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The Google Pixel 10 and 10 Pro come with magnets, a new chip, and AI everywhere
Product Reviews

The Google Pixel 10 and 10 Pro come with magnets, a new chip, and AI everywhere

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Google has formally announced the Pixel 10, 10 Pro, and 10 Pro XL, and their hardware upgrades can be summed up in two letter/number combinations: G5 and Qi2. Otherwise, there’s not much to see on the outside of the phones. They mostly cost the same as last year’s devices — $799 for the Pixel 10, $999 for the 10 Pro, and $1,199 for the 256GB 10 Pro XL, though Google got rid of the cheaper 128GB Pro XL variant. They also look an awful lot like last year’s phones, with a few specs tweaked here and there. But we got a look at some of the new features running on these phones, including — you guessed it — a bunch of AI stuff, and there’s just a whole lot more going on than meets the eye.

But let’s start with those top-line updates. In each of these phones is the new Tensor G5 chipset, the first one made by TSMC after four generations of Samsung-made, Google-customized silicon. Google says the CPU is on average 34 percent faster than Tensor G4’s, and claims a 60 percent performance increase for on-device AI tasks handled by the TPU. On-device AI is a real theme across the Pixel 10’s new features, which we’ll get to in a minute.

The Pro colors aren’t as bright because these phones are Professionals and very serious. Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge

The standard-issue Pixel 10 gets to have more fun. Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge

Then there’s the long-awaited Qi2 charging support. With apologies to the HMD Skyline, we haven’t seen a major Android OEM offer proper Qi2 on a phone until now. That includes the MagSafe-esque ring of magnets on the back panel, which Google is introducing as Pixelsnap. Google will offer a couple of its own accessories at launch: a magnetic stand charger with a detachable wireless charging puck, plus a ring-type grip that also acts as a stand. There are roughly nine million different Magsafe accessories on the market that the Pixel 10 will be compatible with, too. The regular 10 and the 10 Pro will charge at up to 15W with a Qi2 charger, but only the 10 Pro XL supports the top Qi2.2 wireless charging speed of 25W.

There’s good and bad news for the regular Pixel 10. The bad: instead of sharing the 10 Pro’s big 50-megapixel main camera sensor as it has in previous years, the regular 10 makes do with a smaller sensor borrowed from the budget-friendly Pixel 9A. It’s a 48-megapixel 1/2”-type sensor, compared to the 50-megapixel 1/1.3”-type sensor that’s now reserved for the 10 Pro and 10 Pro XL. The Pixel 10 also gets the 9A’s 13-megapixel ultrawide, while the Pro phones get a bigger 48-megapixel sensor. But the good news is that it has a proper telephoto lens for the first time, though again, its 5x camera is a step down from the hardware offered on the Pro phones. Win some, lose some.

1/6Photo: Allison Johnson / The Verge

Speaking of losses: Google is taking a page out of Apple’s playbook, and the versions of the Pixel 10 phones sold in the US will be eSIM-only. The physical SIM tray is replaced with the ability to use two active eSIMs at once and store eight “or more” eSIM profiles.

Screens are a little brighter across the board; batteries are a little bigger, too. The Pixel 10 offers a 4970mAh battery compared to 4700mAh in the Pixel 9. The 10 Pro is actually a little lower than the regular 10, at 4870mAh, which is still a slight bump over the Pixel 9 Pro’s 4700mAh capacity. The Pixel 10 Pro XL gets a 5200mAh capacity, up from 5060mAh in the previous generation.

Maybe the most notable new AI feature on the 10 series is called Magic Cue, which proactively suggests text that you might want to paste into an app or a conversation based on context. If a friend texts to ask for the address of the Airbnb you’re sharing, in theory, Magic Cue will grab the address from your email and suggest it above the keyboard without any input from you. You’ll be able to tap and check the email for yourself, or paste it straight into the conversation. If it recognizes that you’re calling the number of a business listed on an email, like an airline you’ve already booked a flight with, it can surface relevant details in the phone app, like your confirmation number. It looks like a kind of turbo-charged autofill for everything.

Magic Cue works with first-party apps for the most part, including messages, calendar, Gmail, and the phone app, but it’s also built into Gboard, so you may see text suggestions across third-party apps, too. Senior director of product management for Pixel Shenaz Zack confirmed all AI is running on-device, and while it incorporates your very recent phone activity into its suggestions, she says that it’s “ephemeral.” Zack adds, “It’s not going to remember what you did a week ago,” and that it’s not saving any screen content. Zack wouldn’t say whether this feature would roll out to older Pixel devices. It’s one of those things that, if it works as it should, really could save you time and effort as you bounce between apps on your phone. Or it could be nothing at all! Either way, the Google Now dream lives on.

