Paul’s Pixel 10 Diaries: Ecosystem Matters ⭐

About a year and a half ago, I wrote about the Pixel ecosystem after publishing my Pixel 8 Pro review. Given the strength of that phone, I was ready to go all-in on Pixel—this is clearly a recurring theme—and I had a Pixel Watch 2, Pixel Tablet, and Pixel Buds Pro earbuds to compare to their corresponding competitors in the Apple ecosystem.

Since then, a lot has changed.

And, truth be told, a lot hasn’t changed. Google has never updated its Pixel Tablet and apparently won’t, which is a shame now that the iPad has gotten interesting as a real computer. The Pixel phones, Pixel Watch, and Pixel Buds Pro have all been updated with one (Pixel Buds Pro) or two (phones, Watch) new generations of devices. And Google says we can expect a Google Home update in October that should at least include a rumored new Nest Mini smart speaker.

Of course, Pixel users aren’t limited to what Google does directly as they’re also part of the broader Android ecosystem and all the third-party support that comes with that. Any debate about platforms will inevitably devolve into very specific and subjective pros and cons, but I already summarized my own internal confusion in The Perfect Phone (Premium). There is no one phone—and no one ecosystem—that is “better” than the other. Each has its advantages.

Moving from my iPhone 16 Pro Max to the Pixel 10 Pro XL was a familiar process, as it’s one I undergo at least a few times each year. Moving from that big Pixel to the small Pixel 10 was likewise familiar in the sense that the overall experience is nearly identical save the screen size, obviously, and then a few less obvious and much smaller pros and cons.

Let’s talk through a few.

? PC integration

Chromebooks offer terrific Pixel/Android integration, of course. But as a Windows user, I would also like to see Microsoft and Google get along as the two partnering together would pose a formidable alternative to Apple.

But there’s a lot of good news here, too.

I get solid Phone Link functionality with a Pixel, and it’s much better than the way this works with an iPhone. (That said, you have to use a flagship Samsung phone to get all the features.) Answering text messages on a PC with a full-sized keyboard is beyond useful, as I can barely type on a phone screen.

Google provides a solid Google Drive client and it even works natively with Windows 11 on Arm. The new Google Search app for Windows came out of left field, but that’s interesting, too. And there are little interop bits like Quick Share and even Google Play Games for PC.

So we see the basics in there of some nice Pixel/Windows integration. Which, granted, are not Pixel-specific. But I like Pixel for the same reasons I like Surface on the PC side. I would love to see these guys work better together.

? Display scaling

One of the issues I face when using a smaller Pixel like the Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro is that, well, they’re smaller. My vision was never great, but as I get older, things get weirder. My glasses are out-of-date, though I did finally order a new pair recently. And my contacts have shifted to a model where the contact in on eye is stepped up a bit and the other is stepped down, so one eye is good for short distance and one is good for long distance. And if I don’t think about it, it’s OK. But if I start closing one eye or the other and looking at things that way, it’s weird and … whatever.

When I configured the Pixel 10 that I’m now using day-to-day, I paid particular attention to the display scaling options. In Settings > Display > Display size and text, you can individually configure Font size and Display size using sliders, you can bold the text (which I do, also on iPhone), and you can outline text, which I do not do. Basically, I bumped up the Font size and Display more on this small phone than I do normally.

Beyond this, you can access the Accessibility settings to make further adjustments. I’ve looked through those options, of course. But I am near-sighted, not handicapped, and so there’s nothing there for me. Which I guess I’m thankful for, just as I appreciate that these options exist for those who do.

But these display scaling options, like so much else in Android and thus on Pixel, depend on app developers adopting them. And that record is mixed.

The Google Messages app, like most of the in-box Google apps, does of course support whatever display scaling issues the user chose. That’s great, but it also supports a semi-unique pinch-to-zoom capability so that you can zoom messages arbitrarily at any time. I don’t need to mess with that per se, but it’s nice, and it’s a feature more apps should support.

Gmail also supports the scaling customizations, but less successfully. The inbox view looks fine, but individual messages have comically large text. And this app does not support arbitrary zoom. It should.

I can live with that. And most of the Google apps are well-done. The issue is third-party apps. Some clearly support the scaling settings. But many do not. And those apps can be difficult to read effectively on any Pixel, but they are particularly problematic on the small Pixel 10. Inoreader is a good example.

