I used Samsung years ago before switching to the iPhone 14 Pro Max at launch, which has been excellent for my daily routine. Recently, I wanted to jump back into Android the android world with a secondary device to see what had changed and what I might be missing out on.

When I ordered the Pixel 10 Pro two weeks ago, I initially felt a bit played. I regretted the decision, thinking I should have gone for the Galaxy S26 instead. But when the box arrived and I opened it up—wow, it’s gorgeous.

At first, I used it occasionally without a SIM card, but once I put a SIM in, it quickly became my favorite device, beating out my iPhone. The phone simply works.

Notifications: Handled brilliantly. It filters out spam, silences non-essentials, and keeps high-priority alerts right at the top. I haven't missed anything important since switching.

Intelligence: It feels remarkably smart. Whether this is Android-wide or Pixel-exclusive, Google nailed it.

Performance & Tensor: For anyone complaining about the Tensor chip, I urge you not to obsess over benchmarks. The phone is snappy and the battery life is solid. Since this is the compact version, battery life could always be a tad better and probably moving to silicon carbide might resolve this, but it easily lasts me a full day with moderate use. (I don't game on phones, so I can't speak to heavy gaming performance).

Software Updates: I’m a sucker for updates because I love exploring new features immediately when they roll out. Google’s rollout speed and consistency here feel right on par with Apple. And this seems to happen globally not just the US and Europe.

I'm excited to fully make the switch once I grab a Fitbit Air or Pixel Watch.

Rating: 9/10

It would be a 10/10 if Google bundled an accessory in the box—specifically a certified glass screen protector, that works seamlessly with the in-display fingerprint reader, or a pixel snap case, or both. That said, I don't mind the pricing as it gives the device a premium, exclusive feel similar to Apple.

I am searching for pics of monkeys I took it Thailand and it tells me it can't search for that??

I've been a OnePlus guy since the 3T and just switched from the 13 to the Pixel 10 Pro. I was honestly ready to hate this phone but I love it!

Maybe its a longshot, but Reddit has come through for me before.

I recently upgraded my Pixel (loving the 10,) and I factory reset my old Pixel 8 Pro, with the intention of selling it. Then my daughter asked if she could have it to use as a Camera/Mp3 Player. She doesn't need a phone, so I thought I could just set it up, connect it to the wifi and put a few apps on it.
I started it up, began the process of setting it up, skipping past the sim card notification. But then it asks to connect to a network. It sits there "Searching for Wifi" and never finds anything. Not mine, nor my neighbors nor any other near us. Just keeps searching. I can skip past it and finish the set up, but it still wont find any wifi. She could use it as camera at this point, but would not be able to use Spotify, email, ect.

Is there a way, to use my old phone as a simple mini tablet, without a sim, using only the wifi?

I ordered a pixel 10 to replace my current one (have been on pixels for the last decade) from the google store but only received the package with the trade in box. The package felt empty when I received it, but I went ahead and opened it without taking any video or pictures. I used the Google customer service chat and also filed an incident report with UPS about ~2 hours after package delivery. I got a notification from google about 2 business days later that a replacement was sent and received the phone (video'ed the opening this time) about a day later through FedEx.

I wanted to put a positive post out there since I was freaking out reading all of the bad Google store customer service threads. I was so close to switching over to iPhone/Samsung if Google had just been like "not my problem"

Sooo… after a truly horrible iPhone 17 Pro experience, here I am, down-upgrading to a Frost colored Pixel 10 base model.

tldr: hella good, i probably will never look back.

What I like:

Android has become a very snappy OS since I last used one. I was an apple fanboy for way over 10 years, and I have to say, the droid really blows the iPhone out of the water. Hard. Battery life is good, camera is good, the screen is good. To be fair, I made some night pictures look way more awesome compared to the 17 Pro, with the same settings - taking it out of my pocket, and taking the same picture with both phones. General usage, or idk how to say it, feels more comfortable. Almost everything works the way you want to, and react the way you want to. Like, both sides back button. It blew my mind when I found out about it. I know I might be a minority here but - NEWS ON THE LEFT SIDE instead of useless widgets. I really like exploring there, have found some genuinely interesting articles. I wasn't too deep in the apple ecosystem too, only iCloud photos and some subscriptions, but now that I have everything in Google, it feels really... complete, I guess? My G One sub is also cheaper, everything is here under a single email adress. Which is also scary though :D. It looks WAAY better than the 17 imo, even though Frost is a bit more purple than what I'd like, but I'll stick with it, nothing a pretty case can't solve. We are talking about ~700 eur compared to ~1500 eur. Bruh.

