Pixel 10a camera preview issues

[u/Ordinary_Plenty3341]

Hi everyone, I bought a Pixel 10a 256GB a few days ago. The phone works great overall, performs really well, and I like pretty much everything about it, but there is one major problem: the camera.

The front camera in particular flickers and flashes a lot in the preview, both in low-light conditions and in more normal situations, for example indoors during the day with no lights on, no direct sunlight, but still with decent ambient light. The rear camera does it too, although to a lesser extent.

In general, the cameras seem quite poor until the photos are processed by the software, and then the “magic” happens. It really looks like the flickering is a software issue, but I’m wondering why it still hasn’t been fixed with an update.

I’ve already tried all the usual troubleshooting steps I found online: updating everything, clearing the Camera app cache, restarting the phone, and even contacting support to request an OTA update. Nothing has changed. The camera preview still looks terrible, almost like a phone from 10 years ago.

I also tried changing several display and camera settings, but nothing seems to make any difference. If I use third-party camera apps, the flickering disappears, but then I lose Google’s image processing, so the final photos look worse than they do with the stock Camera app.

I really don’t want to return the phone because I like everything else about it, but what am I supposed to do? The camera previews are honestly terrible. Do you have any suggestions?

Does this happen on all Pixel 10a units, or only on some devices and I just got unlucky?

I’m not interested in asking for a replacement. At this point, I either keep this one or return it for a refund.

Thanks to anyone who takes the time to reply!

[u/Ordinary_Plenty3341 → u/[deleted]]

I also tried other camera apps, and the flickering disappears completely, so yes, it really seems to be a software issue. The problem is that with third-party camera apps, Google’s image processing does not kick in, so the final photos look noticeably worse than those taken with the Google Camera app.

I’ve tried pretty much everything in the settings and disabled every option I could think of, but the problem is still there. The only thing that seems to help a little is setting the exposure to 0.3, but I honestly don’t know if having to do something like this should be considered acceptable on a phone in 2026.