The good news? This is getting less and less common. And there is perhaps a similar problem over in Apple land.

⚫ Themed icons

Google has supported themed icons in its customized Pixel version of Android since the Pixel 7 series, but it was optional at first, triggering a visual mishmash of themed and non-themed icons. Flash forward to today and most, but not all, of the apps I pin to my home screen are themed, the notable holdouts being Duolingo and Audible (which is in a folder on my home screen). So this is still terrible. Each time I test enabling this feature, I see the bright green Duolingo icon, out of place in a sea of themed (dark or light, depending on the time of day) icons. Boo.

Apple introduced themed icons to the iPhone last year in iOS 18, and in that company’s typical unilateral fashion, it just forced this on developers. But this is better for users, too, as every icon in iOS is themed automatically. And now we have Liquid Glass (see below), which likewise automatically provides that effect, in light and dark themes and with color tints, too. Developers can customize their icons, and they do. But it’s automatic otherwise.

That this is the “better” approach is debatable, I guess. But all I can say is that my themed icon tests on Pixel always last about 2 seconds and then I go back to the normal display because my brain can’t handle the weird color problems otherwise. The good news? This is about to change: Google has alerted developers that it will soon enforce theming on icons and will simply theme those that aren’t explicitly themed. You know, like Apple does. This change will arrive in Android 16 QPR2, so probably in December. Good.

? Material Expressive 3

Google’s Material Design has long been, to me, Microsoft’s Metro but done right. This design language debuted way back in 2014 and it has evolved over time to accommodate new form factors and changing tastes. And we’re now in the midst of a major shift right now to the latest rendition, called Material Expressive 3. This latest design solves a very real problem with previous versions of Material Design: For all its logic and consistency, previous Material Design versions were, sorry, boring.

But Google is spicing things up quite a bit. I may write a separate article about this, specifically to compare it with Apple’s less visually successful but higher profile Liquid Glass. But for now, I will simply frame this in terms of ecosystem and how the way Google does things impacts Pixel users.

To the latter point, Material Expressive 3 is rolling out slowly. Android 16 is its own weirdness, thanks to a shorter than usual development time frame. And Material Expressive 3 is caught up in that. The initial Android 16 version shipped in June sans Material Expressive 3. Google released the Pixel 10 series in late August with Android 16 QPR1, which includes Material Expressive 3. And then Google shipped Android 16 QPR1 for other phones and devices in early September, bringing this design language to previous Pixel devices. Which I wrote about earlier in this series.

It’s a little more confusing than this, given that Samsung offers its own take on this design language via One UI 7 and 8, also being released over time. And then there are all the other Android device makers that will or will not adopt Material Expressive 3 in their own unique ways and/or whatever schedule. But let’s confine this to Pixel.

As with the themed icons issue noted above, we’re in a world of haves and have nots when it comes to Material Expressive 3. Yes, this design language is available now, and on the Pixel 10 series it’s applied to system user interfaces like the Notifications shade that one can’t help but notice. But it’s not everywhere. And one can’t help but notice that either.

Google is rolling out Material Expressive 3 design updates to its standalone apps as we speak and there are Android-centric blogs like 9to5Google that keep track of this progress if you’re curious. To me, most of these updates are subtle. But there are a few that stand out. The best one, to me, is the Contacts app, which supports a new Calling Card feature that displays a full-screen image of a contact when they call you. That this is very similar to a feature on the iPhone is probably not coincidental. But it’s still pretty great.

To create a Calling Card, you select a contact in the Contacts app and then tap the prompt. (I assume this will just be added as a normal option on this page in time.) Then, you follow a step-by-step process in which you get a photo you want to use (from the camera, the Gallery app, or Google Photos), customize the font that will be used on this screen, and then optionally use this creation as the contact’s picture.

This takes some time, of course, so it’s not something I would do for many contacts. But it’s a nice interface and it’s always delightful when the phone rings and one of them comes up.

The problem is the piecemeal nature of all this. Contacts is notable because it’s an exception in that it’s here now and looks great. But most apps are only subtly different when updated, as noted. And most third-party apps aren’t updated at all. And given history, never will be.

? There’s nothing like AirPlay on Pixel

One of the things I miss when I leave the iPhone is AirPlay. That’s because AirPlay just works, and works well. More specifically for me, AirPlay helps me avoid using the Sonos app, which is handy because I have several Sonos speakers here in Pennsylvania and the Sonos app is, in a word, terrible. It’s always been terrible. The new app is terrible, but so, too, was the previous app.