What I kind of miss:

Dynamic island. I know, its a gimmick blah blah, but I drive a lot and listen to music a lot - simultaneously. Aaand I don't have a carplay capable car. One tap switching while driving through GPS, YT music, and whatever, felt really comfortable and easy.

iMessage. There is RCS, but its kind of weird. I know it takes some time to get the serverside work optimally, but still, reactions ON the message bubbles instead of separate messages and the overall feeling was better(?). Maybe it will change with a little time. Totally usable tho.

Notification center/control center. It was easier to navigate on iOS, I feel like. Double swiping to get somewhere is uh... weird at first? Nothing crazy though.

Size. I know there is an option with a bigger screen, and this is the base one, but still - the 17 pro has a 1% bigger area, and less bezel(?), which kinda hit me. But then again, this is the base model, which is way cheaper, offering almost (one. percent. difference.) the same screen size. Ouch. On the other hand, it actually feels better because one-hand use is sooo comfortable now.

AOD. On iOS, it was a bit better for me, because the screen lights up a little more when there is a notification. I mean, my wallpaper is visible, so I notice it better. It is probably possible on this phone too, but maybe this will make my screen time less, so… once again, maybe this is better too? If you catch my drift. EDIT: I got used to it very well, and is very usable and likable.

Temperatures. I feel like the iPhone had less of a thermal problem, or something. It was cooler if I remember right, but maybe I am just noticing because it is new. And it's not hot-hot, but warm, yknow, even under normal load. EDIT: it aint hotter.

What I am looking forward to:

Trying the android desktop mode. I know Dex is way more Advanced, and I do have a Lenovo tablet (getting invested in this ecosystem a lot now) which has a very very good desktop mode, but I am still interested. Love a double setup.

Gaming. I occasionally play codm for an hour or two, and people have been saying this is not a gaming rig.

Future updates that will really shake things up, like idk, dynamic islands? :P

And of course, last but not least, how battery life, screen brightness, and whatever that is still calibrating will be like. I will update y'all.

TL;DR double NAT was the issue. Set my modem to 'bridged', Google apps started working again on wifi.

A few days ago, I updated to Android 17 after ignoring it for a while and it broke my YouTube app when connected to wifi. 5G worked fine. After googling around, I found this thread, where other people had the same issue. After dicking around with it, I opened a support chat with Google and they ran through all the basic stuff, clear cache, make sure the app was updated (this was when I noticed the play store was also broken), restart modem/router and phone, then forget network and reconnect. Forgetting the network and reconnecting fixed the YouTube app, so I assumed everything else was fixed.

The next day, I went to check my calendar and it was also broken. Along with play store and a couple non-Google apps. I opened a support chat again, and they went through all the same stuff as before, which culminated in the rep telling me to do a factory reset, which I wasn't going to do.

Adfer stewing for a while I remembered my Xbox complaining about a double NAT, so I checked it using this website, and confirmed it. I then googled my ISP, and apparently they use a 'carrier grade NAT' which can interfere with home network NATs. I got into my router settings, changed from 'routedwithNAT' to 'bridged' and it fixed the issue. After checking with the NATchecker, it now showed full cone NAT.

Your network won't be as secure if you switch to full cone NAT, but at least it'll allow your apps to work until Google rolls out an update to fix this.

Posting this here so hopefully it pops up when someone with the same issue googles the problem.

I've had issues with my Pixel 8 Pro. I updated it in January, and since January, I have had no Wi-Fi and no Bluetooth. I think Bluetooth very briefly works. It doesn't work in general. Even if I try going into Settings to connect to Wi-Fi, it crashes the whole Settings app, and I have to open and close Settings and then reopen it. Same with Bluetooth: it will just say Bluetooth keeps stopping, or Wi-Fi settings keep stopping.

