Up until September 9, I’d had the same phone for three years. It was a perfectly cromulent phone, and it was quite advanced for its time. However, it did have one thing I never liked — it had the sloping “edge” screens pioneered by the Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge (which I bought when it came out because I thought it was cool). I think that phone probably could’ve held on another couple of years — it still had software updates guaranteed through (I think) 2027 or 2028 — but it was having a few minor issues and as it turned out I could get a good deal on a new phone plus a great value on the trade-in. So I bought a Google Pixel 10 Pro XL (the 256GB model — since I put everything in the cloud I don’t need any more storage than that) and it arrived on September 9 — the same day as Apple’s iPhone 17 announcement. That last bit doesn’t matter to me; I’ve sunk enough money into the Android ecosystem at this point that switching to an iPhone would be a mistake. I just thought it was a fun coincidence.

One of the things Google is touting with the Pixel 10 series is even better AI integration. This includes being able to hold down the button (I hesitate to call it a power button because it doesn’t shut the phone off anymore) and activate Gemini. I tried it a couple of times when I got the phone and it did what it was advertised to do: it answered me, vocally and with captions. Which is great and all, but what if I’m in a place where I don’t want the vocal response? Sure, if I have my earbuds in, no one else will hear it, but what if I don’t? I’m not one of those people who has earbuds in all the time.

I found an old Reddit thread where people were bemoaning this very issue, and it turns out the only way to turn off the vocal responses is to turn your phone’s media volume all the way down. That’s great, but if you do that you can’t listen to music or watch videos. You can hit the pause button whenever the captioned response comes up on your screen, but you have to find it (it’s quite small) and you still hear the first couple of words. One of the people in the thread said they didn’t want everyone at work to hear that they used AI, which is a legitimate concern (though not for me — we are allowed and encouraged to use Copilot at work, so I do); another person said they didn’t want everyone on the train to hear the responses, which can often contain private information. As for me personally, I read much faster than I listen — it’s why I don’t do audiobooks — and I process the written word better than the spoken word.

The fact that the Reddit thread was posted more than a year ago suggests that Google not only knows about this issue but is actively choosing not to resolve it. It would not be difficult to put a toggle switch in the Gemini app settings that turns off the voice, and (for lack of a better term) wire up that switch to make the voice go away. I bet even I could program that (in JavaScript, which is the only language I know well enough to do it in, but still). I’m sure Google’s highly-paid software developers could make it happen. So the question is: why don’t they? My guess is it has something to do with the marketing aspect of the Gemini voice; having your phone talk to you is a big deal in commercials, if you even see them (I watch football, so I see a lot of commercials on Thursdays and Sundays). Still, the ability to silence it would be quite welcome.

Other than that, I’m very pleased with the phone, and I’m sure it will make a great daily driver for another three years. I’m hopeful that, by then, Apple will have solved the problem of the bump in foldable screens* and other phone manufacturers will copy what they’re doing; I have a tablet, but I rarely carry it with me — having a tablet in my pocket would be great.

* Three reasons I didn’t buy the Pixel Fold: (a) the cost (b) the bump (c) the cameras on the Pixel 10 Pro XL were better.