Pixel 10 leak could be good news for all Android phones

Generally speaking, companies don’t acknowledge the existence of new smartphones until the official unveiling, even though everyone knows they’re coming. To that end, the Pixel 10 is guaranteed to follow 2024’s Pixel 9 and 2023’s Pixel 8 later this year, and we’ve even seen leaked renders of what it might look like.

However, we’ve had an early indirect acknowledgment that the Pixel 10 exists. Moreover, it speaks of an improvement that could impact all Android devices.

While browsing the Android Open Source Project (ASOP) code review, Android Authority’s Mishaal Rahman found a code change that mentions the upcoming handset by name. The code refers to a “performance mode” in the “Parallel Module Loading,” with a Google engineer noting that it provides a 30% reduction in loading time on the Pixel 10.

As Rahman explains, this improvement speeds up a part of the Android booting process that occurs after the Linux kernel is loaded. The performance mode removes a bottleneck from this stage, giving the boot-up a speed boost.

It’s worth managing expectations here: the 30% figure is only for this part of the boot process. The overall change will be less impactful. Still, faster boot-up times are objectively good news, and there’s a hint that this could impact all Android devices (or at least all Tensor-powered hardware), not just upcoming yet-to-be-announced handsets.

The Google engineer writes that this change also results in a 25% boost on the Pixel Fold. That presumably means Google’s original 2023 foldable as opposed to last year’s Pixel 9 Pro Fold, but given it’s not as big a boost as on the Pixel 10, it’s safe to assume it’s older hardware and not a yet unreleased handset.

Pixel 10: what we know so far

Renders of the Pixel 10 have currently revealed three devices: the regular 6.3-inch model, a Pixel 10 Pro of the same dimensions and a 6.8-inch Pixel 10 Pro XL.

The pictures show the iconic camera bar in place despite its recent removal from the Pixel 9a.

The Pixel 10 series is expected to run the Tensor G5 processor, which is being manufactured to the 3nm process by TSMC. This smaller fabrication process should lead to better performance and efficiency over the 4nm Tensor G4.

The provider switch is interesting, as previously, Samsung handled the Tensor chip-making duty. That said, it may be worth tempering expectations: the leaker Chunvn8888 believes that the new chip is “gonna stay the same” with the chip “basically [a] TSMC-made version of G4.”

Raw performance has never been Pixel’s strong point, of course, with innovations in Android being a bigger selling point. And it sounds like the Pixel 10 may have some interesting new AI tricks up its sleeve, including “Video Generative ML” for video editing, “Speak-to-Tweak” photo editing and a Sketch-to-Image tool that will seem familiar to fans of Galaxy AI. It could also see the debut of Pixel Sense, a contextual assistant designed to offer a more personalized experience based on your use of Google services.

The Pixel 10 isn’t expected to arrive until August at the earliest, so there’s plenty of time for more specs to emerge. With Google-made devices dominating our list of the best Android phones, we’re confident the Pixel 10 will be pretty impressive when it arrives later this year.

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