There have been many debates online about Google’s new tensor g5 chip, which is included in the Pixel 10. It seems that people either love or hate this phone. Most of the complaints about this chip center around its slightly lower GPU performance, which is about 5 percent worse than the Pixel 9. However, users will notice significantly faster performance in daily use, especially when multitasking or when using on-device AI features. After extensively testing this phone’s ability to handle heavy everyday usage, I can safely say that it exceeds my expectations. Here’s my Pixel 10 Review after Switching from iPhone 16E.
Table of Contents
Hardware
The Pixel 10 base model offers 128 or 256 gb of storage. It has a large camera bar which can be a bit of a dust trap. This phone has face ID and an ultrasonic fingerprint sensor underneath the screen. I have so far had no issue using either form of biometric identification. The right side of the phone contains the power button, and below that, a volume rocker. Overall, I really like the minimalistic design of this phone.
Speakers and Mics
The microphones on the Pixel 10 are very good, I actually prefer them over the iPhone 16e. The speakers are clear, and can reach a decently loud volume. I was very impressed by both the microphones and the speakers.
Initial Setup
The setup process for this phone was a breath of fresh air. I was very concerned about my data transferring from my iPhone, but I need not have worried. Everything transferred seamlessly, and signing into my accounts was a breeze.
Setting up face ID couldn’t have gone more smoothly. There were settings for allowing face ID with your eyes closed, and for individuals with limited vision or head motion. I enabled both these settings just to be safe, and I have not had any problems with my face being recognized. When setting up my fingerprint, the Pixel gave me clear instructions on where to place my finger. It took some getting used to, but I can now reliably find the fingerprint censor every time.
Battery Life
The Pixel 10 battery can easily last a day with light to moderate usage. I was previously using an iPhone 16e, and in my opinion the Pixel’s battery is much better. It also charges fairly quickly, usually in about 45-60 minutes.
The Accessibility Perks
The home screen is very accessible. Arranging apps and creating folders is easy with Talkback.
The notifications screen is very well-labeled, notifications can be read, cleared, and otherwise acted on with ease.
The camera app surpassed my expectations. The Pixel has a feature called guided frame to help blind users with centering a subject, and it will automatically start a 3-second countdown, then take a photo once the subject is in the frame. I have had good luck with taking selfies this way, as well as pictures of other people. When I took a picture of my guide dog, guided frame was able to help me line up the camera, which means that it recognized her as a subject. There is also an accessibility feature for video recording, which attempts to noise cancel TalkBack’s speech output if it speaks while you are recording. I found this mostly effective, though a few syllables did slip through the cracks here and there. I do appreciate the effort though, because text to speech interrupting a video is a real pain. I have experimented with some of the new AI features in the camera app, one of the more interesting ones being the ability to have Gemini edit your photos. You can type to Gemini and ask it to do things like crop something out of the photo, change the background color, or zoom in on one portion of the photo. Because I cannot see the results of this, I can’t safely say that it works well. However, it is still a very cool feature.
The Pixel has a number of other AI features as well, one of them being magic cue. This feature provides contextual information and helpful suggestions while using the phone. Examples of this include offering to create a calendar event if someone texts you about an event happening at a certain date or time, or providing a phone number if someone asks you to call a business. I have found these features helpful, but they are not groundbreaking in my opinion.
The quick settings screen is wonderful. Everything can be adjusted with Talkback, which, considering the lack of accessibility with this screen on many other Android phones (namely the OnePlus 13), is a blessing.
Overall IOS vs Pixel Comparison
I must admit that I still have a slight preference for my iPhone, though that may change over time. I find navigating the Pixel to be a bit overly complicated sometimes.
I have tried using TalkBack, Prudence Screen Reader, and Jieshuo (Commentary) Screen Reader. There are things about all three that I like and dislike.
TalkBack
This screen reader is the most stable, since it is made by Google. I was an everyday braille display user with my iPhone, and still am with my iPad. However, the braille display support with TalkBack is disappointing.
My HIMS Braille eMotion 40 will connect to my Pixel with bluetooth, but frequently disconnects. My HIMS BrailleSense 6 connects reliably, but I cannot use the panning keys at all. When I tried to connect my Braille eMotion via USB HID, it was unsuccessful. I have been in contact with both HIMS and Google about these issues, but neither of them can give me any information about if this will improve.
There is a pretty significant delay with TalkBack when scrolling. Setting the refresh rate of the Pixel to 120 hz, and setting focus delay and typing delay to minimum in TalkBack settings improves this, but does not fully fix the issue. Another inconvenience is that TalkBack currently does not have a gesture to start and end voice dictation, which is incredibly frustrating.
Prudence Screen Reader
I enjoyed using Prudence, and I really like that it is free and available through Google Play. I had a few issues with it, mainly some hiccups when swiping quickly through a lot of items, but overall I would absolutely continue to use it. It does not currently have any braille display or braille keyboard support, which is disappointing.
