The iPhone 17 looks great, but I’d still choose the Pixel 10 over it

At first, I wasn’t sure how to feel about the iPhone 17. To me, all of the leaks pointed towards another year of the same old, same old. But then, Apple unveiled its base-level flagship, and it had some tricks up its sleeve. It gave the base iPhone 17 a 120Hz refresh rate, an updated chipset, and doubled its base storage — not to mention a 48MP ultrawide camera.

And you know what? Those are all significant upgrades. They’ll make the iPhone 17 Apple’s best yet. But for me, the Pixel 10 is still the way to go for everyday usage. Switch to iOS if you want, but the grass won’t be greener.

If we’re being honest, making a great phone isn’t really about hardware at this point. Sure, the A19 chip inside the iPhone 17 will probably put up better benchmarking numbers than Google’s Tensor G5 — that’s nothing new. Apple’s chips have run benchmarking circles around the best Android chips for a while, thanks to the top-to-bottom optimization. Google, though, has never really made a fuss about that.

The reason why I don’t think that matters is because Google’s Pixel 10 features, especially those that center around Gemini, are miles ahead of Apple Intelligence. To see what I mean, you don’t have to do much more than try to edit a photo in your phone’s native Photos app. Google’s Pixel 10 supports a powerful Magic Editor that lets you resize, reshape, or remove elements, or you can ask for some editing help with Help Me Edit. Both work brilliantly, and they’ve reached a point where there aren’t many odd artifacts — if any.

Over on the iPhone 17, I expect Clean Up to work just like it has since Apple introduced it. Whenever I’ve tried to erase an extra person or a piece of trash from a cityscape, I’ve found that Apple simply doesn’t know how to fill the space in a way that makes sense. I hope it improves this year, but I don’t have high hopes given Google’s head start over Apple.

And then there’s the fact that Google keeps adding features while Apple is trying to clean up the basics. The Pixel 10 introduces several new wrinkles, like the Magic Cue, which pulls information from texts and emails right when it thinks you’ll need it, and the Camera Coach, which helps you compose more interesting images that make the most of Google’s exclusive camera features.

Apple’s announcement? It mentioned that the iPhone 17 supports Genmoji (which is fine), Writing Tools (which Google has too), and new calling features like Call Screening and Hold Assist… which Google has offered for literal years.

For years, one of the closest points of comparison between the base iPhone and the base Pixel was their dual-camera setups. Both were content to offer wide and ultrawide cameras, figuring the duo would cover most shooting situations despite their limited top-end zoom. But now, Google has figured out that three cameras are better than two, despite Apple still languishing in the past.

Don’t get me wrong — Apple won’t tell you the iPhone 17 only has two cameras. Instead, it’ll work up some mathematical equation to say that the wide camera is one camera, the wide camera punched into 2x zoom is a second camera, the ultrawide camera is a third camera, and macro support from the ultrawide camera is a fourth camera. Add them all up, and you’ve got a quad-camera flagship with 256GB of storage for $799.

By that logic, the Pixel 10 has even more than four cameras. I’m not sure how to do the math when you have a wide camera, an ultrawide camera, and an actual telephoto sensor that enables up to 20x zoom. Oh, and there’s macro support, too, of course. Somehow, I’d say that works out to six cameras, but only because I want to keep Apple and Google on equal footing.

Sure, maybe Apple’s video recording options are better than those on the Pixel 10, but that’s only part of the battle. I’d much rather have Google’s approach to panoramas, its Add Me feature, and Auto Best Take to ensure that all of my friends are looking the right way in a group shot. Don’t forget Google’s Motion Mode or Astrophotography, which allows the Pixel 10 to automatically capture scenes that would take a lot of clever aiming and angling on the iPhone.

Then again, maybe the fact that Apple is finally bringing meaningful upgrades to its iPhone 17 should be enough to turn heads. Yes, it’s a big deal that Apple splurged on a 120Hz refresh rate, and upgrading to a 48MP ultrawide camera is huge for fans of macro photography — and also for Gen Z kids who love to take their 0.5x selfies. I don’t really feel a need to bash on any of that.

However, I’m out as soon as you tell me that I’ll have to switch over to iOS if I want to enjoy the iPhone 17’s hardware updates. I like Google’s customization options and the revamped look of Material 3 Expressive too much. I like that Google has already developed so many AI features that it’s copying the best of other OEMs by perfecting Motorola’s Next Move, reimagining Samsung’s Now Brief, and giving OnePlus’s Open Canvas a run for its money.

Apple? Well, it’s nice to have FaceTime and iMessage as an American with a lot of iPhone-toting friends, but I’m not ready to give up the Android experience that I’ve spent years curating. Pixel UI has long been my favorite and will continue to be.

And, to the vocal members of the Google Pixel subreddit who declared the Pixel 10 dead in the water once Apple introduced the iPhone 17, I suggest you take a long look at what makes a Pixel a Pixel and realize that it’s not the same as what makes an iPhone an iPhone.