Pixel from the Samsung Side
I bought a Pixel 9 Pro XL 2 weeks before the unveiling of the new line of Pixel 10 phones, not because I was unaware of the Google event, but because I had seen the leaked photos and specs and decided that now was probably a good time for me to buy the current generation and get back into the Pixel space.
Like many people who start tech YouTube channels and tech-oriented blogs, I love playing with a variety of gadgets and tech toys, but there is a special place in my tech-loving heart for phones and tablets. I'm old enough to remember the journey from PDAs to smartphones and I throroughly enjoyed watching mobile technology grow from its infancy to the mature adult it is today. But acquiring gadgets is expensive and I'm not yet made of money. So rather than spend full price on a new Pixel 10 Pro XL, I decided there were enough similarities that I could get by for awhile with the 9 Pro XL. The difference in AI features and performance improvements didn't appear to be dealkillers for me. And when I watched the event last week, I felt comfortable that I had made a reasonable choice.
I bought my phone used from Amazon Renewed, so technically, I still have time to change my mind or even trade in this phone for a new 10 Pro XL with an additional outlay of cash. But I don't cuurrently have any plans to do either of those things. I'm just enjoying the Pixel experience on a phone. My last Pixel phone was the Pixel 3A XL. I still have that phone buried in a drawer of dead devices. I liked that phone a lot and probably would have used it a bit longer if I had not dropped it on a concrete floor and cracked the screen (yes, it was in a case but did not have a screen protector on it). It still worked fine, but I didn't want to pay to have it fixed and I never felt completely comfortable using it as my primary phone after that and I eventually relegated it to being my experimental device and backup phone.
As a person who has chosen to live the Android lifestyle, I do try to make attempts to be at least somewhat well-rounded even within that world. I have used a variety of Android phones from several brands over the years, many of which are no longer with us (HTC, LG) and I've even spent time with Apple devices. I currently have an M1 iPad Pro 12.9" that I fire up from time to time to see what's new with OS betas and new applications. I don't love the iPad, but I do appreciate it for what it is and I genuinely enjoy using it in its fabulous Magic Keyboard. But my primary tablets are my Samsung Galaxy Tab S9 (11" and 14.6") and S10+ (12.4"). The small Tab is semi-permanently connected to a 4k monitor along with my Galaxy Z Fold 3 which is attached to the 4K monitor next to it. Running in DeX mode, together they form my command center displaying live social media feeds, news, and the occasional web page or productivity app. And with Samsung's multi-control feature, I can use them with one mouse and keyboard. I have two smaller portable 4K monitors sitting directly on my desk and one of them is semi-permanently attached to my 8" Windows PC that I use for video editing and anything else I feel I can't adequately get done on Android. The other monitor remains available for me to connect whatever video-capable device I want to try out that day. I have a Pixel tablet that I originally bought to try out the Pixel experience, but I found it somewhat limiting as it didn't have video output capability. I played around with Android betas on it and tried to make a go of the desktop experience on it, but in the end it has found the most usefulness in my house by sitting on its speaker dock (something I bought separately later), replacing my Google Nest Hub Max. I also have a Chromebook Duet that I had hoped to use to play around with Linux, but because it is the version with 4GB of RAM, I found it even more frustrating to use than the Pixel Tablet and it spends most of its days powered off, sitting in a rack of unused gadgets next to my desk. I also have a 7" and 10.3" in Onyx Boox tablet/e-reader that I use for most of my "real" reading, whenever I find time to spend on such activity.
So I had covered a lot of Android ground, but I felt I needed another phone that wasn't a Samsung to expand my vista a bit more. I strongly considered getting the Nothing Phone 3, but finally decided against it, primarily because I decided I wanted an additional phone to offer something different and although the Nothing phone is certainly different, I ultimately wasn't going to use it in any unique way. When I somehow stumbled upon Moment lenses and the realization that I could get a case and lenses to fit the Pixel, but not any other Android phone, I made up my mind to get a Pixel. The idea of a phone with cameras good enough to use for an additional angle for my videos but also double as a camera I could use in a variety of oddball scenarios where I might have otherwise used a DJI Osmo Pocket 3 (something I didn't decide I wanted until the price had gone up high enough to completely dissuade me from buying one) appealed to me. Here was an Android phone that was almost as versatile as an iPhone. Not only could I use it as a multi-purpose camera, but it would also give me an opportunity to see Google's take on Android on a phone and not a tablet that felt so neglected in the grand scheme of all that Google was doing.
