I find it hard to believe we’ve had ten generations of Pixel already. The event for the original Pixel in October 2016 is still vivid in my mind — I’d never been as excited for a phone as I was in that moment, and I haven’t felt that excitement since, either. As enamored by the Pixel as I was, I stopped using Pixels for over six years, and with good reason. The Pixel 10 Pro, though, is the phone I’ve been waiting for Google to make.
What went wrong
If I used to be so excited about the Pixel, you may wonder when and why that stopped. Well, by the time the Pixel 3 arrived, the honeymoon period had ended. My time with the early Pixels was plagued with defective phones and issues I’d grown tired of. My Pixel XL, 2 XL, and 3 XL all had to be swapped on warranty at least three times, and the Pixel 3 XL made things worse by being a frustrating device even when it was working as intended.