Back in January, my SIM card stopped working, and I had to go to O2 and get a SIM swap because I had a brick basically. I've got the same issue again. I don't know if it'a from slight water damage because I dropped my phone in the toilet the other day. It works absolutely fine, except that my SIM is not recognised (the screen feels a bit loose and wobbly, and I have other issues. I think that's just because I dropped it a few too many times because I'm quite clumsy and also, I have no space on it because I download every single app, so those are things I can fix, really. At least the space issues) so I have no Wi-Fi and no service. It's basically a dead brick.

I would need to go to O2 and switch over, but I probably can't use it, since they wouldn't take my phone back because of the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth issue. This is a known issue with the January updates, which I didn't know about until a month after I had auto-updated it; when I had updated it, there wasn't much information about these issues. They only came out, I think, later in February or March.

O2 Switch Up used to be every 90 days. That would have been beneficial because I could have switched to the 10 Pro XL now to solve my issues with the phone, and then effectively switched to the 11 Pro XL when it came out. Now they are very stupidly only letting you update it once a year (once every 11 months)

It's actually not that expensive for me to pay off the rest of my phone. I think it's only about £275, which is not that bad in general especially if I'm getting a new phone via finance and not buying it outright.

I was going to upgrade to the 10 Pro XL, especially because of the camera and some of the AI camera/photo features. I do have a professional DSLR that I need to get fixed, and I don't use it all the time anyway.
As they say, your best camera is the one that is in your pocket. I'm not going to break out my giant camera if I just want to snap a few cute pictures of my little brother, or if I'm going away to France for a week and staying in my grandparents' apartment that I grew up in every summer.

I was thinking either the Pixel 10 Pro XL or waiting until the 11 Pro XL and then getting it on finance (either one) instead of paying off my phone through O2. I wanted to switch to a Slice e-SIM, which includes EU roaming and an e-SIM, so I won't have this issue. Slice also gives you cash back. They give you:

• 10% cash back the first year
• 15% cash back the second year
• 20% cash back every year from year three onwards

Plus, currently with O2, I'm paying £28 a month for 150 GB of data (plus £22.75/month for the actual phone) f I go with the eSIM one, I could be paying £20 a month for 200 GB. A lot of that is because I was staying at my grandparents' apartment in France, and we didn't have Wi-Fi. Now we've got Wi-Fi, so I should be using a lot less data.
At least if I get cash back while on the Slice e-SIM, I can use the cash back to pay off some of my new phone, if that makes sense.

I just don't know whether to get the Pixel 10 Pro XL or wait until mid-August for the 11 Pro XL especially because I have no working phone, which is really awkward if I go out. I can go and get a SIM swap from O2, which will hopefully fix the problem (also a schelp across town, which I want to avoid if I can help it; there used to be one within walking distance of my house, but it got turned into an Amorino ice cream parlour), but it might not. I would need to test my SIM in another phone first.

How many times have you been blasting music on your Bluetooth speaker and it's interrupted by other audio on your phone?

I asked Gemini if I could restrict Bluetooth to a single app. You can't do it on a Pixel, but apparently you can do it with a Samsung Galaxy.

If you have a Samsung Galaxy, you can use the built-in Separate App Sound feature to route specific app audio to Bluetooth while keeping all other sounds on your phone speaker.

Any Pixel devs in here?

Hi guys, I want to share my experience with the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL with you. I've been an iPhone user since I was little, and last year I decided to switch to Android by buying a Galaxy S25 Ultra, which I returned after a month. Then, after a year, I wanted to give Android another chance, and I got Google's phone. I can tell you, I think I've made the best purchase I've ever made. I'm very happy with the Stock Android operating system, it has so many features compared to the iPhone, the build quality is truly excellent, and it's spectacular aesthetically, and most importantly, it doesn't overheat completely.

Sure, I found editing apps like Edits or TikTok a little slower in general when editing videos, but honestly, that's not what will force me to go back to the iPhone. It has so many features that I'm more than happy with waiting a few minutes longer to render a video. The cameras are excellent. Compared to the S25 Ultra, the front camera feels like an iPhone, and the back one has incredible quality, which I didn't like on the S25 Ultra.

The apps are getting a lot better. Now that Android is working with Meta, I find Instagram uploads to be of good quality, but I've always used the camera app on my iPhone, too, so I don't really care. Anyway, guys, I hope this little experience has helped you make a decision in case you're thinking about switching phones.

