I upgraded to the Pixel 10 Pro XL for better battery life, and I’m… confused?!

Putting aside the excellent Pixel 5, battery life was never one of the Pixel line-up’s strong suits. The Pixel, Pixel 2, and Pixel 3 had average battery life; the Pixel 4 and 6 series were pretty bad, while the Pixel 7 and 8 were very average. Last year’s Pixel 9 phones put the series on a better trajectory, despite the still questionable modem and Tensor G4 processor. With the Pixel 10 series, however, Google promised its best battery life yet — 30+ hours on a charge! — thanks to an optimized Tensor G5 and larger batteries on all models.

This claim is one of the reasons I chose to upgrade from my Pixel 9 Pro XL. My experience had been pretty average for a whole year, starting pretty decently, but then getting to a point where the battery would die by mid-afternoon on busy travel days, where I’d be using the camera and maps frequently throughout the day on 4G or 5G. I hoped the Pixel 10 Pro XL would fix this, but so far, I’m just left scratching my head.

I don’t think I’m a typical Pixel user. On most days, there are hours when I barely touch my phone while I’m working, and hours when I’m constantly using it, usually during the morning or when I’m testing some new app or feature. But I also go on short daytrips or short trips pretty often, which is when I rely on Google Maps’ transit directions to guide me throughout the day, and also when I take 100+ photos on average every day.

On top of this, my phone is constantly paired to my Pixel Watch 4 and Oura Ring 4. I’ve been testing several Bluetooth trackers with their own apps (Pebblebee, Moto, Chipolo) that require a constant connection, too. Plus, I use a few smart home apps that rely on geolocation (Nuki smart lock, Tado thermostat, Home Assistant) to trigger specific notifications or automations. All of it obviously creates a mishmash of criteria that can significantly influence the battery life of my phone.

Still, I can’t shake the feeling that my Pixel 10 Pro XL’s battery life is a bit of a crapshoot. Even on days that feel pretty similar, where I’m home, on Wi-Fi, and using similar apps, I get widely varying battery drain. One day, it’s down to 50% with three hours of screen-on-time, the other, it’s down to 42% while eking an impressive five-plus hours of screen time.

There are days when I go to bed with more than 40% of battery life remaining, and days when the phone goes into battery-saving mode at 8 PM, despite being at home for the whole of the day. There are days when I’m traveling and get back to my hotel at the end of the day without needing a power bank top-up, and days when I have to grab my Qi2 power bank in a rush because the battery plummeted to 30% mid-afternoon.

My colleague Rob has already theorized and proved that the Pixel 10 Pro XL’s battery usage goes up on data networks, probably due to the inefficient Exynos 5400 modem. But my experience is more erratic than just a matter of using 4G or Wi-Fi, or being in areas with bad reception or not. Sure, I notice more drain when I’m out of my home and specifically when I’m roaming, but as I said, there are days when I’m just home, and the Pixel 10 Pro XL rolls a dice and chooses average or great battery life.

For example, here, it managed nearly seven hours of screen time before going to battery saver mode at 19%, while keeping the total Wi-Fi and mobile network use under 15% despite this extensive use. It could’ve easily lasted eight and a half hours if I’d continued using my phone until the battery died.

Whereas here, it dropped to 26% in less than five hours, meaning it would’ve only lasted around six hours total on a full charge if I continued. Sure, there are differences in how I used the phone with less streaming on Canal+ and more WhatsApp chatting, but the rest is pretty similar with Photos, Camera, Google, and the Pixel Watch. The main difference? Wi-Fi and mobile network use were both up to more than 50% total. Why? I have no idea.

The discrepancy is frustrating

What annoys me the most about this is that I don’t really know what to expect from my phone. Sometimes, I stream a lot of video, and it lasts forever; other days, I see it dropping in front of my eyes. Some days, I’m out and use the GPS a lot, but it lasts all day; other days, it just plummets after a few hours.

Here’s an unfortunate but silly story: I couldn’t kill the Pixel 10 Pro XL when I was testing a bunch of chargers and had to actively work to empty the battery to 0% to start my test, but I could easily kill it in a few hours by doing random things on my phone. I keep complaining to my Android Authority colleagues that this battery won’t die when I need it to, but it dies all the time when I don’t want it to.

The Pixel 10 Pro XL could give me six hours of screen time, or it could give me 10 hours. When I see more than three hours of screen time with 32% of battery use (such as in the rightmost screenshot above), the “Don’t introduce me to a vibe you can’t maintain” quote comes to my mind. The day might continue to be epic, or the battery might drop drastically soon after this promising start. With the phone promised seven years of updates, I fear for what battery life will be like in a few months once I reach the 200 charging cycles magical number and Google starts throttling it in the name of Battery Health Assistance.

At this point, I’m just flipping a coin and hoping it’ll be a great day, but there are still as many poor days as there are excellent ones. Despite how inconsistent this seems to me, I realize it’s still more consistent than many online reports of people who have seen their phone’s battery go anywhere between three hours and nine hours, depending on specific software updates. Yikes.

On average, I’m in the six- to seven-hour range, but I really can’t predict what kind of day it’ll be, no matter whether I’m staying home or going out. I just make sure I have a charger with me at all times, and hope I don’t need it. At least the Pixel 9 Pro XL was reliably bad for me.