There’s a load of other AI features here, too. On the 10 Pro and 10 Pro XL, the camera app will use diffusion AI models to improve detail in shots taken above 30x zoom. This isn’t just an algorithm deciding whether a pixel should be red based on the pixels around it — this is full-on generative AI in the camera app. It happens after you take a picture, it doesn’t work on people, and the results are tagged as being edited using AI in C2PA content credentials, which are now supported by Google Photos. Good! But holy crap is this an extinction-level “what is a photo” event. I have more thoughts about it all, but regardless of any philosophical hangups, it looked really effective in the demos I saw. What would normally look like digitally zoomed garbage became an actual usable image. Were they photos? Who can say?

This an extinction-level “what is a photo” event

Then there’s the lightning round of AI features. There’s an AI Camera Coach, which gives you step-by-step directions to improve a particular photo you’re trying to compose. Nice idea, but I’m not sure who’s going to use it. You can now use text prompts to edit photos in the AI-powered Magic Editor. There’s also a journal app, because Google and Apple can’t stop copying each other, and this one uses AI to assign a smiley face emoji summing up your daily entries and generates prompts based on what you’ve written about. Creepy!

Finally, there’s an AI translator in the phone app — not a new concept. But this version uses AI to mimic the voice of the person you’re talking to, so you’ll hear translations in something closer to their speech rather than a robot. The effect is decent, if not spot on.

The Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, and Pixel 10 Pro XL are available for preorder today; they’ll be on shelves August 28th. The Pixel 10 starts at $799, and the 10 Pro starts at $999 — same as last year’s phones. Starting at $1,199, the Pixel 10 Pro XL isn’t technically more expensive than the 9 Pro XL, since it matches the price for last year’s 256GB variant; you just won’t find a $1,099 128GB version this time around.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge

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GameFi Guides

Vietnam Passes Landmark Law Defining Digital Assets, Boosting AI and Chip Sectors

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In brief

  • Vietnam’s National Assembly passed a landmark law regulating digital assets and formally categorizing them into virtual assets, crypto assets, and other digital assets, each with defined legal status under civil law.
  • The law also introduces major tax and investment incentives to boost domestic innovation in semiconductors, artificial intelligence, and digital infrastructure, effective January 1, 2026.
  • The new legislation aims to curb offshore migration by offering clear rules and incentives to keep crypto firms and talent in Vietnam.

Vietnam’s National Assembly overwhelmingly approved landmark legislation Saturday, legalizing digital assets and establishing sweeping incentives for semiconductor manufacturing, artificial intelligence development, and digital technology startups.

The Law on Digital Technology Industry passed with 441 votes in favor out of 445 lawmakers present, making Vietnam one of the first countries to comprehensively regulate digital assets through dedicated legislation rather than traditional financial frameworks.

The law, which takes effect January 1, 2026, defines digital assets as products “created, issued, transferred and authenticated using blockchain technology” with clear property rights under civil law.

The move addresses a critical problem that has forced Vietnamese crypto and tech companies to relocate operations to Singapore and other jurisdictions with clearer regulations. 

The new legislation creates three main categories: virtual assets that can be used for exchange or investment purposes, crypto assets that use encryption technology to authenticate assets during creation, issuance, storage, and transfer, and other digital assets, per local media reports.

Both virtual and crypto assets explicitly exclude securities, digital representations of fiat currency, and other financial instruments under existing civil and financial laws.

In March, Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh had directed the Ministry of Finance and the State Bank of Vietnam to finalize crypto regulation proposals by the end of the month as part of an ambitious 8% economic growth target, but no framework had yet materialized until now.



Vietnam’s crypto adoption has surged despite the legal uncertainty, with blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis ranking the country fifth globally for crypto adoption in 2024. 

Over $105 billion in blockchain market investments flowed into Vietnam during 2023-24, much of it through offshore structures that provided no benefit to the domestic economy.

Beyond crypto regulation, the legislation underscores Vietnam’s ambition to emerge as a regional technology powerhouse. 

The law sets a target of 150,000 digital technology enterprises by 2035, a major expansion from current levels, supported by unprecedented tax incentives and state investment.

Companies developing semiconductors, AI systems, and digital infrastructure can receive corporate income tax rates as low as 10% for 15 years, along with exemptions from import duties and land rental fees. 

Large-scale projects investing over $80 million in data centers or $160 million in semiconductor facilities are eligible for additional “special” incentives, including a five-year personal income tax exemption for foreign experts.