With AirPlay, I can use any app that plays audio and then target any Sonos speaker, or any combination of Sonos speakers, for playback. If this is a Google app, like YouTube or YouTube Music, those controls are in the Chromecast menu of all places: There’s an AirPlay & Bluetooth devices item in the pop-up menu that appears when you tap the icon and that brings up an Apple-provided menu of AirPlay compatible speakers. Which, for me, is all Sonos.

With the Pixels or other Android devices, these same (Google) apps (and others) only discuss Chromecast/Google Cast-compatible speakers. And in my home, there are only two: The smart display in the kitchen and the smaller smart display in my wife’s office. And I never want to stream to either of those things. And so I am forced to use the Sonos app, which isn’t just terrible but also requires me to go find the content again. Assuming I can. Services like YouTube (video) don’t appear there.

That Sonos and Google have been entangled in a years-long legal battle is no longer news, but it impacts me every single day. Previous to this, Google Play Music, the predecessor to YouTube Music, could play directly to Sonos speakers just like Spotify does, and this worked across platforms. But YouTube Music never supported this feature, and Google’s issues with Sonos suggest it never will.

I have called on Google to make up with Sonos. An even better solution would be for Google to buy Sonos because this would give it access to a premium ecosystem of devices and compatible services. And it could then put Sonos technologies into its own smart speakers, which are overdue for an update, and license it to third parties. More selfishly, it would let me simply use the speakers I already own and like while ignoring the app I hate and make it work with apps like YouTube and YouTube Music directly. That would be wonderful.

We’re flying to Mexico City on Friday, and there, we have a pair of HomePod Mini speakers tied to the Apple TV plus a single JBL Bluetooth speaker that we typically use to listen to music out on the balcony. But I will also bring that speaker into the bathroom to listen to a podcast, audiobook, or whatever while I shave and shower. And I also use a Pixel Tablet there as a smart display in the kitchen. So the setup there is less complex. The Bluetooth speaker and Pixel Tablet work with Pixel, of course, and the Apple stuff does not. Of course.

But saying that Bluetooth “works” is an overreach. Bluetooth has more problems than I care to discuss right now, but the one that’s top of mind is how it’s not a per-app feature, it’s a system feature. So if I switch the audio output on a Pixel or any other phone to a Bluetooth speaker, all sound goes through that speaker. If I get a phone call, a notification, or anything else that generates audio, it will interrupt the music or other audio I am listening to. That is incredibly annoying, and it makes Bluetooth less than ideal for this use case. Not Google’s fault, per se. And it did create Chromecast/Google Cast to address this issue and provide a more open-ish alternative to AirPlay. It’s just that finding compatible devices is more difficult. I don’t really have any.

? A mixed bag, still

No one is to blame for any of this, but these are merely a few examples of the ecosystem in action (or in inaction, in some cases). I feel like both Apple and Google take a “build it and they will come” approach, but this only seems to work for Apple and, by extension, those users. This is a strange issue I don’t quite understand, though I have often seen its impact.

Apple’s ecosystem is strong. It’s also a one-way, dead-end street when it comes to interoperability, and as the company’s antitrust battles prove, it will fight the long game to prevent any incursions that result in more choice for users in ways that impact its revenues.

Google seems to do the right thing in some ways—letting developers adopt themed icons on their own schedule, for example—but it rarely pays off for anyone. In some cases, like the Sonos interoperability thing, Google is understandably at a strategic impasse, unwilling to admit wrongdoing, but with the same net result for users. Things aren’t as good as maybe they could be.

It’s not clear what we can do about any of this. I’ve expressed my frustrations with Sonos, and while I’m not actively trying to replace the speakers I have, I’m not buying new Sonos speakers. What I am doing is looking for some similar solution, cross-platform and independent, that works with everything.

And I am, of course, very interested to see what Google will announce in October. We know that Gemini is coming to Google Home devices. We know about the rumored smart speaker. I am well overdue to update the smart displays I have, so I am curious if there is a new Nest Hub or two coming too. And there are always the Nest cameras, which I would consider for the balcony in Mexico City, given the relatively low-resolution (and skewed images) I get with our current Blink camera.

Hope springs eternal.