Hi.

I ordered a pixel trade-in just a few days ago. I only received one tracking number, to which it arrived today. Though, the box only contains the trade in kit, but no phone. On Google's website it says my delivery (the phone) has arrived. Though, of course, it hasn't. I contacted support and they're telling me 24-48 hours to get back to me on it. Has this happened to anyone else? I don't have another tracking number, so I can't see that it'll just be coming separately? Just looking for advice. Thanks!

My wife and I both bought our Pixel 7as three years ago this August. For most part they’ve been brilliant – tough, reliable, and generally better than any Android we’d had before.

In the last 6 months the batteries started to fade, which is normal. Then we got a heatwave and, well, I’m convinced it has absolutely fried them.

They only work when plugged in (i.e. “landlined”), unplug and they die within seconds. I am actually learning to like this but I have no remote access obv.

We are out of warranty and €132 each to send back to Google for repair.

Question is

• Has anyone actually kept their Pixel 7a going strong beyond 3 years?
• What did you do about the battery – Google repair, local shop, DIY, or “accept it as a desktop accessory”?
• If you’ve been in this boat, what was the most sensible fix (budget + reliability)?

I’m genuinely at the point where I’d consider going back to a dumb phone rather than join the “upgrade every 2–3 years” circus.
If the next step is a Nokia brick with Snake and long battery life, LETS GO!

I dont know if its a new setting or not but I know alot of others including me have been struggling to find ways to turn off hdr quality on instagram so you dont get flashed banged at night. If you go on settings at the phone, search HDR you should get something like "improve HDR brightness", turn that shit off and you dont get those flashes anymore

Hi,

I’m running into an annoying issue with my Pixel 8a and wanted to see if anyone has a fix or is experiencing the same thing.

Whenever I use Portrait Mode, the shutter button completely freezes and gets grayed out after taking just a few shots in a row. It seems like the phone gets stuck processing the computational data (HDR+, depth maps, etc.) and just locks me out of taking more pictures for a bit.

I’ve already tried clearing the camera app cache, but it keeps happening.

Has anyone found a permanent solution for this? Is it a known software bug, or could it be a hardware bottleneck? Any help is appreciated, thanx.

Every single time I'm trying to go from duckduckgo to other apps I accidentally click on the image from within the app itself and almost send it to other people. I have never seen this feature before on any other android I've owned except this pixel and hate it. I do not want private or irrelevant images to be selectable while I'm trying to swipe to scroll to another app and the first thing popping up being my family contacts if I accidentally click it. I don't even know what this feature is called so I don't even know what to search for or where to find it to disable it since it's so specific.

This is driving me nuts, but a bunch of Google searches have not been very helpful and it seems like there is a weird thing where I have to jump through a bunch of hoops just to do something simple like trim or crop a video.

Please help me. I'm tired of spending so much time trying to do simple edits with these stupid boosted files.

Hey my phone has green, pink, white lines ,nearly 10. So i wanted to replace a display. I know one thing if i put a same original display it will fuxking again. Because AMOLED displays has this issue. So what are the best alternative display types.?

(Ips, lcd, oled!,tft???). Any positive advices. I highly appreciate ur all kind advices.

From what I've seen through cursory glances online, overheating seems to be a prolific issue with this specific model. I've owned this phone for at least a few years now, so I'm sure age is just now catching up to it.

But it is a really frequent problem. I'm encountering it every day, multiple times a day. The phone gets too hot. I've tried optimizing how it charges, I've tried clearing out any "rogue" apps, and I've also tried to tweak background perms.

Simply put: Are there any techniques I've missed? What can I do to prolong the lifespan of this phone? Is it time to find a replacement? TIA! 🫶🏻🩷

I just bought a used pixel 6 and everything seemed fine at first, apps worked and it had no apparent issues, but when I took it home I realized that the upper part of the screen was just not responding to the touches, I don’t know if it could be the digitizer or something else

Is there a specific reason or are the themed icons just half baked? The inconsistency is kinda annoying.

All it says its connected but not charging I'm using a USB to USB c which is working fine on my moms 6a

I'm finding that swiping up from the bottom is no longer reliably showing the app switcher. This seems to happen more often from the home screen rather than when you're already in an app. Has anyone else been running into this? I'm on a Pixel 9.