The law targets semiconductor development explicitly, establishing Vietnam’s goal to “gradually become an essential link in the global supply chain.” 

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

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Gaming Gear

TSMC to open up chip design center in Munich to help local chip developers

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TSMC is set to open its first chip design center in Munich, Germany, in a bid to help local and European chip developers optimize their designs to its process technology, the company announced at its European Technology Symposium in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

The facility in Munich will perform multiple functions to simplify the implementation of chips on its process technologies, as well as helping partners on system-level design. Essentially, the center’s competencies will span from basic assistance in the development of tiny microcontroller units (MCUs) made using mature process technologies for the automotive industry to design technology optimization (DTCO) of advanced processors for AI and HPC applications that rely on leading-edge production nodes.

“We want to bring the best support to the European customer,” said Kevin Zhang, Deputy Co-COO and Senior Vice President of Business Development and Global Sales, at the event. “Here we want to have the design team to be able to directly work with the customer under our fab here, so we can bridge the product design and the manufacturing together. Lots of time we use the term DTCO — design technology co-optimization — [so that is what we are going to do in Munich].


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The development center in Munich will be the company’s 10th facility of this kind, but the first one in Europe, which highlights the revival of European chip development in particular and the semiconductor industry in general. TSMC already has nine chip design centers across the world that are located in Canada, China, Japan, Taiwan, and the U.S.

In addition, the world’s largest contract maker of chips has Design Center Alliance (DCA) — a global network of companies — that provide chip implementation services as well as system-level design solutions. Ultimately, these companies can even design chips to order, something that TSMC’s own design centers are not meant to do.

TSMC — along with its partners Bosch, Infineon, and NXP — is currently building its first fab in Europe. The fab, which will be capable of building chips on TSMC’s N12 and N16 (12nm and 16nm-class), is mainly aimed at MCUs, but will certainly make other types of chips. To perform and yield optimally, all chips nowadays require design optimizations that may go beyond what EDA software offers, which is why TSMC needs its design center in Europe.

“It is not like you bring the technology there and you can do manufacturing for the rest of your life,” said Zhang. “That does not work that way. You need to work closely with your end customer to continue to make an improvement. So, by having a design team right here in the heart of the semiconductor land in Europe, we can bridge the customer and the technology manufacturing closer.”

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Nvidia's Jen-Hsun Huang on stage during the GTC 2025 keynote
Gaming Gear

Nvidia’s CEO says attempts to control chip exports to China are a failure: ‘If they don’t have enough Nvidia, they will use their own.’

by admin



Attempts by the US government to put a cap on China’s development of AI technologies by limiting exports of GPUs has been a “failure”. So says no less an authority on the subject than Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang.

The New York Times quotes Huang at the ongoing Computex show in Taipei, Taiwan denouncing GPU export controls. “AI researchers are still doing AI research in China,” Huang said on Wednesday. “If they don’t have enough Nvidia, they will use their own,” he said. All of which means, “the export control was a failure.”

He may have a point. But then Nvidia does rather have a dog in this fight. Huang himself says that restrictions on Nvidia’s H20 GPU will cost the company $15 billion in sales. So, it’s not hard to understand why he might prefer those limitations to be lifted.


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Just for context, back in 2022 the former Biden administration imposed limits on the export of the most powerful GPUs from the US into China. Into the void left by restricted Nvidia exports has moved local outfit Huawei, whose GPUs currently do not match those of Nvidia for AI prowess. However, the fear is that the GPU export restrictions have only encouraged Huawei to put even more effort into closing the gap.

Indeed, according to the New York Times, Nvidia is concerned about just that, with an adjacent worry that, “any advantage gained by Huawei in China could eventually spread into other markets, helping Huawei build a stronger foundation from which to compete around the world.”

Computex 2025

(Image credit: Jacob Ridley)

Catch up with Computex 2025: We’re on the ground at Taiwan’s biggest tech show to see what Nvidia, AMD, Intel, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI and more have to show.

Meanwhile, it’s a little difficult to gauge Jensen Huang’s strategy and loyalties in all this. He recently appeared with other business leaders as a guest of the Trump administration in Saudi Arabia. But Nvidia has also just unveiled what will be a new Global headquarters in Taiwan, which doesn’t entirely square with the broader push to reshore tech manufacturing to the US.

Likewise, the New York Times reports that, “the day after the US government opened an investigation into whether Nvidia’s previous sales to China had violated its rules, Mr. Huang met with top economic and trade officials in Beijing.”

The plot, as they say, thickens. At the very least, it seems Huang and Nvidia are keeping their options fully open.



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