Pixel 10 users report GPS glitches

Have we gotten a little entitled when it comes to location data? It wasn’t that long ago when we’d have to print out turn-by-turn directions and pay very close attention to where we were if we wanted to navigate anywhere — and now, we get nervous when we don’t have a GPS satellite lock pinpointing our location down a meter or two. If you find yourself in that same location-anxiety group, we sure hope you’re not rocking a Pixel phone, as a large number of users report a variety of problems concerning the quality of their GPS data.

GPS problems in general are hardly anything new, and we don’t infrequently hear a few reports about a new phone running into some problems consistently achieving a nice, accurate GPS lock. Even Pixel hardware isn’t immune to complaints like those — but it sure feels like they’re blowing up all over the place with Google’s latest handsets.

Over the past few months, we’ve identified dozens of reports across Google’s own Pixel community forums (like this post from Matt Adamski) and Reddit’s Pixel sub alike (such as this one from Last_Ad1873), all describing inconsistent, poor-quality GPS location data — and the lion’s share of it on Pixel 10 handsets.

So, what could be the problem here? Well, it’s possible that we’re looking at an issue with Pixel GPS receiver hardware or the software that controls it. It’s also possible that this isn’t specifically a Pixel 10 problem at all, and could stem from some system-level Android change — like maybe that density-based coarse location system that debuted in Android 16?

Maybe the most frustrating thing about this issue is that it doesn’t break GPS support entirely — if location data just weren’t available, users would be returning their phones in droves. But with the glitches these users describe, the phone does show location data — it just erratically jumps around, producing incorrect direction and speed estimates as a result. That means we may have significantly more affected users who don’t even realize that this experience isn’t normal.

Right now, we’ve reached out to Google to see if it’s aware of these reports, if it has a better idea what might be causing the problem, and — maybe most importantly — if it has any advice for affected users. We’ll be sure to post a follow-up with anything useful we’re able to learn.