My phone carrier is Google Fi, and I'm on the plan where you get up to 4 data-only SIMs for your various connected devices. When I got the phone, I took the SIM out of my Fold 3 and put it in the Pixel. It's true that I'm not beneftting from the calling features that a Pixel offfers, but I rarely make phone calls and my primary phone almost never rings except for Suspected Spam, so I'm not the best to benefit from those features anyway. I've therefore focused my time and attention with the Pixel on its UI, which is different in many ways from Samsung's One UI 8, and its differing camera abilities.
I took some time to think about the new Pixel 10 features to ensure upgrading wasn't the best option for me despite the cost since I haven't had a Pixel in such a long time.
Tensor G5 - I'm not going to be doing anything intensive on the phone beyond testing out the AI features that are available on the Pixel 9 already. I can use my Windows PC and my Android tablets (and of course my iPad Pro) for video edting if/when necessary, so this phone does not need to be that powerful. I don't play any games, so extra power isn't needed for that, either.
Camera Coach - although this feature looks interesting, I'm mainly concerned about leearning to frame photos from experience and not necssarily what an AI assistant might suggest. Because of the extra time it takes to use this feature, I don't see myself having the patience to use it except for the first time just to see how it goes.
Pro Res 100x Zoom - Most of my pictures are taken indoors and I rarely have a need to zoom in. When I am outside, I can imagine this being useful mainly on trips, and sadly, I don't take many trips. It may be with time I will have additional thoughts on this, but over the past several years, I have never once longed for more than 2 or 3x optical zoom. I'm more likely to care about a good macro focus, especially for product shots. Plus, I have a Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra and that more than enough zoom for me for now.
QI2 wireless charging - I do think this is a great feature. I do have a few wireless chargers in my house, but they're all old and don't conform to the new standard. I don't charge wirelessly frequently enough to justify buying new wireless chargers. I almost always plug my devices in to charge them and I have cables everywhere.
Faster wired charging - This means a lot more to me than fast wireless charging, but for the most part, I have learned how to time my charging so that I'm rarely waiting for a device to charge. I no longer charge overnight; I usually charge devices in the morning when I'm working out. That seems to work well for me. I imagine that if I traveled more often this would be a bigger deal to me than it is now.
Magic Cue - I will admit that this feature is probably one of the most intriguing to me. However, I'm not as fully invested in the Google ecosystem as I think I would need to be for this to work at its best. I have a Gmail account, obviously, but it itsn't my primary email account. This means most of my emails that would contain information about reservations and travel plans aren't likely to be in my Gmail. I would have to be intentional about using my Gmail account for items that I think might be useful for Magic Cue to surface, but because many of my accounts are already tied to my primary email account, this isn't really likely to happen except for interaactions with new companies and services I've not used before.
Live Translation - I do have a couple of friends I could try this with, but it would be a novelty thing to try once and never use again. If I did travel more perhaps this could be useful, but I'd be nervous to use this in situations where understanding both sides of the conversation is critical. If this becomes more socially acceptable, I would consider using it. But I think we're a few years away from that.
So in the end, with my home-based lifestyle, many of the new features aren't super useful to me. The thing I really wanted to get out of a Pixel was having the Google UI and the camera capabilities. The Pixel 10 didn't offer enough different on those fronts for me to justfiy the extra expense.
So I've been using the Pixel for a few weeks now on the Android 16 beta and final builds. What has the experience been like compared to my many years of using Samsung phones almost exclusively?
Samsung News vs Google Now
When you swipe right on your home screen, you get Google's news feed by default on the Pixel vs. Samsung News on the S25 Ultra (S25U). And in theory, both of these news aggregators are tuned to your preferences. But Samsung News sways much more heavily toward national news whereas the Google feed is more eclectic, blending in my love for tech news but also shows me cultural topics and sprinkles in YouTube videos, local news of note, or other items I've searched recently that it thinks might interest me. As a result, the Google feed feels more personal and enjoyable to scroll. However, I think this is primarily because national news is almost always depresing lately, and the Samsung feed doesn't always offer enough to offset that fact so it feels like more of the doomscrolling I actively try to avoid on social media. You can change the feed on Samsung though, so it's not so much of a loss for the S25U. Nevertheless, by default, Pixel wins here.
