Google's Pixel 10 Pro XL: A Leap Forward in AI-Powered Smartphones

Pixel 10 Pro XL review: Google's superphone gets AI and magnetic upgrades

Top camera, great software, solid battery life and huge screen bolstered by helpful Gemini and Qi2 support Google's Pixel superphone is back, packed with a bigger battery, faster charging, magnetic accessories and even more cutting-edge AI tools to try to usurp Apple and Samsung as the monarchs of really big phones. The Pixel 10 Pro XL is the largest slab phone Google makes and is one of the biggest available in Europe and the US. It costs £1,199 (€1,299/$1,199/A$1,999), sitting above its smaller sibling the Pixel 10 Pro and below the upcoming folding Pixel 10 Pro Fold, and competing directly with Apple's iPhone 17 Pro Max and Samsung's Galaxy S25 Ultra. The 10 Pro XL is almost identical on the outside to the 9 Pro XL it replaces in terms of dimensions but with 11g of additional weight. It is a big, heavy phone that requires two hands to use most of the time and benefits from a phone grip or handle. It has a huge, bright and smooth OLED screen, which is one of the very best and excellent for watching TV and films. The back hides Qi2.2 wireless charging and magnetic accessory support, making it one of a very small number of phones that can charge at up to 25W using a new generation of wireless chargers. The 10 Pro XL has the same Google Tensor G5 chip as the rest of the Pixel 10 lineup and performs just as well, feeling rapid in general use. It plays games just fine, but those wanting the best graphics and frame rates in high-end mobile games are better served by rivals with Qualcomm's top Snapdragon chip, such as the S25 Ultra. The biggest Pixel also has the largest battery with the longest run time. The 10 Pro XL matches its predecessor, lasting about 52 hours between charges after a mix of usage across wifi and 5G. The phone should outlast even the heaviest of usage days, with most people probably needing to charge it every other day. The 10 Pro XL has the same Android 16 software and AI features as the 10 Pro, making it one of the most expressive and polished experiences available. Google will provide updates until 2032. The Gemini chatbot is available throughout the system, and has its own stand-alone app that can see what is on your screen or through the camera to help. But the standout new feature is Magic Cue, which runs locally in the background as a proactive little helper presenting data from your calendar, emails, chats and other Google apps on your phone when you need it. It will pop up with the location of a restaurant when a friend texts about your dinner date or shows your order emails in the phone app when you ring a recognised business. It works great in Google's various apps, and a handful of third-party ones, but not WhatsApp or other popular messaging apps yet. The 10 Pro XL also comes with a year's subscription for Google AI Pro, for access to the company's more powerful Gemini models, and 2TB of cloud storage for photos, files and email, worth £19 a month. The big Pixel has the same camera system as the 10 Pro, meaning your choice is only about phone size not camera quality. The 50-megapixel main, 48MP ultra wide and 48MP 5x telephoto cameras are some of the very best you can get. Point and shoot with the 10 Pro XL and you are almost guaranteed a great shot regardless of the conditions. It also has a handful of helpful AI tools including: the novel Camera Coach; Add Me, which blends two photos to put the photographer into group shots; and Best Take, which has now been made automatic. It helps get group shots where everyone is looking at the camera by shooting a photo when everyone is looking once you press the shutter button or blending multiple shots where needed. Finally, it has the Pro Res Zoom feature that kicks in when you push beyond 30x magnification and uses genAI to put the detail and sharpness back into images lost to digital zoom. It isn't always perfect and is switched off when the system detects a person, but it can have remarkable results, making blurry 100x zoom images much clearer and more usable. But it is also not a true photo at that point, as it has been interpreted and remade by AI, and is labelled as such by the camera app using C2PA content credentials. Overall, whether you use the AI tools or not, the Pixel has one of the very best camera systems on the market. The battery is rated to last in excess of 1,000 full charge cycles with at least 80% of its original capacity. The phone is repairable by Google, third-party shops, or self-repair using manuals and parts available. The Pixel 10 Pro XL contains 29% recycled materials by weight including aluminium, cobalt, copper, glass, gold, plastic, rare-earth elements, tungsten and tin. The company breaks down the phone's environmental impact in its report and will recycle old devices for free. The camera is one of the very best, the screen is great and the software, including Google's most cutting-edge AI features, is top notch. The addition of Qi2.2 support speeds up wireless charging, but more helpfully opens up a world of magnetic accessories including grips to make the big phone easier to hold. The Pixel feels responsive but it isn't a dramatic upgrade on last year's 9 Pro XL model. When it comes to raw power, particularly for games, the Pixel falls short against rivals such as the Samsung's Galaxy S25 Ultra, which remains the superphone to beat.

