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

Final yr, Google proved it may make a cellphone that appears and looks like a real flagship, regardless of the software program feeling like an AI jumble. This yr, the Pixel 10 Professional begins to place AI options collectively in a means that really 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 cellphone, and it feels extra polished than ever. There’s Android’s model of MagSafe, a flagship-worthy processor, and a very good digicam. All of the stuff you’d need from a cellphone that begins at $999.

The ten Professional additionally represents a child step from AI’s social gathering trick period to turning into genuinely helpful on a cell machine. Magic Cue, which goals to floor data out of your e-mail and calendar contextually, lives as much as its identify for probably the most half — just like the time it provided to place a espresso meetup with a pal on my calendar as we have been hashing out the small print 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 inner mandate to place AI into each accessible 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 cellphone with stable upgrades, although it doesn’t fairly really feel like a must-upgrade so long as your present machine is working effective. It’s a glimpse of the longer term, with all of the messiness of now combined in there, too.

From the surface, the Pixel 10 Professional may be very laborious to inform other than its predecessor. That’s simply effective; 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 primary made by TSMC, and it appears to be the important thing to unlocking lots of on-device AI. Magic Cue, for instance, runs within the background on machine. A digicam characteristic we’ll get to later runs a diffusion mannequin on machine. Identical with the cellphone name translator that mimics the sound of your voice. It’s extra than simply a formidable record; working these totally on the cellphone means your knowledge is far more personal than if it had taken a visit to the cloud.

Identical to final yr, 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 net 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 value, Diablo Immortal runs simply effective on the ten Professional. The cellphone additionally doesn’t appear to warmth up fairly as a lot or as shortly as earlier Tensor-powered Pixels both, which have a status for working sizzling. I used the ten Professional as a hotspot exterior on a heat morning with no downside — one thing I’ve had much less success with on earlier Pixel telephones.

The ten Professional’s battery capability is a bit larger 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 a bit worse than traditional regardless of the marginally upgraded capability. I examined it with the always-on show enabled and the very best display decision accessible. 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 night time. That’s effective, and inside the realm of a contemporary flagship cellphone, however not precisely stellar.

I’m nonetheless testing the ten Professional XL’s battery stamina. Given the entire resource-intensive, customized AI options on board, per week simply wasn’t sufficient to attract stable conclusions about battery life on two completely 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 lots to say concerning the Pixel 10’s different marquee addition, Qi2 help with built-in magnets, aside 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 customary. I throw my cellphone on a wi-fi charger on the finish of the day so slower charging by no means bothers me, however the magnets positive are good to have. I by no means put a case on my cellphone both, for higher and worse (largely worse), so I’m thrilled I can reap the advantages of what’s basically MagSafe on an Android cellphone 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 yr’s Pixel telephones stand out in a means 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 number 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 data if you want it, with out you having to go search for it. Which may sound obscure and unserious, nevertheless it’s the sort of factor we’ve been promised ever since corporations began speaking about AI on our telephones. And it really does work. Was it magic? Hardly, however what I’ve seen to this point 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 when you do stuff in your cellphone. It runs fully on machine — it’s not offloading something to the cloud — and solely works in a handful of Google apps. However they’re necessary ones, together with Gmail, Messages, Calendar, and the cellphone app in addition to final yr’s addition: Screenshots. If somebody messages you and asks for details about a date or reservation, Magic Cue will examine your calendar or your inbox and also you’ll see the small print pop up above the keyboard as a suggestion. You may lengthy press to examine the place Magic Cue received the knowledge or simply faucet to drop it into the dialog. I attempted it out in a fast staged-but-plausible take a look at with my colleague Vee Track by having her ask a couple of live performance I’d already placed on my calendar and it was truthfully cool as heck.

Magic Cue can also be supposed that can assist you seek for stuff. It does this by listening to 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 would possibly need to paste into the search bar, just like the identify of a product you have been simply 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 cellphone is monitoring what’s on my display a bit bizarre? For positive. However the truth that this data doesn’t go away the machine makes me really feel higher, or at the very least nearly as good as I can really feel, realizing that Google is aware of every little thing about me anyway.

