I believed it lacked this feature. It appears Google excels at it.
Traveling globally for technology trade shows is among the highlights of covering tech, but for nearly twenty years, I’ve been lugging around a backpack weighing at least 15 pounds, often more. As smartphone cameras have advanced, I’ve been on the lookout for a phone camera capable of permanently taking the place of my traditional camera.
In the last couple of years, I’ve alternated between various top Android devices, striving to find the ideal equilibrium between portability, features, and overall camera quality. The portability aspect is crucial: even if I don’t utilize this phone as one of my two daily devices, I bring it along nearly everywhere.
This year alone has seen the phone change twice, but the Pixel 10 Pro might just be the finest yet. I relied on it as my sole camera during last week’s IFA 2025 tradeshow, and although it boasts an exceptional camera, there’s one feature that should be enabled by default, as it greatly simplifies my tasks!
A number of modifications over the last two years
Two years back, the leading smartphone cameras began demonstrating their capability to substitute for a professional camera and multiple lenses, at least for certain situations. Initially, devices like the Oppo Find X8 and Pixel 9 Pro became my photography substitutes, which constitutes the bulk of my work.
Subsequently, the Osmo Pocket 3 became my exclusive videography camera, despite being less convenient than the impressive video recording capabilities on phones like the iPhone 16 Pro Max. While the new iPhone 17 Pro lures me back from the Osmo Pocket 3 with its ProRes RAW video recording, the competition for my go-to work camera is significantly closer.
The Pixel 9 Pro was supplanted by the Oppo Find X8 Ultra earlier this April, as Oppo’s 1-inch camera provides remarkable bokeh and zoom capabilities. However, the primary challenge is its size, as I favor compact phones, and the Find X8 Ultra resembles the dimensions of the Pixel 10 Pro XL or Galaxy S25 Ultra.
Why the Pixel 10 Pro camera excels
The Pixel 10 Pro camera is outstanding. It has the same hardware as last year’s Pixel 9 Pro, but the significant addition is the new 100x zoom. While this may not be as beneficial for product photography, I’ve noticed improvements across the entire zoom range, which proves extremely useful, particularly at 2x.
Like most smartphone cameras, the Pixel 10 Pro utilizes in-sensor cropping to provide a 2x ‘optical-quality’ zoom. In my search for the optimal phone camera for work, I’ve determined that 2x, rather than 1x, is the ideal mode for capturing product images. This is mainly because the narrower focal length results in a tight crop while also providing a shallower depth of field, allowing the product to stand out.
Additionally, the Pixel 10 Pro offers another remarkable feature for work-related photos: RAW photography. While the Oppo Find X8 Ultra and others can also shoot RAW images, Google permits you to configure the camera to record each picture in RAW and JPEG by default, eliminating the need to switch modes as required with other devices.
I frequently edit images before uploading them to articles, and Lightroom includes a Google Pixel color profile that simplifies the editing process.
Reasons the Pixel 10 Pro will be my work camera
After spending a significant amount of time capturing product photos using the Pixel 10 Pro last week in diverse lighting situations, I noticed one flaw that significantly impacts performance: the exposure levels.
By default, the Pixel 10 Pro tends to overexpose images in low-light conditions, which poses challenges during press events and keynotes where lighting can be dimmer and scenes brighter. While the Pixel 10 Pro isn’t the only phone exhibiting this behavior, Google has, by default, disabled the on-screen sliders for adjustments.
I initially thought Google had bafflingly done away with this feature, until someone informed me that it was turned off by default across all three of my new Pixel 10 devices. However, once I activated it (Camera > Photo settings > (…) > Quick access controls), I discovered the best implementation of exposure control among smartphone cameras.
With most devices, you can select the focal point and easily set the exposure by modifying the on-screen control. This allows you to adjust the exposure for that specific shot while temporarily lowering it for future images.
In contrast, other devices require mode switches, menu toggles, or tapping in various regions — or even a combination of these actions — to access these settings.
This more straightforward method also means you typically do not have to sift through menus to make adjustments to more advanced settings, such as shadows and white balance. The latter is crucial, particularly when capturing images in a wide range of lighting conditions, and Google is the
