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

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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.

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.

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.