Overview

• Google switched the bottom speaker and microphone locations on the Pixel 10 Pro XL, moving the speaker to the right of the USB-C port and the mic to the left.
• Right-handed users recording in landscape often cover the left-side mic with their palm, causing muffled or uneven video audio.
• Android Police’s Artem Russakovskii worked with Google engineers, who identified hand placement as the root cause rather than a software fault.
• A practical workaround is to rotate the phone 180 degrees so the USB-C port faces left, with some users also reporting success using a looser grip or external microphones.
• Google has not announced a formal fix, and the change appears tied to a design trade-off intended to reduce speaker blocking during gaming or media playback.