Tested: My Pixel 10 runs faster with Android 16 QPR2 update

My Pixel 10 seems to perform better with Android 16 QPR2 on top of all the new features.Check out the benchmark results.

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Tested: My Pixel 10 runs faster with the Android 16 QPR2 update

before 10 o'clock

Google's second major quarterly release of Android 16 — known as Android 16 QPR2 — is finally here, bringing a slew of new features to Pixel owners and eventually other brands.According to anecdotal reports from the usual corners of the Internet, an unexpected bonus appears to be improved graphics performance for the Pixel 10.

Google hasn't officially mentioned the new GPU drivers Pixel 10 owners have been waiting for, but that doesn't mean there aren't minor improvements or optimizations hidden under the hood.To find out, we bought a Pixel 10 Pro XL running the November 2025 patch, ran it through our usual testing suite, then updated it with the December 2025 QPR2 update and tested again.

The show Android 16 QPP2 cured?

Pixel 10 Pro XL tests on Android 16 QPR2

Compensation my box-O-box-box, butib2 is the same, the level of increased level of Android is equated.

Since launch, CPU performance has improved slightly, with GeekBench 6's single-core performance showing a 2% increase (which is close to the margin of error), while multi-core scores increased by an average of 5% across all three tests.This is welcome, but not a game-changer for peak performance.It's also worth noting that these new results are within the range of performance we've seen when testing the entire Pixel 10 series, so they significantly push performance to brand new heights.

Also, the PCMark Work 3.0 test shows that different use cases can significantly improve performance.Here is an increase of 19.6%, which seems significant.However, we got a similar result when running the Pixel 10 Pro (while the Pixel 10 and XL were slower), which shows that there was always some variability.I don't want to draw too many conclusions from this synthetic benchmark, but hopefully Google has managed to address some of the performance bottlenecks in Android 16, unleashing the Tensor G5 Pixel 10 to hit peak performance more consistently than before.

Next, let's look at some graphics work courtesy of the 3DMark stress tests.

The performance gains we saw on the CPU side are reflected in the revised GPU tests, but we can see that QPR2 is only slightly faster than its predecessor.Peak performance is about 5% in the wilderness test and about 7% in the extreme wilderness test.So let's call it a modest increase of 6% on average, but the real advantage seems to be that ongoing performance is likely to be better in the new version.Again, this boost won't drastically change premium average gaming performance.For phone calls.However, this should result in slightly higher peak frame rates and, perhaps more importantly, better stability and fewer bugs in more demanding games and emulators.

By the way, both of these graphics tests use the Vulkan API;some users report significantly larger gains in OpenGL, but I haven't been able to verify this yet.As a bonus, this performance boost comes at no additional cost to temperature or stability.

Continuous performance improvements since launch

There were undeniable performance improvements in my Pixel 10 Pro XL during launch with QPR2However, It seems that most of the performance improvements were already in place before the last update was released, but still, the arrival of QPR2 may cause many people to hit this update button and finally benefit from what Google released a little earlier. (Probably in the November patch)

He said, all the packages and systems seem to be the result of iron in the previous uncertainties, but the advantages of the GPU are less promoted.In any case, this performance improvement is not the trigger on top of the excellent qp2 update.

My pixel 10 Pro xL is now better than at launch, but that improvement came before the QPR2.

An often overlooked benefit of better peak performance is that it can make a bigger difference in a worst-case scenario.Even if a 5% increase doesn't bring the latest pixels to the level of Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5, it could mean that apps feel a little smoother when loading and games have fewer problems, which is consistent with anecdotal reports of more responsive phones.

We'll see if this holds true as many users spend time with their updated Pixels in the meantime. My next step is to check if Android 16 QPR2 finally addresses the Pixel 10's terrible emulation performance compared to its predecessor. Or do we still have to wait and hope future driver updates feel like a real upgrade rather than a Tensor G5 step?

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