Jieshuo (Commentary) Screen Reader
Jieshuo is by far the most customizable screen reader for Android, but it also seems to be the least stable, at least in my experience. I have had issues using the Google messages app with Jieshuo, to the point where I dread trying to navigate my messages. I have also had issues with the “to top” and “to end” commands not working.
However, I do love being able to customize almost everything about the screen reader, and I was pleasantly suprised by the ability to customize per-application gestures. Jieshuo has some issues with jumping around when swiping through elements, and that can become frustrating. I have also noticed that Jieshuo will loop the same few elements over and over when I am swiping. For instance, in the phone app, it will continuously cycle through the “all”, “missed”, “spam”, and “nonspam” tabs without being able to progress forward. I did notice that using Gboard with Jieshuo was consistently bad, especially when I enabled double tapping to enter a character. I switched to a third-party app called Futo keyboard, which fixed the issue and gave me an IOS-like typing experience. Again, this screen reader has no braille display or braille keyboard support.
I recently bought the Jieshuo premium subscription, which I considered to be a very reasonable price. The process of purchasing the subscription was a bit challenging, but in my opinion worth it. I had no issue with using PayPal to pay for the subscription, but the first time I attempted to register a Jieshuo account I got an error. However, it worked smoothly the second time.
A Note About The Overview Screen
I have noticed a small issue with the overview screen on the Pixel 10 when using TalkBack. There seems to be a lag when swiping through your open apps. It is still accessible, and there is a “Clear all” button at the top, but because of the lag, it can take longer to reach it, and using a “focus on first item” gesture doesn’t work. When using Prudence, I could not double tap the clear all button. With Jieshuo, it worked smoothly.
My Overall Thoughts
I have tested out a few Android phones recently, including the OnePlus 13 and Samsung Galaxy s25, and can say with certainty that this phone has the smoothest TalkBack experience. Daily usage is smooth and unencumbered by unlabeled buttons or inaccessible controls. Using fingerprint and face ID is consistently fast and easy. However, the lack of stable braille display support is frustrating and disheartening for me, and makes me miss my iPhone. That being said, this phone sets a high standard for me in the world of Android devices, and I sincerely hope that Google will continue to focus on accessibility improvements in the coming years.
Excellent review! I have the QBraille, a nice middle child between your displays and it works … I won’t say flawlessly but will say reliably. I do every now and then need to toggle talkback off and on or just lock and unlock my phone for it to connect but that’s less trouble than I have with voiceover on the iOS side. I also use a Humanware nls eReader and lately that connection experience has been pretty good, even with HID, probably smoother than on the iPhone too. Note I’m only talking about connection stability and sped getting resynced after a disconnect or whatever, iOS Braille still has this beat by a lot with sheer number of features but I find the talkback Braille support actually more steady when I need to turn on my display and do something on my phone or keep it connected and locked in standby. I wonder what makes our experience so different?
I have a google pixel 9a, which is similar to the pixel 10, except for magsafe, faster charging and a more efficient modem. I’m sticking with android because I have much more room and ability to customize things to the way I like them. I’ve also been getting fed up with apple not fixing voiceOver’s more aggregious issues. For example, while talkback’s braille display support is not great on android, it’s at least stable… at least in my experience. I’m using the NLS eReader on the latest version, and it is one of the best braille experiences with a mobile device. On iOS, when editing long chunks of text, in 99% of apps, when you would put your cursor on a character or in between two words, that cursor will not stay where you put it. On top of that, if I was to delete a word, it would start adding gibberish and deleting or adding stuff that wasn’t there in the original text. I do agree that voiceOver has faster performance than talkback, and prudence and commentary do fix that, but the lack of a braille keyboard or braille display support makes it a no-go. However, talkback absolutely redeems itself with screen and image description, which is something it does much better, when compared to voiceOver. Also, when I tried guided frame for the first time, it won me over almost right away. With the new pixel drop and potentially a new talkback update, it’s going to get even better. Plus, the ability to do a two finger flick down to get a scene description is incredible. It’s not as good as be my eyes, but it’s almost instantaneous. Also, purely talking about a phone to phone comparison, I find that the pixel 9A lasts at least 30% longer than the iPhone 16E that I came from.
Hi, I wrote the post and wanted to follow up because a lot of people say the NLS E-reader is a better experience with Android than some other displays. I have been testing it, and can say that I fully agree.
I think the reason that is is because there’s less buttons. It’s just the braille keyboard, thumb keys and cursor routing buttons. At the moment, the eReader is my only braille display.
This review is perfect – I was just looking at Pixel 10, but I wasn’t sure about it’s performance (I’m currently on Pixel 8 Pro). One question: how did you turn on the option for silencing screen reader voice while taking a video? I looked in the Camera settings but I can’t find it.