The Pixel 10 Pro is a must-buy for me thanks to these AI features

The Pixel 10 Pro serves a helpful side of AI that will take you by surprise on a daily basis. I've been a Pixel smartphone user since the first one from Google landed on the scene, rocking its sleek metallic build and a lone rear camera that set a new benchmark. The Pixels retained their signature camera chops over the subsequent generations, and thanks to computational photography advancements, they continued to wow. The journey hasn't been exactly smooth-sailing for Google. But then, the real undercurrent for Pixel smartphones has always been delivering a standout software experience. Ten generations later, it's become evident that the convergence of Gemini AI and Android was the ultimate goal. And it's not just for show. Recommended Videos On the Pixel 10 Pro line-up, Google has delivered an AI experience that touches nearly every aspect of the phone. From phone calls and scam detection to taking astoundingly clear long-range shots and putting an invisible AI sidekick into action, these tricks truly put the Pixel 10 in a league of its own. Magic Cue Think of it as an always-present assistant that reads the context of your actions and automatically pulls the relevant information. In a nutshell, it shows you what you need before you actually go hunting for it. For example, as I was texting my brother, I mentioned plans for a phone call at nine. Recognizing the context of the chat, the AI automatically put a small chip by the chat bubble, which allowed me to set a reminder with a single click. Likewise, during a call, when I mentioned a concert ticket, I saw a chip on the call screen where I could glean those details pulled from the actual ticket in my inbox. In the Messages app, while I was discussing a cafe, a map action automatically popped up. Magic Cue can do its job in chat, phone, weather, Maps, shopping, and streaming apps. Thankfully, you can also control which apps Magic Cue can pull data from. When I first saw the feature appear in the marketing videos, I was pretty skeptical, but after pushing it, Magic Cue has emerged as my favorite perk on the Pixel 10 Pro. ProRes Zoom Long-range capture has always been a challenging scenario for smartphones, mostly because you only have so much space to fit a large sensor and moving lens parts to achieve sharp results. On the Pixel 10 Pro, the updated telephoto camera architecture not only manages 10x optical quality and 20x Super Res Zoom, but an unprecedented 100x Pro Res Zoom, thanks to some help from AI. Interestingly, a lot of heavy-lifting is also done by the Tensor G5 silicon and an AI model that generates pixels to recover details lost during digital cropping. And this is no ordinary AI at play here. It's so demanding that only the Pro models have the processing bandwidth to handle it. "Pro Res Zoom is the largest AI model ever used on Pixel Camera, helping deliver the highest-quality zoom on a smartphone," says Google. The results are astonishing. Most cameras, in my experience, that have attempted this feat have relied on aggressive sharpening and denoising at such high zoom levels. On the Pixel 10 Pro, the results are a lot more natural, retaining realistic colors and geometry of the objects appearing in the frame without any overt oil-painting effect or choppy surface details. It even does a fantastic job at reducing color noise, even in handheld mode, which is no small achievement. Video Boost For years, iPhones have been held in high regard for their astoundingly smooth videos, especially after Apple embraced the sensor-shift stabilization tech. On the Pixel 10 Pro, Google has enhanced the stabilization pipeline for videos, and paired with the refined 50-megapixel camera, it can now record some terrific action footage. On the Pixel 10 Pro, you can record up to 8K clips and send them to the cloud for processing. Thanks to heavy AI processing, the final result fares much better at controlling grain, exposure adjustment, and most importantly, improving the frame stability. It truly shows its true potential in low-light scenarios, where a boost in saturation and exposure brings dim footage to life. The whole pipeline integrates seamlessly with Night Sight and Super Res Zoom, so you are covered on both challenging fronts. The results, irrespective, are unbelievably good, especially when you play within the 20x Super Res Zoom range. At that level of magnification, most smartphones simply deliver choppy footage. The Pixel 10 Pro makes the best out of its AI chops and advanced hardware to deliver videos that are much better than raw capture. It brings out a heck ton of extra details in terms of colors, sharpness is boosted, and even the zoom in/out transitions look seamless. The only caveat is that this feature is still tied to cloud-based processing, as the enhancement doesn't happen on-device. Camera Coach Of course, you are buying a Pixel smartphone for its camera chops. But as the adage goes, a camera is only as good as the person behind it. Simply put, you must know a few basics of framing and color adjustments to make the best out of your Pixel 10 Pro. Well, not quite. Google has packed an AI-powered feature that quite literally coaches you on how to fix and improve the frame in real time. The feature in question is called Camera Coach, and it works pretty well. It tells you to shift the frame so that the subject follows the golden rule of the thirds, analyzes the background items to make corrections, and once you've selected the exact look that you are going for, the real magic begins. Camera Coach takes you on a step-by-step tour where it suggests that you find the best zoom (or wide-angle) view, adjust the vertical angle, and level it with respect to the central object in the frame. The whole system is pretty dynamic, and on a few occasions, it will genuinely surprise you. For example, while trying to click a picture of my cat, the style carousel suggested a shot of the superhero figurines on the corner shelf. Within a few steps, the guided photography system helped me click a surprisingly well-composed shot of the tiny statues, ready to post on my socials for bragging rights. The best part is that the whole process is pretty simple and not overwhelming, at all.