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.
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.
