I have a Pixel 10 and it’s hands-down the worst phone I’ve ever owned. Google uses their customers as unwilling Beta testers and there’s hardly a day goes by that I’m not dealing with multiple, serious bugs.

A few examples:

• Some features are just missing. The much touted “Live Translate” feature exists on one Pixel 10 but not on the other. Pixel Support is mystified and there is no fix.

• Apps are aggressively shut down to save battery even when the phone is plugged in.

• My BT speakers work fine with older versions of Android, but with the Pixel on Android 16 and 17, one speaker has two volume levels, off and 100%, the other blasts at full volume momentarily when playback starts.

• Bluetooth intermittently will not turn off. The fix requires a complete reset of wifi and Bluetooth settings along with saved networks and paired devices. It’s only temporary and the problem will reoccur.

• The company removed the “Metered” setting in the firmware so there is no way to stop OS updates when roaming. Google has twice pushed 1.4GB updates when I’m on very expensive, limited international data plans. Even Microsoft has a metered data setting but Google decided it was a good idea to get rid of it.

• The Pixel’s USB port won’t connect to some computers at all. Google’s fix is telling customers to use a different computer. I’ve never before had a USB device just fail to function.

• DND settings are completely unreliable. After having the phone wake me up repeatedly at 3AM with urgent New Feature Notifications! I’ve had to use Tasker to shut the damn thing up so I can sleep.

I’ve always wondered why the Google employees I’ve known have carried Iphones. After purchasing a Pixel I understand completely. The Pixel 10 makes me wish I had an Iphone too.

I’m honestly surprised that the November Android update made it out of beta. It’s actually a disaster. I’m personally seeing apps being aggressively killed. YouTube streams are stopping, browser tabs are constantly reloading, and tracking apps are dropping sessions when placed in the background. Annoying for me as I use Cronometer to follow a few recipes I created and I’ll be happily weighing something, look away, come back and the recipe has been closed. Its not even like it’s a single device, this is happening consistently across both my Pixel 10 Pro XL and a Pixel 8 Pro.

Having looked into it a little it seems to be tied to memory management regression introduced in the November patch. Apparently, ZRAM clogs up, and instead of cleanly stopping idle processes, the OS aggressively kills active background apps to clear space. Again, how did this make it out of beta testing?

Worst thing is, we’re unlikely to see a fix before December. I’m hearing a workaround that works is setting the background process limit to 4 via the developer settings. But is it really even a flagship phone if it can only manage four background processes. It’s honestly unacceptable.

Is it just me or the quality of monthly updates has tanked this years? Every single one of them brings new bugs or breaks something.