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Having reviewed a lot of Pixel phones over the years, I wanted to check if the AI hype around the new series was more than marketing spiel. This is why I have been walking around with the Google Pixel 10 for the past few weeks. Unlike the Google Pixel 10 Pro we reviewed recently, this is a base model with relatively muted camera specifications.
The Google Pixel 10 is a compact phone and caters to those who don’t want a lot of screen in their hands. For me, the 6.3-inch display made it a perfect second phone, easier to hide in the jeans pocket. The phone has a decent display with the 1080 x 2424 OLED 120Hz screen offering great colours and smooth visuals for videos and games.
The display is minimalist, and that’s one aspect to love about this phone. The Pixel 10 is not crying for attention, and the Obsidian model I had for review matched my aesthetics well. The only notable design feature is the camera bump, which tells the world this is a Pixel phone. The phone offers you a perfect grip and is lightweight for long hours of use.
The Google Pixel 10 is powered by Google Tensor G5 and runs Android 16 out of the box. In the weeks I used the device, I found it to be very powerful with no stuttering, whatever you are getting it to do. The phone also does not overheat, even when you have accumulated 100+ tabs in the Chrome browser or when you are shooting long videos in 4K.
But I felt the 4970 mAh battery should be able to give more than just a day of juice on a phone this size. Maybe it has more to do with how bad networks are in India still, but maybe a better yoking of the battery to the functionalities of the phone could help here.
A lot of people prefer Pixel phones because of their cameras. The Google Pixel 10 also has a great camera setup with a 48 MP wide-angle lens with Macro Focus and a 13 MP ultra-wide lens. The camera offers a 10.8 MP 5x telephoto lens now, with a 20x digital zoom that rarely pixellates. The Pixel’s superpower is offering users a complex camera where they don’t have to worry about the complexities or even the final output. The camera takes charge and gives you photos that have a natural feel about them.
Even an early morning shot of my plants by the window, clicked on 5x from my dimly-lit living room, looks like it is a well-framed, artsy photo.
But when I put my mind to it and shot something where the California sun was trying to be an artist on a hotel wall, it turned out as a stunning image, especially for a phone camera.
The Macro Focus is also impressive, even in low light. This wonderful orchid I found turned out the same way my eyes perceived it. Usually, phones have a tendency to overplay the colours, especially with flowers.
And as always, Pixel continues to impress with its low-light capabilities and night mode. For instance, the details in this photo of a lemonade seller’s wares are great when you consider it was taken at night without much light. A photo of kids prepping for Diwali shows the different shades of lights and colours this camera can capture at night.
The 10.5 MP Dual PD selfie camera is, without doubt, one of the best I have used, with results about the same natural feel as the rear camera.
The camera also comes with a bunch of AI features, from the ability to identify objects to being great with adding and removing subjects. In fact, there is the Add Me mode that lets you insert a person into a photo that has been shot, keeping this scenario in mind. It works well, but I found that this kind of use case comes very rarely in real life.
While Pixel has had AI features for a while now, I was more intrigued to see how Google has incorporated Gemini Nano into the phone. A press of the power buttons brings Gemini to the screen, but it works fully only when the phone is online. It always has context of where you are, and you can just ask it to explain what’s on the screen or just help you with something you had on mind. You can also use voice effectively to have a conversation with Gemini.
One of my big AI use cases is to interrogate Gemini on a new concept I want to learn. A conversation is always a better way to learn than just reading some academic text, though I did not like the default Indian voice. A conversation like this also gives you the ability to clear doubts right away. There is a Gemini App if you just want to tap that and start a query.
With AI embedded on your phone, you can also use the camera more effectively by just capturing anything you want to know more about, or just translating from a language you are not familiar with. For instance, I clicked the wallpaper of my Google TV, and Gemini told me where the image was shot, even the name of the photographer. During a trip to Kerala, I checked if it could read the Malayalam boards, and it did a good job.
There is more. You can just switch on the video and do a live sharing with Gemini, and it will decipher everything it sees, a great feature if you have vision challenges or if you are in unfamiliar territory.
Notebook LM, one of the best AI apps, is pre-burned on the phone and gives Pixel users the ability to have a notebook that helps them in more ways than one. This app is like your research assistant, helping you declutter stuff and pull the gist out of anything you could be working on. My suggestion is to move all your new projects to this app, even if you don’t have a Pixel.
But at the moment, the AI, though powerful, needs to be summoned to help you. For me, great use of this technology would be when it could nudge you to take actions that it thinks would be appropriate, like alerting to an app that could be draining the battery rather fast, or a priority email that has landed in your inbox and has missed your attention. Unless this happens, we would be under-utilising the capabilities of AI.
At Rs 79,999, the Google Pixel is a complete phone that brings powerful AI capabilities into your pocket. However, I think Google is delaying pushing more AI features in your face when it comes to its own smartphones. I am sure it has good reasons for not making a fully AI-powered Pixel at the moment. I am waiting for that moment.