I noticed Magic Cue most frequently provide to avoid wasting calendar occasions primarily based on my conversations. As I used to be determining a time to satisfy for espresso, Magic Cue provided a hyperlink to examine 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 like a robust descriptor, although I’ll enable it. Largely, this looks like a extremely useful characteristic that may take just a bit little bit of the friction out of utilizing your cellphone. Bear in mind the primary time you noticed your cellphone autofill a one-time 2FA code from a textual content? It’s like that. Finally, I feel that’s what AI on our telephones will turn out to be. One thing that simply occurs, saving us a bit 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 cellphone app the place it offers real-time voice translations on calls — a well-recognized characteristic, this time with a twist: it mimics the voice of the speaker. I as soon as once more known as on my colleague Vee Track (actually) who was additionally utilizing a Pixel 10. She enabled voice translations on her facet and spoke in Japanese. I heard the translations in English — and in a voice that sort of appeared like Vee. In response to Vee, the characteristic’s translation of my English into Japanese was fairly good, although it struggled a bit with what she calls her textbook Japanese. It received the purpose throughout, and I suppose it was nicer than listening to a neutral-sounding robotic.

However as Vee noticed, this characteristic would seemingly work greatest for a vacationer out of the country making an attempt to make a dinner reservation, not for members of the family 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 social gathering trick, although.

If voice translation is midway between a useful characteristic and a gimmick, then Day by day Hub leans even additional into gimmick territory. It’s lots just like the Now Temporary Samsung launched on its S25 telephones, and it’s alleged to act as a fast digest to your day in addition to a spot to seek out some inspiration primarily based in your current exercise. It does the primary a part of that job simply effective; it’s possibly a extra longwinded model of Google’s At a Look widget, which supplies you a heads up on the climate and upcoming calendar occasions. Nevertheless it additionally misconstrued a few of my current 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 serious 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 primarily based 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 in school. 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 realizing that you simply’re going to get some sort of suggestions on the finish is motivation for individuals to journal once they wouldn’t have in any other case? And I suppose I did make some extent to jot down an entry each night time earlier than mattress, which isn’t a behavior I’m in at the moment. However except for that, I can’t say I discovered the prompts or bits of reflection useful.

AI reveals up in yet one more place: the digicam app. And never simply as a device for including wild stuff to your pictures — it’s within the precise digicam. On the ten Professional and 10 Professional XL, there’s a brand new characteristic known as Professional Res Zoom that goals to make digitally zoomed pictures 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 try to clear up your picture.

This occurs after the very fact; the unique picture is retained, and all of it runs in your machine. It additionally doesn’t try to boost any individuals it identifies in a picture, which is for the higher. The outcomes rely lots in your topic, the situations, and the way far you’re pushing the zoom vary. With sufficient gentle, a predictable topic, and reasonable zoom, the outcomes might 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 really 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 present 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. Sort of poetic however not what I had in thoughts. And this goes with out saying, however Professional Res Zoom isn’t going to present you something that appears nearly 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 pictures are tagged with C2PA metadata that identifies them as captured with a digicam and edited utilizing generative AI. In truth, all pictures taken with the Pixel 10 are tagged to replicate whether or not or not AI was concerned, which could look like overkill however feels more and more essential in a world with accessible, succesful gen AI modifying instruments.

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

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

The Pixel is in sort of a humorous spot, particularly within the US. Yr after yr its market share is relatively small in our iPhone and Galaxy-dominated panorama. In truth, 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, notably in the previous few years as Google has pushed it into correct flagship territory. The ten Professional looks like that image of what’s attainable on Android greater than ever.

The Pixel 10 sequence represents the primary telephones from a significant OEM to get full Qi2 help. They’re the first phones to put C2PA content credentials on pictures taken with the digicam. They provide a glimpse of what AI can really 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 machine 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, notably within the Tensor period, the place utilizing a Pixel cellphone felt a bit bit like being an early adopter, and never in a great way. The costs have been decrease, however the {hardware} felt cheaper, software program bugs persevered, and the chipsets ran sizzling. However the Pixel sequence has advanced into one thing higher, one thing worthy of the title “flagship.” If the ten Professional represents the perfect of what Android can do, then there’s lots for Android followers to stay up for — whether or not it’s on a Pixel or not.

Images by Allison Johnson / The Verge