The new winner! iPhone 17 Pro vs Pixel 10 Pro

If you look at Apple's marketing, they will probably tell you that the iPhone 17 Pro is about the cameras. If you look at Google's marketing, they'll tell you the Pixel 10 Pro is about AI. And I think for once, they're not lying. Which means if you buy the wrong one, I think it's more on you. Because these phones aren't competing so much anymore. They're not both trying to be the best phone. They're kind of trying to be the best, I think, at different things. And depending on what you actually use a Pro phone for, one of them is going to feel like a waste of money. Also, like, quick note, this whole video was shot on the iPhone 17 Pro Max and the Pixel 10 Pro. And I'll label which is which. You'll actually see what these cameras can do. So I've been iPhone for years. I switch back and forth, but primarily an iPhone has been my phone. I'm in the ecosystem. But I ditched my Apple Watch a while back. It wasn't helping my anxiety. I went back to a mechanical watch. And that move, I think, cracked the Apple ecosystem for me. Without the watch, staying on the iPhone started to feel less like mandatory and more like a choice. So I started paying much closer attention, especially to the Pixel, a phone that I always really wanted to switch to. Really used it, tested it against the iPhone. And by the end, I knew exactly which one I needed. And it wasn't the one I expected when I went in. So start with price. Pixel, about $1,000 versus $1,100 for the iPhone 17 Pro. And the storage, different story too. 128 gigs starting on the Pixel, 256 gigs on the iPhone. So you get double the storage for extra $100. The Pixel tops out at one terabyte. The iPhone goes up to two. Both are aluminum and glass. Apple ditched titanium. The Pixel's shiny edges add a really nice grip. The iPhone curves, I think, would feel better long-term. Comfort to Apple, style to Google. Apple also has two extra buttons. It's got the action button and the camera control. I do not use camera control. I forget about camera control. I use it once when I started testing the phone and that was it. Action button, I use every day. Nice shortcut. Still, I cannot understand why I can't make it do a double press and have it do more things. But that's a video for another day. With my watch gone, the ecosystem that kept me tied to the iPhone didn't feel as strong. iMessage, still important but less important. AirDrop, nice but not essential. I was kind of getting ready to sort of make the switch. The Pixel felt right to me immediately. Big change for this generation Pixel, Pixel Snap. But it's essentially MagSafe. And all the MagSafe stuff on the iPhone now works on the Pixel. So your Apple wallets, your MagSafe wallet just clicks on. That is a giant deal, a huge convenience deal. I am, admittedly, a screen snob. And hear me out, no matter how good a phone is, if the screen sucks, it doesn't matter what the phone can do. It doesn't matter what the cameras can do. It doesn't matter how fast the processor is. I think screens almost matter to me more than any other spec. The Pixel screen gets really bright indoors, around 2,200 nits versus 1,000 on the iPhone. Both can hit 3,000 outside, so pretty equal in sunlight. That was my experience in direct sunlight. They look pretty even. Dynamic Island, I think, is really useful. I was at the airport this past weekend. I was flying to San Francisco and having sort of flightly updates pop up there was genuinely helpful. Pixel's punch hole, I think, looks cleaner though, but especially if you're watching movies. So that's kind of, I guess, a toss up. Screens are basically a draw here. But what's not a draw happens when you listen to these phones, and that's the speakers. The iPhone wins in a blowout. Fuller sound, the Pixel's audio is fine. It's just like hollow. If you spend a lot of time listening to music on your phone, you'll notice immediately how much better the iPhone is. And I want to talk about battery. This is probably not fair, but the iPhone Pro Max, surprise, it wins. It's bigger. It's got a bigger battery. It's a true all-day phone, almost a day and a half. Heavy use, 25, 30% by the end of the day. And again, it's a Mac, so bigger battery than the regular Pro. What was surprising was how good the Pixel actually was. It was really close and not even the biggest one, the biggest battery. It did need to charge a little bit earlier, but that was unsurprising. When it didn't need to be charged, the iPhone did charge faster. 