Google can't fix Pixel 10 hardware, so they just increased the benchmark scores

Every once in a while, a software changelog comes across my desk that makes me do a double-take. Usually, smartphone manufacturers cloak their performance updates in polished PR jargon, promises of enhanced fluidity, optimized gaming framerates, or seamless multitasking.

But not Google. For the latest Pixel 10 March update, the company decided to skip the marketing speak and say the quiet part out loud.

According to the official changelog, the latest update brings an:

"Improvement for Pixel 10 GPU performance by optimizing the OpenCL driver to reduce overhead and increase benchmark scores."

Read that last part again. “…and increase benchmark scores.” It’s completely absurd and, quite frankly, a little bit crazy. I mean, they’re probably trying to say that the actual performance improvements they’ve made will result in higher benchmark scores, but to explicitly list “increasing benchmark scores” as a primary feature of the update is wild.

Why not just say better framerates? Or improved thermal management? Or literally anything related to actual human usage? Perhaps it’s because “benchmark” has inexplicably become the catch-all term people insist on using when they really mean phone gaming and video streaming. Or maybe Google knows that Pixel 10 users have become so obsessed with comparing their performance metrics against other brands that the only way to appease the masses is to artificially feed the Geekbench machine.

Whatever the case, it’s funny to picture Google engineers scrambling to patch a benchmark score rather than the phone’s actual performance.

Software can’t fix hardware

Pixel 10 users have been complaining about the device’s GPU performance since launch day. Google promised improvements, and to be fair, they have been delivering on the driver front. The Pixel 10 picked up a couple of GPU-related updates in December and January, and now the March update.

Looking at the scores users are sharing, OpenCL performance has seen a notable bump:

• A 10% to 13% improvement in scores from the recent February 2026 update.
• An impressive ~40% improvement compared to the software state back in November 2025.
• Vulkan GPU scores have also seen a respectable ~11% jump since November 2025.

That sounds great. However, even with a 40% boost, the Pixel 10 GPU benchmark scores are still hovering at just half of the scores produced by the Pixel 9.

At this point, it is incredibly obvious that the underlying problem leans heavily towards hardware limitations rather than software bugs. Granted, you were never going to magically fix a hardware deficit with an OpenCL driver update, but Google is clearly doing everything in its software power to squeeze blood from a stone.

Does a better benchmark scores mean a better phone?

So, Google has successfully increased the benchmark scores. But does this actually translate to real-world performance, or are we just looking at optimized synthetic numbers?

Surprisingly, the consensus is leaning toward actual, tangible improvement.

One Pixel 10 Fold user noted:

"I swear it could be a fresh reboot and clearing of things, but my 10 Fold really does feel snappier. And I'm usually one of the people that is dubious/thinks it's placebo."

So, it does seem that behind the funny curtain of Google trying to patch its synthetic benchmark numbers, there are indeed some real-world UI and multitasking benefits for users. We don’t have the latest Pixel 10 lying around to test these exact framerates ourselves, though we have older models that weren’t invited to this specific update party.

Google might be awkwardly laser-focused on moving the needle on a benchmark graph, but if the side effect is a phone that actually drops fewer frames while watching a Twitch stream, we’ll take it. Even if we have to chuckle at the changelog along the way.

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