With the Pixel 10, Google inches ever-closer to its vision of a truly useful AI assistant in your pocket

The new Google Pixel 10 might give you a sense of déjà vu with its polished, familiar design, but the story this year is all about some powerful upgrades beneath the surface.

As with seemingly every tech launch this year, the new flagship phone is all about artificial intelligence. Built around the next-generation Tensor G5 chip, enabling a slew of clever on-device AI features. The new phone promises an even smarter, more proactive software experience, with on-device AI features like Magic Cue aiming to anticipate your needs when messaging friends and family. The camera gets some impressive new tricks too, notably ProRes zoom for unfathomably crisp (if semi-fictional) 100x shots.

The Pixel 10 is undeniably an excellent Android phone. Almost physically identical to last year's Pixel, the design of the Pixel 10 remains impeccably premium, with the now-iconic, pill-shaped camera bump housing some upgraded camera hardware. The new MagSafe-style Pixelsnap feature is a welcome addition. Android 16 is a pleasure to use too, with a fresh new look and apps and menus feeling snappier and more responsive than ever before.

While it is the best phone Google has ever made, most of the appeal is in the AI features and the software experience, making it tricky to recommend Pixel 9 users upgrade as they're about to receive the new Android 16 operating system as a free update.

I put both the Google Pixel 10 and the Pixel 10 pro XL through their paces for several weeks, using each of them in turn as my primary phone. As well as measuring their performance under real-world conditions, I assessed the phones in a few key areas:

Steve Hogarty is The Independent's tech critic. He dedicates his working life to testing the latest flagship smartphones from all the major brands, including Google and Samsung. His reviews are based on weeks of intensive use - he swaps in his own sim card and uses the phone as his primary device to get a true sense of its performance, battery life and camera capabilities under real-world conditions. This hands-on approach allows him to separate the genuinely useful features from the marketing gimmicks, ensuring his final verdict is always honest, unbiased, and based on how the phone actually performs in everyday life.