Perhaps the best part of owning a Pixel is that the phone is better a year in than on the day it launched. Google has very successfully made a name for itself in the industry with Pixel Drops, a set of quarterly updates delivered to Pixel phones alongside monthly security updates and annual operating system updates.
After a year with the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL, I can confidently say this phone is better now than it was last August, but that comes with some caveats along the way. Considering the rising prices of electronics these days, it very likely makes more sense to buy a Pixel 10 this year than a Pixel 11.
While the Pixel 11 is launching with several new features that might make Pixel 10 owners jealous, there is very little doubt in my mind that the vast majority, if not all, of these new features will come to the Pixel 10 Pro XL.
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But this past year hasn’t been without its problems for the Pixel 10 series, and a series of very serious, problematic software updates follows a trend Google simply shouldn’t be proud of. One of the reasons I didn’t recommend the Pixel 10 series last year was its bad software update track record, and Google did nothing to help that image this year. Let’s explore the best and worst of the Pixel 10 after one year, shall we?
Start with the bad
I’m going to get the bad out of the way because it’s really bad. Ever since the Pixel 6, Pixel phones have been a bit… buggy. Most of the time, a reboot fixes the issues, or, in a worst-case scenario, you have to wait a month or two for Google to patch them. But March 2025 marked the start of a trend in the wrong direction. I even wrote a guide on how to roll back your firmware at the time.
Somehow, the Pixel 10 series may have had the most update issues I can recall with a Pixel phone to date. For the first several months, Google continuously worked on weird graphical issues for the Pixel 10. Touch responsiveness and battery drain issues followed in January, and the patch even completely broke Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
And then the really big problems began. Google’s March 2026 update seemed to finally put an end to the GPU issues users had dealt with since launch, but it also bricked many Pixel 10 units. So many users reported the problem that the initial bug report hit the maximum number of comments, while the follow-up report is now 230 comments deep as of August 10.
This very scenario is something I was concerned about going into the Pixel 10’s release, and Google has done little to assuage my fears about recommending its devices. The problem mainly seems to come down to Google’s update cadence. With very rare exceptions, Pixels get an OS update every month. In my opinion, this is too much and doesn’t allow enough time for proper QA testing.
I wrote as much about Meta Quest headsets in April 2025, as the same kinds of issues kept popping up with every monthly software update. Quarterly or even bimonthly software updates make much more sense and would certainly give Google more time to test devices properly before rolling them out to the public.
At this point, there is zero likelihood that I would recommend Pixels to anyone, given Google’s abysmal track record of software update stability. It’s time for Google to take this seriously and fix a brand-killing problem.
Mellow it out a bit
Google has shied away from promoting its phones as top performers, and I said as much in my Pixel 10 Pro review. Some games are fine on this phone, while others aren’t. That hasn’t changed at all in a year.
But we did see some software changes toned down a bit compared to Google’s initial marketing. Pixel Daily Hub was removed just a few weeks after launch, and while Google said the feature would come back better than ever, that never happened. Instead, it looks like we got Gemini Daily Brief, a feature I enjoy using every morning, but not one that’s Pixel-exclusive, and it’s also not quite the same as what Daily Hub was.
Google also removed Pixel Studio, the AI-generated image creation suite that shipped with every Pixel 10. Ironically, Google did this right before Apple announced an identical AI-powered image generation app for iOS 27.
Now for some better news
If you made it this far (and I’m impressed you did, to be honest), then you’re about to get a lot happier about the Pixel 10’s future. Let’s start with Magic Cue, a feature hyped during the Pixel 10’s launch that turned out to be far less exciting than most hoped for. Google put major work into the feature, and it’s being relaunched as Gemini Proactive Intelligence with the Pixel 11 series and Android 17.
Google also debuted Material 3 Expressive in the Pixel 10 Pro’s first big update, further improving the look and feel of Pixels, with additional apps and settings windows getting the update a few months later. Google then debuted AI-powered notification summaries in October 2025, and Pixel Theme Packs a month later.
Subsequent updates gave us custom AI-generated icons, followed by a working desktop mode and a brand new notification organizer. Then, in 2026, we got Gemini automation (albeit not a Pixel-exclusive feature), lock screen widgets, and the rather awesome Comfort View Filters to reduce visual stimulation.
Yeah, it’s been a monumental year of jam-packed updates, often delivered via Pixel Drops each quarter. Assuming you weren’t one of the people who experienced major problems with your Pixel 10 after an update, you were probably extremely happy with Google’s support for its phones.
Which brings me back to what I said in the intro: the Pixel 10 Pro is a better phone today than it was on launch day, and that’s not just because Google introduced a boatload of new features. It’s also because the company wasn’t shy about pulling back features that weren’t worthwhile and then reintroducing them when they were improved.
Here’s hoping that the problematic updates we’ve seen over the past year for this phone are gone and, in their place, updates we can actually look forward to installing. Otherwise, I’m not entirely convinced people will want to keep returning to the Pixel brand.
