Android has a uniquely frustrating way of forcing people to use the native camera app directly, and not via third-party apps. And now, as per a fresh anecdote, this frustration apparently extends to the Pixel 10 lineup, and Google's bespoke apps on it.
Google's own apps apparently can't make full use of the Pixel 10 Pro's camera API
A Reddit user, who goes by the username "lemikeone," has now highlighted a frustrating issue with Android phones in general and Pixel ones in particular: that you can't get the Pixel 10 Pro's native camera to work with its full potential within Google's apps.
The Reddit user "tried to take a photo inside Gemini to ask a question about an object in low light, and every single shot came out blurry." Interestingly, when the same shot was taken by opening the native camera app, it came out "perfect." As such, the user then took that photo and uploaded it back into Gemini, making for a quite circuitous workflow.
Of course, we can create some allowance for third-party apps, owing to the proprietary nature of Google's algorithms embedded within the Pixel 10's native camera app. Even so, one would expect Google's own apps to make full use of the camera API. That, however, is not the case, and quite frustratingly so.
Pixel 10 updates improve performance but break other things
The Pixel 10 lineup's Tensor G5 SoC leverages TSMC's 3nm process and an Imagination IMG DXT-48-1536 GPU. However, the chip has failed to live up to its hype, primarily due to the lack of a vapor chamber, no ray-tracing support, and Google's continued reliance on Imagination for foundational driver updates and hardware-specific code.
Even so, the Pixel 10's Android OS updates for November and December appear to have noticeably improved the performance of the smartphone lineup. This is interesting as the Android 16 QPR2 update brought a Generational Concurrent Mark-Compact (CMC) Garbage Collector to the lineup, improving the manner in which the memory is freed up, reducing the overall CPU use in the process.
Nonetheless, while the November update in particular seems to have bestowed a performance boost on the Pixel 10 lineup, the December one has introduced a major bug for some Pixel 10 users, where the display freezes after the smartphone is left stationary for a while, with the screen turned off.
One can only hope that Google will get its act together soon and stop breaking things with each iterative update.
About the author: Writing is my one incontrovertible passion. Over the past six years, he has authored over 2,200 distinct articles on financial and tech-related topics, spanning nearly 1 million words. And he has been a member of Wcctech mobile team since 2025. As an alumnus of the University of Toronto, Rotman Commerce Program, I bring nuance, in-depth knowledge, and a unique perspective to every topic that I cover. When I'm not writing, I'm traveling the world, exploring hidden confectionaries and restaurants as an aspiring food connoisseur.
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