Is your Pixel 10 Pro XL struggling to run Genshin Impact? You’re not alone

There’s no arguing that the Google Pixel 10 series isn’t quite as powerful as many of the best phones on the market, but it still manages to hold its own, usually. However, it seems that an issue has been appearing for users trying to run one of the most popular Android games.

Recently, several videos surfaced showing the Google Pixel 10 Pro XL struggling to run the five-year-old game Genshin Impact.

The videos, first spotted by Android Authority, have appeared on both X and Reddit. They show screen tearing, controls misbehaving and flickering textures.

So, what is causing these issues to appear, and is it entirely due to the Tensor G5 chips? In a sense, yes, but it's not exactly to do with the lack of power, but rather with the GPUs provided with the phones.

The issue is that Genshin’s developers dropped support for PowerVR GPUs in the v5.0 update last year. Unfortunately for Pixel 10 users, Google switched from ARM’s Mali GPUs to Imagination Technologies’ PowerVR series for the Pixel 10 series.

However, while support might have been dropped, it is still possible to launch the game on a phone with PowerVR-based graphics.

Unfortunately, doing so can affect how the game runs, which could be an explanation for these videos. However, if that were the case, you'd imagine that the faults would appear on every Pixel 10 phone, and so far, that doesn't seem to be the case.

We tested out our own Google Pixel 10 Pro XL to see how it ran, and we did notice some texture pop-ins — and the phone got quite hot — but otherwise nothing exceptional. Android Authority also ran its own tests and didn't experience any of the issues on any of its devices.

This leads to a couple of different possibilities regarding why this is happening. It could be a fault with specific builds of the game, or it may be locked to certain regions or content. It’s also possible that the game being played in the clips was using out-of-date drivers, which could explain the problem.

With all that said, the Google Pixel 10 series really isn't designed to be the best gaming phone. Instead, the Tensor G5 chip supplied with Pixel phones is designed to get the most out of AI, something it does very well. With that being said, Genshin Impact first released back in 2020, and it runs fine on older Pixel phones like the Google Pixel 7, so it's a shame to see this happening on the newer phones.

Thankfully, considering we’ve seen other Pixel phones run it without issue, it doesn’t look like this is a widespread problem. But let us know if you've been having issues running any games on your Pixel 10 series phone.

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