40-watt wired, 25 wireless versus 30 and 15 on the Pixel. Not a big deal. I charge my phone at night, but if you're looking to charge up as fast as possible, there you go. Let me just take a quick break. I'll tell you about this guy who's been sitting on my desk for like two-ish weeks, and I got some thoughts on him. This is the Framer Crater Micro 2. Thank you to them for sponsoring this video. It's actually a collaboration between Framer and Work Louder. Essentially, it's a compact macro pad with 13 mechanical switches, a touch sensor, a rotary encoder, and a joystick. So Framer, if you don't know, they're a web design platform, and this thing ships with all sort of custom keycaps for their software. The thing that caught my attention is that you can remap every single button to work with whatever app you want. No code, no complicated setup, just literally drag and drop in their configurator. So we do a lot of editing in Final Cut. So I mapped this to give me things like the blade tool to one key, JKL for scrubbing through timelines, dedicated button for grouping clips, stuff that we do hundreds of times per video. And obviously, I've memorized these keyboard shortcuts, but there's something about having physical buttons with actual mechanical feedback that just feels different. It's the reason people use mechanical keyboards on their PCs. So you build that muscle memory faster when your fingers always land in the same spot. The build quality here is insane. CNC aluminum, real mechanical switches, and also even a joystick if you want that pulls up sort of radial menu with seven more shortcuts, which sounds gimmicky, but it's actually pretty useful too. So is this essential? Nope. But if you're someone who does repetitive actions all day, whether you're editing video, like we are designing in Photoshop or building websites in Framer, having a dedicated control surface just make the work seem much smoother. And also I think a little bit cooler to wireless versions, 179 bucks, wires, 149. If you want to check one of these out, want to give as a gift to somebody, you're doing something repetitive all the time. And you're earning for that mechanical feel links will be down below. Battery is like the most subjective part of any review because like my third party app will be different than your third party apps. But I can say no matter what battery draining tick tock apps you use on your phone, you will be able to get through a full day with either of these phones. And I think the big story depicts like talking about at the start is AI. It's Gemini. This is like a Gemini machine that can also browse the internet and take photos. And Gemini works really well. I can ask it questions to find an email about my kid's baseball schedule. Does it pull up directions? Done. That's what Apple intelligence should do, but doesn't. A series handoff to chat GPT feels clunky. It's easier just to open up chat GPT and ask those questions. I even mapped one of my shortcuts to Gemini on the iPhone, but it's not the same. And for the first few days of using these phones, the pixel felt smarter and it felt like the right call. And the more I used it, the more Gemini started to slip a little bit. The luster came off. So I've like probably every person I've gotten multiple Google accounts. I've got a personal one. I got one for work here in Gemini. I got a little confused. I didn't know this and I probably should have, but each account is siloed. So can't see everything. If you live in one account, Gemini was awesome. Absolutely kick-ass. If not, it became kind of a mess. You guys actually switch your Gemini to the Google account that you want to reference and ask to. Now, if you're not asking it to search your calendar or search your mail, then it's great. It doesn't really matter what you're in. But if you're doing those really intensive tasks, that was a bit annoying. Then I started taking photos. I think this is where things got a bit more interesting. The pixels camera and pixels been known for cameras since it was a pixel one and had one single sensor is incredible. It is the phone's defining feature. Anybody who's watching the video knows that pixels going to take good photos. It's a reason so many people love the pixel in the first place. It can turn an average shot into something I think really special, but how it gets there is different. The pixel does a lot of heavy lifting after you press the shutter or the capture button. There's that moment of processing where it takes kind of multiple frames, merges them and pulling out all the detail and balance that you didn't see on the screen. And the results I think are oftentimes really amazing. Sometimes like I can't believe the phone took this, but it does mean the process can feel a bit slower at times and also sometimes unpredictable. And people are split on this. Personally, I like what it's doing most of the time. The final image is usually sharper and cleaner and more balanced than sort of what I framed out, but I do get the other side and why people prefer the iPhones. What you see is what you get approach. The iPhone actually shows you what you're capturing for better or worse. The pixel kind of aims to make the best possible version of what you captured. So whichever one you prefer, I still like seeing what the photo is going to look like on the pixel. I do wish it was a little bit faster, but and there's a lot of processing happening on device. So our photo samples, my oldest, my 12 year old Nate just played his championship baseball game at night, actually last night from filming. This is the perfect time to test these cameras. You can see what the photos look like here at the different lengths. I thought