Google Pixel 10 Pro – Can It Convert a 17-Year iPhone User?
I have not used a phone other than an iPhone since 2009. The Droid was my first ever smartphone, and I look back on it fondly. But after that, I switched to an iPhone and never looked back. Until now. I decided I wanted to venture outside of my Apple Ecosystem bubble to see what the waters were like on the seas of green text. Luckily, Google was willing to send me a Pixel 10 Pro to test-drive and answer the question: is there a significant enough difference between Apple and Android for me to make the jump?
This isn’t an iPhone-versus-Android article in the slightest. I may have thought that was the path I was heading down when I started out on this nearly 2-month-long journey with the Google Pixel. But this is an honest heart-on-the-sleeve long-time iPhone user offering an Android perspective. I am not going to bore you with a spec sheet review because I don’t think everyday consumers like myself really care about that. What we care about is the experience and ease of use of the things we do with our phones day to day. Smartphones have become an integral part of everyday life for most people, and I want to approach this from that lens.
It was an amazing experience working my way through a new operating system after so many years of the same one. I found myself having fun with my phone again, which I hadn’t done in a long time. I was trying new apps and working on my interfaces for daily use. While on my iPhone, I have become a bit locked into the way I do things. If I take one major thing away from this entire experience, it is that I need to freshen up the way I do things once in a while.
I have also picked up on some of the more snobby tendencies of someone in that camp with the “it just works” mentality, but after experiencing the Google Pixel 10 Pro, I have unlearned that fully.
UI and Widgets
One of the biggest things I noticed when I first dived in headfirst to using the Google Pixel 10 Pro was the Google user interface and design philosophy. Coming from Apple’s clean glass obsession to something with a lot more color and whimsy was a breath of fresh air. I found myself smiling countless times when I noticed a small design feature like a shape or squiggly line.
Even the boot-up icon felt more alive to me as a shape that shifts between stages to notify me of the boot-up. There was much more life to the phone’s overall design philosophy, which made it a joy to pick up and use. Even small things like the time bar on Spotify being a squiggle rather than a straight line just made me want to use the phone more. It felt intentional, on the part of Google’s design team, to add some much-needed color and flair to my day.
The other major user interface feature that completely enamored me was the widgets. Yes, Apple has widgets too, but they all feel tacked on from another operating system rather than native to my home screen. Something about them always makes them feel out of place, and, honestly, more of a clutter than a shortcut to make my day easier. But that isn’t true of the Google Pixel.
From the initial boot-up, I was in love with how the Weather widgets on my home screen had the same vibrancy and life as the design elements. They felt like a natural part of the ecosystem without strict lines or forms to fit into. The small notch-style weather in the top left felt like it belonged there, rather than the Apple one, which feels tacked on to the screen it is on. The larger icon fit the overall vibe of the design, which I loved, because it wasn’t so blocky; it was something I didn’t mind looking at throughout the day to see what it was like outside my windows.
When I didn’t have any notifications, the lock screen also looked much cleaner. The center block of the time, along with a small notch below for the weather, made it feel like a much cleaner experience with a more vibrant look. I used the same wallpaper as on my iPhone to see if the experience was the same, but I ended up loving how the Google Pixel’s lock screen looked a lot more overall.
Everything felt more beautiful with a visually fun, flashy design language across native Google apps and most third-party apps as well. The overall design of Android systems has changed a ton since the old days of Droid, and it’s clear why many of the features have been copied for iOS.
Camera Deep-Dive
I’m no photographer; let me be clear up front. I am never the person my fiancé asks to take pictures at events because “I don’t take them right.” But Google was very clear about how incredible their camera was. So, during my switch, I decided to really test it out at a concert I’d been looking forward to for months. The band Bleachers was playing at The Mann Center in Philadelphia, an outdoor venue. We had incredible seats, so I decided to use the opportunity to test the camera.
