In June, a leak pointed to the Pixel 10 series coming with some significant battery capacity upgrades. Those would include, according to Android Headlines’ sources, a 5,200 mAh cell in the 10 XL, the largest battery Google’s put in a phone to date. Today, new ratings from an EU regulatory agency shed a little more light on the Pixel 10 battery situation, along with some other details.
As noted by 9to5Google, tech news site TECHB has published the European Product Registry for Energy Labels (EPREL) for the Pixel 10, Pixel 10 Pro, and Pixel 10 Pro XL. The ratings look like mostly good news: with the maximum rating being an A, the Pixel 10 and 10 Pro XL got an overall rating of B, with the Pixel 10 Pro nabbing an A.
All three phones got an A rating for durability, meaning they survived 270 drops without breaking, and a rating of B for repairability. The Pixel 10’s battery is rated as lasting up to 49 hours and 23 minutes per charge. The 10 Pro’s rated as lasting 51 hours and nine minutes; the 10 Pro XL, 48 hours and 39 minutes. That all sounds great, but there’s a little more to the story.
Some context before we get too excited
I couldn’t find the Pixel 10 series labels TECHB published on the official EPREL site, but I did track down listings for the Pixel 9, 9 Pro, and 9 Pro XL. Here’s how the ratings for last year’s Pixel 9 series stack up against these newly published Pixel 10 series labels.
Pixel 9 |
Pixel 9 Pro |
Pixel 9 Pro XL |
Pixel 10 |
Pixel 10 Pro |
Pixel 10 Pro XL |
|
Overall rating |
A |
A |
B |
B |
A |
B |
Battery life rating |
49h 12m |
50h 44m |
49h 30m |
49h 23m |
51h 9m |
48h 39m |
Drop test rating |
A |
A |
A |
A |
A |
A |
Repairability rating |
B |
C |
C |
B |
B |
B |
EPREL says its battery life ratings are based on “a standardised test of usage reproducing a typical real life situation,” but given we’re seeing numbers around the 50-hour mark, it seems like the group’s testing replicates relatively light-duty use.
Based on the EPREL numbers available, battery performance in this year’s Pixel 10 phones will be nearly identical to the Pixel 9 series. The 10, 10 Pro, and 10 Pro XL are all rated within a few minutes of their 2024 counterparts. The entire Pixel 10 series nabbed B ratings on repairability, though, which is an improvement from the 9 Pro and 9 Pro XL, which got C ratings last year (the base Pixel 9 also got a B).
Google is slated to reveal the Pixel 10 series in full at an event on August 20.