The Pixel 10 Pro is a flawed and inconsistent phone — and I'm still using it one year later

I find it hard to believe that it’s been almost a year since I got my Pixel 10 Pro. Since August 28th, it has been my primary phone (almost) every day, and I adore this phone when it’s working as it should.

The problem, as is often the case with Pixels, is that it doesn’t always work as Google intended. Looking back, it’s been a year of ups and downs with the Pixel 10 Pro, but it’s still the only phone I want to call my own.

The Pixel 10 Pro is the perfect size

After five years of using Samsung’s huge Ultra phones, I was ready to use something smaller. Toward the end of 2024, I played with an iPhone 16 Pro for a few weeks and loved having a phone I could comfortably use with one hand without sacrificing camera hardware.

That’s the main reason I pre-ordered my Pixel 10 Pro. It has almost identical hardware to the larger XL model, aside from the screen and battery size, and it offers significantly better cameras than my Galaxy S24 Ultra. I still prefer those cameras to my wife’s Galaxy S26 Ultra.

I’m not going to call the Pixel 10 Pro a small phone. It’s still bigger than a base Galaxy S26, and it’s heavier than you’d imagine. Even so, it’s a comfortable phone in all situations, and not once have I ever found myself wishing it were bigger. It sits in that sweet spot of being big enough to easily enjoy looking at photos, watching videos, and using any apps you’d like without giving me hand cramps.

Pixel features I can’t let go of

The other thing that’s kept me coming back to my Pixel 10 Pro all year is the software features you can’t find anywhere else. Now Playing is a prime example of that. Being able to find out which song is playing in a shop or cafe without having to do anything more than glance at my lock screen is something I miss whenever I use another phone. My wife had a Pixel 4 several years ago and has used Samsung phones ever since. Even now, she still misses Now Playing.

Call screening is another one of those features. Other companies, including Samsung, have created their own versions of call screening, but none are as good as Google’s. The Pixel has always done a better job of automatically detecting spam calls and handling them for me, instead of leaving me to choose whether to screen or accept a call.

In the same vein, Hold for Me and Direct My Call are two other features I can’t live without. I changed my internet service provider last month, and the Pixel made the process so much easier than it would have been on another phone by labeling all the options and handling all the holds for me. I know it’s a cliche to say this about a Pixel, but it has smart features other smartphones don’t. It’s a smarter smartphone.

Pixel-perfect pictures

The Pixel 10 Pro doesn’t have the most exciting cameras. Phones like the Motorola Razr Fold have a stronger, more distinctive style, which can leave the Pixel feeling a little bland at times. The Pixel makes up for that with consistency. A Pixel’s photos are always natural, and in the year I’ve owned this phone, I can’t recall missing a shot. Editing photos can be tedious, but I’d rather have to edit some drama into a well-captured photo than salvage something that’s over-processed.

When I went to Cornwall for my holiday this year, the Pixel did a stellar job of capturing the places I want to remember. The two beach photos, in particular, have a warmth to them that I’m glad the Pixel was able to preserve. One of the reasons it managed to do so was the easy-to-access white balance slider in the Pixel’s camera app. You only need to tap the viewfinder once to summon the slider, unlike Samsung’s camera app, which buries such settings behind several sub-menus. I know you can adjust these things in the editor after taking a photo, but doing it before you even take the picture saves time.

I also like the different modes Google has added to its camera app over the years. I played around with the long exposure mode quite a bit during my trip, and I love how shots of moving water turn out, especially in the third image in the gallery above.

My Pixel 10 Pro has replaced my Sony A6300 in many situations. I love my camera, but taking it, its lenses, and replacement batteries to a car show is a chore, not a pleasure, and the Pixel always delivers excellent photos and videos and is much easier to carry. But what the Pixel has done best, above all else, is help me save as many memories as I can with the little guy who came into my life toward the end of last year.

I won’t go into all of the details, but after some tragic events within my close friend group, we took Bandit in last October. He’s the first pet I’ve had since I was a child, and one of my biggest regrets is how few photos I have of my childhood pets. Smartphones weren’t something a 10-year-old had back then. The Pixel is pulling overtime to make sure I never have that regret with his Royal Roundness. Since we’ve had him, my wife and I have taken nearly 3,000 photos, and the Pixel 10 Pro has captured the vast majority.

While Samsung phones constantly struggle to focus or expose correctly for his black fur or lose the moment to shutter lag, the Pixel has nailed every shot. No matter the lighting or whether he’s moving, the 10 Pro has made sure I will have as many memories of this little man as possible, something you should never take for granted with a 14-year-old cat. It doesn’t matter what complaints I go over in the next section — this phone has justified its price based on sentimentality alone.

Pixel problems persist

When my Pixel 10 Pro works as intended, I’ve gotten some stellar longevity from it, often ending the day with 25% left after 16 hours off charge with over nine hours of screen time. The trouble with the Pixel 10 Pro, and many Pixels before it, is that they often don’t work as intended. There has been a shockingly widespread battery-drain issue on several Pixel models this year, leaving my phone barely able to last five or six hours between charges. I didn’t mind the slow charging speeds Google insists on sticking with when I only had to charge the phone overnight, but the lethargic charging was unbearable when I was topping up two or even three times a day.

Google says the battery drain has been fixed, but many people are still experiencing issues. In my case, things have improved enough that I have my SIM back in the 10 Pro, but it isn’t quite as good as it was when I got it. Thanks to this job, I had no shortage of phones to use while I was waiting for the Pixel’s issues to get fixed, but most people don’t, and the frequency with which issues like this plague Google’s phones is unforgivable.

I know that complaining about a Tensor chip running hot isn’t exactly original, but it’s baffling how hot this phone gets sometimes. Older Tensor-powered Pixels would, in my experience, get hot when the phone was doing specific things, such as using the cameras for extended periods, gaming, or heavy 5G use. The heat build-up was something you could predict.

My Pixel 10 Pro, on the other hand, gets hot at the most random of times. When I’m spamming the camera shutter button or streaming YouTube at max brightness over 5G in direct sunlight, the phone says cool even though I’d expect some heat. Scrolling through Threads in my bedroom at night over Wi-Fi or going through my Gmail inbox shouldn’t warm the phone up, and yet those tasks often make it as hot as a Galaxy Note 7 in the seconds before its demise.

Really, all of my complaints about the Pixel 10 Pro could be summed up with one word: inconsistency. The phone has the potential to be great, and it very often is. But those moments of greatness are interspersed with periods of time when the phone is almost unusable, and that’s not good enough.

It’s sticking around for now

I’ve been fortunate enough to use a lot of phones this year, many of which have been fantastic. Despite that, and with the issues I’ve had in mind, the Pixel 10 Pro is still the phone I enjoy using the most.

It feels like my phone in a way few devices ever have, which means I don’t plan to replace it anytime soon. The Pixel 11 series will most likely improve on the 10 series, but year-over-year upgrades are so small these days that I doubt I’ll feel any inclination to upgrade. I’m not prepared to throw more money at Pixels until I see evidence that reliability and consistency have improved.

I’m hoping the Pixel 11 series addresses all my complaints so I can feel confident enough to buy a Pixel 12 Pro next year.