they all looked pretty good. The iPhone, it was weird light. Like I said, it was dark and I had overhead lights. It was bad conditions. Neither of these, I don't think are print out and frame worthy, but I was surprised at how similar the photos actually look. Zoom is where I spend most of my time. The pixels hundred X AI zoom is a fun party trick. It's impressive to show off, but it is mostly guessing at what should be there. It's cool for like skylines, but not something I would actually ever really use. But the five X to 10 X range, that's, that's where I live. And in that range, both phones are good. The pixels reliability, I think gave it an edge. It just locks on every time. And at those distances cross a baseball field, first base to third base, the extra reach to 10 X on the pixel versus the iPhone's eight X. I love that. By the way, proud dad moment. Nate did get a ring. HDR is like the big divide here. Look at the train photos. The pixels perfectly balanced and I don't know how to describe it. It kind of lifeless. Same thing with the shot of the vision pro and Nikon. The pixel keeps every bright detail. The iPhone loses some, but then gives the subject depth and color. The pixel I think is technically right, but boring. And that's a choice. The pixel keeps information. The iPhone kind of makes it more arty. Neither is wrong at all. I think people would probably prefer one or the other on the video side. You guys can see this whole thing again, a shot with a video from these phones. I film a lot and it's all family stuff. It's, it's baseball games out with my kids, with my wife, standard video. Both look good. And this is maybe going to ruffle some feathers here. iPhone's better, uh, more consistent color, smoother stabilization. Uh, the pixel does have fewer micro jitters when walking iPhone's pro res and log modes just work. And if you care about video, that's obviously the one durability is not great either. Uh, the pixel screen scratches easily. I set it down once and got a mark on it. The iPhone ceramic shield to one single time, just once before I put my iPhone 17 pro max in a case, dropped it on concrete. And this is what happened. Uh, just scratched up absolutely everywhere. It was my fault. Not so, uh, not so durable. The aluminum frames scuffs too easily. If you're going to get one of these phones, get a case, get a screen protector. Don't trust the marketing. So performance is an interesting one with these. The Geekbench scores are pretty drastic here. We'll put them up on screen. Not even close, uh, when it comes to Geekbench, but in real use, which kind of kind of what matters here, actually using these phones, both phones are buttery smooth scrolling, switching apps, opening camera, everything, uh, is going to be fast here. Gaming though, I think the iPhone pulled ahead, uh, better sustained frames, less throttling, uh, in the new vapor chamber. I think the cooling really helped where that Geekbench gap, I think will matter. I think the eight 19 pro is going to give you more like future headroom, more runway, future iOS updates, more demanding apps three years from now. I think that's where you're going to feel it. Um, I know that Google will support the pixel for years. We'll get software updates, but the apps that are going to be made for the pixel 12 or pixel 13, I imagine it'll start to feel a little slow on today's kind of hardware. And kind of that was when it hit me. I kind of went in thinking that I was going to want a smarter phone. Um, being an iPhone user, I haven't really had a AI focused phone. I haven't had a phone where the assistant could do that much. I thought AI would matter to me more, but it really makes a pro phone for me is what I do most of my phones. And that is camera. And it's not what I expected. The iPhone system just fits the way I shoot. It's consistent. It's the pixels camera is still phenomenal. And in some situations definitely looks better, but as a complete package, so looking at photo video and reliability, the iPhone kind of edges it out for how I use it. So here's my decision. I'm going to be honest. I'm not going to pretend otherwise. I'm staying with my iPhone for now. My ecosystem's already cracked. Um, like I said, no watch, but the camera kept me here and Google fixes some camera lag and get serious about video next year. I'd very easily switch. The gap is closing and it's closing so very much, but right now for what I need, the iPhone pro max is the answer. But for the first time in a really long time, you could close your eyes and pick a phone and you're going to get a great version of the best version of these ecosystems. I think what Google's done is incredible. The AI assistant is second to none. When it comes to mobile, what Apple's doing with photos and video is really, really impressive. And both phones do a good job of the other stuff too. But again, for me, it's just easier. There's less resistance and friction to stay with my iPhone. Again, I don't know if you make the same choice or not. Um, let me know in the comments. Again, all those pictures will be linked down below.