Material 3 Expressive (M3E) vs. One UI 8
I am on the betas for both Android 16 on the Pixel and the Samsung. The biggest features for Samsung in my experience are the Now Brief and the customizations for the lock screen via Good Lock. I have always liked having a calendar on my lock screen and the faint view of the background image along with the rotating images you can set offers me a lock screen that always feels fresh. It does not feel as informative as the Pixel lock screen, however. The Pixel lights up when new notifications come in and shows me what they are since I have the setting to show notifications on. There isn't an option for a calendar, but it does show me the date, time and weather without me having to do anything special to set that up. Icons for my notifications will display when new notifications are waiting for me. I have to tap the S25U screen to see any information about my notifications. But in terms of the appearance of the UI, although M3E is more colorful and fun for sure, it doesn't matter all that much to me. I do wish sometimes that I had a little more leeway in the color options offered to me when you opt to customize things based on your wallpaper. I used to be a person who was heavily into icon packs, so much so that I would pay for a custom launcher that allowed me to use icon packs without jumping through extra hoops. But somewhere between the Note 20 and today, I stopped using icon packs. My Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3 still has a custom icon pack on it that it inherited from the Note 20 and I do really like the way that phone looks even today. But I haven't bothered to try to install any custom icons on my S25U nor have I tried to do icon theming on the Pixel. This used to be a really big deal to me and I can't at all explain why it isn't that important to me anymore. I do remember the frustration of scrolling through pages of custom icons, trying to find one that will be a good fit for that app I want on my home screen but doesn't have a customized icon in the pack. I always hated that because I always had plenty of apps that were never included in custom icon packs because they were niche or just not quite popular enough. Maybe subconsciously, I just got tired of that life. I'm certainly not living it anymore.
Samsung DeX vs. Android 16 Desktop
This isn't really even a competition except that Samsung changed DeX with Android 16 to be more like the Android 16 desktop. I don't consider this an improvement, and I speak this that person who already told you I have DeX on two screens at almost all times throughout the day. I greatly prefer classic DeX. However, now that Good Lock has updated the MultiStar module that allows for high-resolution monitors, it's more tolerable. It is a bit more like Windows 11 than it was before, and I can respect that many people who use an Android phone probably also have a Windows device and this will feel a little more like home to them. However, some apps just don't respond well in DeX mode and since Samsung eliminated Linux on DeX (yes, I was one of the three people that used this little-known feature), Android 16 on Pixel with its nascent Linux support is perhaps primed to step into spaces Samsung has left empty. Nevertheless, Android 16 still feels behind even the new DeX. I tend to believe that over time it will catch up. For now though, Samsung wins here.
Cameras
In the time I've spent with both my S25U and the Pixel, I've found that I used the S25U more for video. This isn't always necessarily because I find the S25U to have superior video as much as it is easier to connect the S25U to an external monitor so I can see what's happening if I have the phone in a place where it's hard to see the screen. My small portable Synco monitor that I use most connects wirelessly and I have not yet found a way to easily use it with the Pixel. I take handheld video and photos with both phones without feeling like I need to prefer one over the other. I did find that using attachments like filters and lenses make using a smart gimbal like my Insta360 Flow 2 Pro nearly impossible because of the weight imbalance. So the advantage of having special lenses and attachments available for the Pixel isn't a universal advantage.
General Ecosystems
I have a Pixel Watch 3 and a Samsung Galaxy ring. The ring fits much better into the overall Samsung ecosystem. I get sleep and readiness summaries in my morning Samsung Now Briefs and I get notifications from Samsung Health throughout the day. I don't get any notifications from Fitbit even though I'm a premium subscriber. There is no real integration with the phone other than reminders to get ready for bed. I installed the Daily Hub apk that came with the Pixel 10 to see how it compared to the Now Brief and I understand why Google pulled it. It doesn't really provide a lot of meaningful or actionable information and it certainly doesn't integrate with Fitbit. At best it will tell me the current temperature and recommend YouTube videos to me that I already watched. To be fair though, the Now Brief will also recommed videos I've already watched and will also often recommend videos that I made.
I like the Pixel a lot and I could use it as my main phone if I needed to. But I prefer to stick with the S25U because of its integration with my other Samsung devices (call and text sync across devices signed into my Samsung account and Multi-Control to share mice and keyboards are killer features for me) and the fact that it still supports pen input. I prefer writing on a larger screen, but I do use the stylus on the phone and don't really want to give it up even though Samsung keeps degrading it over time.
But I'm going to keep the Pixel around to see where things go because I believe Google is going to continue to find ways to keep us interested.
If you'd like to buy an Amazon Renewed Pixel, here are some Amazon affiliate links - using them will help support my work, so thanks in advance!
Pixel 9 Pro XL
Pixel 9 Pro
