Google has officially announced its latest flagship smartphones, the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro and Pixel 10 Pro XL at a flashy event in New York City. The devices have very similar designs to last year’s Pixel 9 series but do bring notable if minor upgrades across the board.
They boast premium designs with eye-catching new colours including a fetching indigo, the new Google Tensor G5 chipset across the board, brighter displays, seven years of software support to 2032 and magnetic Qi2 wireless charging (called Pixelsnap as MagSafe is Apple’s brand name).
The phones also mark the introduction of Google’s Material 3 Expressive design language for Pixels, which it says makes your device more personalised, with customisation options, big icons and bright colours throughout the Android 16 software.
Google also introduced a folding Pixel 10 Pro Fold and the Pixel Watch 4, which comes in two sizes.
But Google’s biggest Pixel bet remains on artificial intelligence (AI) features, and these new phones are stuffed to the gills with them. The main new tool is called Camera Coach, which uses AI to help you take better photos in the camera app with framing and composition suggestions.
AI is also used to help improve image quality if you zoom beyond 30x with Pro Res Zoom on the Pro models. Also on all phones, as with older Pixels, are Best Take and Add Me, which manipulate reality to put the best faces on people from a burst of shots, or adding the taker of a photo to the final image by taking a photo of them in the same spot afterwards.
A system-wide new feature in Google apps called Magic Cue promises “proactive contextual suggestions” according to Google, with on-screen text pointing you towards a likely next action, such as displaying your upcoming flight information from Gmail in the Phone app if the Pixel 10 detects you are on a call to that same airline, or suggesting to forward the information via text if a saved contact asks for your flight information in Google Messages.
The base Pixel 10, which starts at £799, has three rear cameras including a 5x optical telephoto lens for the first time on the entry-level model, though spec sheet detectives will note that is at the cost of a hardware downgrade to the main and ultra-wide cameras, which are a notch below those on the older Pixel 9.
Most buyers won’t know or care, but for the enthusiast crowd, it’s worth noting.
The Pixel 10 Pro and 10 Pro XL have more advanced displays than the 10, with LTPO tech that is more power efficient and can scale between 1Hz and 120Hz refresh rate depending on what you’re doing. The choice is between 6.3-inch or 6.8-inch screens, but unlike last year, the XL has some hardware advantages with improved speakers and a faster wireless charging speed of 25W vs 15W.
The 10 Pro starts at £999 for a 128GB model, whereas the 10 Pro XL costs from a hefty £1,199 but does at least come with 256GB.