Did Google fix the Pixel 9’s lifeless photo colors on the Pixel 10? I’m shocked.

What Google did to photo colors on its last few Pixel phones is criminal. There is no other way to say this, but the degradation in color quality and science was so palpable since the Pixel 6, culminating in the washed-out photos of the Pixel 9 Pro. Even me, a staunch Pixel camera fan, had somewhat given up on getting good, lively photos from my phone last year. Every time I snapped a picture, especially in a colorful environment or a warm indoor, the result came up dull and boring.

I say this because I know what the Pixel’s camera was capable of in previous generations and because I’ve been testing the new Pixel 10 Pro XL against the Pixel 9 Pro XL. The results? They’re not even funny. Nearly everything I complained about with the Pixel 9 Pro’s camera has been fixed on the 10 Pro, which makes me equally happy and angry. See for yourself.

I noticed it first at a concert

A couple of days after I got my Pixel 10 Pro XL, I was at a concert and had both my Pixel 9 Pro XL and the new phone with me. While the opening band was blasting their music, I decided to snap some pics with both phones. And that’s where I saw it for the first time.

The colors on both phones were different. Where the Pixel 9 had whitened the yellow flood light, the Pixel 10 kept it warmer. It also grabbed the right skin tone and shirt color of the guitarist instead of the pinkish hue that the Pixel 9 had chosen.

The most jaw-dropping difference, though, is in the two images below. I don’t think I need to explain what’s happening here, but just look at it. Look at what the Pixel 9 Pro XL did to the warm spotlight shining on the guy’s face. When I use words like “bland,” “lifeless,” and “washed out,” this is the perfect example. The Pixel 9 tries too hard to apply a single white balance across the entire photo and forces tones that aren’t there in reality. The Pixel 10 Pro XL, in comparison, understood the scene; it didn’t take away from the cold blue of the crowd while also letting the warm spotlight effect shine.

So I did more comparisons

After I noticed this staggering change, I started looking for more opportunities to see how differently these two phones can interpret colors. During the day, the difference is there, but it’s subtle. A bright outdoor white balance environment was never a challenge for my Pixel 9. But when the lights dim a bit and there’s more nuance to the hues, that’s when the difference in color performance becomes much more obvious between these two phones.

I’ll just leave this example here. (The storefront was green, in case you were wondering, not blue or turquoise.)

And this one. I’m sure we all know the real color of a Coca-Cola can.

And this one. How did the Pixel 9 Pro XL insist on creating brightness where there wasn’t any, and washing out the purple in the process?

And this one, where my nice (fake) indoor plant gets its proper real-life punchy color in the Pixel 10 Pro XL’s shot instead of the desaturated tone the Pixel 9 gave it.

A subtle difference in some scenarios

In other situations, the difference is more subtle, but it’s still there nonetheless. In this one, for example, the Pixel 9 Pro XL warm-washed everything in the photo, whereas the Pixel 10 Pro XL balanced out the beige of the walls, the wood tone of the table, and the very yellow ducky bag. There’s something more one-dimensional about the colors in the Pixel 9’s photos versus a more complex, more nuanced balance in the Pixel 10’s pics, and this is a great example of it.

The next two snaps, taken at dusk, show this too. The Pixel 9 Pro XL’s forced white balance paints the Parisian buildings in a colder tone, whereas the Pixel 10 lets the warmer evening glow show its warmth. It also nails the red color in the restaurant shot and makes the small bulbs pop out more. The Pixel 9 Pro tries to even out the brightness between the dark wall and the bulbs, resulting in a flatter look.

Putting aside brightness, the Pixel 10’s photos are also generally a little punchier. There’s more contrast and better saturation, all without veering into the absurd or the unnatural. The result in night scenes is more vivid and, yes, more social media-friendly.

For me, this extra pop in my Pixel’s photos is more than welcome, and I don’t think it veers too far away from Google’s famously natural “unprocessed” look. As a matter of fact, due to its wash-out effect, it’s the Pixel 9 Pro XL that has looked unnatural and overprocessed by over-correction to me.

I’ll end this comparison with a few samples that show how the Pixel 10 Pro XL deals with more subtle nuances of color. In both shots below, the Pixel 9 Pro XL decided to adopt a warmer color tone for the globe, while making many other parts of the shot colder (curtain, plant pot). The Pixel 10 Pro XL understood the nuance of what was really a warm yellow-pink light, didn’t make the curtain overly blue, and didn’t let the plant pot veer to a greenish hue. The terracotta lamp and the deer are both a little brighter and better highlighted in the Pixel 10’s shots.

Nearly every snap I’ve taken with both phones shows some difference, and never once did I think, “Oh, the Pixel 9 did it better.” The improvement is staggering between last year’s phone and this year’s, to a point where I’m as angry as I am happy about it, honestly. I appreciate Google fixing this and bringing the joy of snapping great photos back into my life, but I’m livid at the year(s) of dull shots we had to endure in the process.

There’s nothing inherently different in Google’s hardware sensors this year, so all of this could’ve been possible on the Pixel 9 Pro XL, 8 Pro, and 7 Pro… Why couldn’t we have it then? Why did we have to lose what made the Pixel camera great for so long? And can we please have a software update to fix it, ASAP? Everyone who still uses the older Pixel phones deserves to shoot nicer photos, too.