I found myself flabbergasted by it, to be honest. The zoom on the Google Pixel 10 Pro could probably see atoms if I held it close enough to something. We didn’t have bad seats, but I could zoom in to the faces of every member of the band without blur or anything like that. I was blown away by the clarity of some of the photos, which made it seem like we were a lot closer than we were.
Here is a shot of where we were seated:
And now here is the zoom:
And here are some action shots of the concert (Again, I’m no Cindy Sherman):
When I zoom on my iPhone, I don’t think it gets anywhere near as far as the Pixel and nowhere near as clear a result. The overall image quality is beautiful and if you’re a camera person, this is a genuine selling point for making the switch.
Real-World Living
Now not everything was rainbows and sunshine. With my iPhone, I could and probably have used it in my sleep. I am used to certain logical pathways that apps and navigation should follow based on years of use. I like the ways they work and didn’t necessarily think they needed a fix. So I found myself frustrated from time to time when things didn’t work the way I expected. It took some real deliberate thought to perform tasks that I had my brain trained on years ago. It’s not the phone’s fault so much as the ease of use I have become accustomed to, being so ingrained in the iPhone ecosystem.
Back when I got an Android in the Droid days, apps felt more exciting. It felt like this whole new playground I got access to. There were always new games popping up and things to try out. But I don’t think that’s how it is anymore. It feels like we all use the same social media apps, and casual phone games just aren’t the same anymore. The Google Play Store also just doesn’t have the same sleek design as Apple’s, which made spending time in it a clunkier experience, where I didn’t even want to try out new apps and instead stuck to what I knew.
But at the end of the day, there wasn’t enough to make the two platforms all that different. For years, I thought there was a huge gap between the two platforms, but in reality, the landscape is sort of stagnant. Overall, the Google Pixel can do everything the iPhone can in basic functionality and apps. It didn’t feel all that alien at the end of the day after the learning curve of a new overall UI. They are so comparable, feature- and capability-wise, that it’s more of a preference choice than a sweeping forward momentum in the technology itself.
The One Real Issue
There was only one major hiccup I had during my time with the Google Pixel 10 Pro as my daily phone: app crashes. Overall, I found that apps crashed way more on the phone than on my iPhone. One such example was Google Maps during a long drive. I was using the phone for my navigation through Android Play in my car, but it kept crashing mid-drive. Thankfully, I had a passenger who could grab the phone and pull it back up, but it happened a handful of times, to the point of real annoyance, nearly missing a turn on a highway.
I cannot recall the last time an app crashed on my iPhone that wasn’t pure user error, but I found it happened quite frequently on the Google Pixel. It wasn’t glaring, but it was enough that I needed to state it here.
Who Is This Phone For?
Going into this experiment, I didn’t think I would walk away with such a bright love for the Google Pixel 10 Pro that I did. There is something about using the phone that made me feel like I did when I got the Droid back in the day. I was excited to explore and play with the phone because it made using it enjoyable. Everything in its design brought a freshness to the smartphone experience that I think I have been missing. Especially with Apple’s obsession with glossy, strictly lined design sensibilities. There was something much more whimsical and fun to how Google does things overall.
I think this phone is a great fit for anyone looking to break out of the iPhone bubble if that’s the only device they use daily. Its integrations with Google’s suite of apps are incredible and purely made for its own phone. If you want a top-notch camera experience on your phone, I think this is an accessible way to get that overall feature.
Who it’s not for is someone who is already fully integrated into the Apple Ecosystem. The ease of use of copying something on my computer and having it just appear on my phone without needing to do anything is quite handy. All of my apps, calendars, and daily life drivers are so ingrained in Apple that I can’t see myself fully switching off any time soon. But I think this has finally opened the door for me to consider doing it in the future; it’s the greatness of the Google Pixel 10 Pro that made me think maybe someday soon I could be an Android user again full-time.
View on Amazon
This post contains affiliate links. We receive a small commission if you buy through this link.