusion mannequin to attempt to clear up your picture.

This occurs after the very fact; the unique picture is retained, and all of it runs in your gadget. It additionally doesn’t try to boost any individuals it identifies in a picture, which is for the higher. The outcomes rely loads in your topic, the situations, and the way far you’re pushing the zoom vary. With sufficient gentle, a predictable topic, and average zoom, the outcomes will be actually good.

Professional Res Zoom has a more durable time with writing. In the event you take an image of a sign in the distance, you’ll see the telltale indicators of generative AI — one thing just like actual writing that’s truly an alien language if you look nearer. And all the way in which at 100x zoom there’s solely a lot even AI can do to offer you a usable photograph.

In a shot I took of a crane wading in a pond, it didn’t know what to do with the leaves and bits of particles on the floor of the water and turned them into little white points, like dozens of tiny sailboats. Type of poetic however not what I had in thoughts. And this goes with out saying, however Professional Res Zoom isn’t going to offer you something that appears pretty much as good as an optical zoom lens. Belief me. I lugged round a Nikon Coolpix P1100 with a 3000mm equal lens simply to make sure.

Professional Res Zoom images are tagged with C2PA metadata that identifies them as captured with a digital camera and edited utilizing generative AI. The truth is, all images taken with the Pixel 10 are tagged to mirror whether or not or not AI was concerned, which could seem to be overkill however feels more and more needed in a world with accessible, succesful gen AI modifying instruments.

Does it nonetheless creep me out somewhat? Yeah. Is an image I took with Professional Res Zoom nonetheless a photograph, or is it one thing else? I’m not so certain. However I don’t suppose that is the final we’ll hear of diffusion fashions in telephone cameras, so we’re all going to have to seek out our personal ranges of consolation with this type of factor.

Elsewhere within the digital camera there’s some excellent news: portrait mode is way improved. The Pixel digital camera had some catching as much as do right here, and it’s not excellent, however topic isolation is loads higher on the Pixel 10 collection than on the 9. Reynolds tells me that this revamped portrait mode pays “explicit consideration to hair,” which is nice information for me, personally, as a result of my child’s hair is ungovernable. In images taken with the ten Professional, I can see the place the digital camera retained individual strands of hair fairly than simply blurring them into the background the way in which the 9 Professional tends to. It goes a protracted approach to making that photograph look extra convincing.

The Pixel is in sort of a humorous spot, particularly within the US. Yr after 12 months its market share is relatively small in our iPhone and Galaxy-dominated panorama. The truth is, Counterpoint Analysis counts its percentage of the market in the single digits and lumps Google into the “others” class, far behind Apple, Samsung, and Motorola. However what Google is doing on Pixel telephones issues greater than its gross sales figures recommend. The Pixel is a showcase for the Android ecosystem, significantly in the previous few years as Google has pushed it into correct flagship territory. The ten Professional looks like that image of what’s doable on Android greater than ever.

The Pixel 10 collection represents the primary telephones from a significant OEM to get full Qi2 help. They’re the first phones to put C2PA content credentials on images taken with the digital camera. They provide a glimpse of what AI can truly do to avoid wasting us some effort and time tapping round on our telephones. It nonetheless looks like AI is being shoved into corners of the gadget the place it doesn’t actually have to be, however for the primary time it looks like there’s a sort of connective tissue between the helpful bits.

There was a time, significantly within the Tensor period, the place utilizing a Pixel telephone felt somewhat bit like being an early adopter, and never in a great way. The costs had been decrease, however the {hardware} felt cheaper, software program bugs continued, and the chipsets ran scorching. However the Pixel collection has developed into one thing higher, one thing worthy of the title “flagship.” If the ten Professional represents the very best of what Android can do, then there’s loads for Android followers to look ahead to — whether or not it’s on a Pixel or not.

Pictures by Allison Johnson / The Verge