Business is booming.

the First Foldable Phone That Gets It Right

[ad_1]

When you buy through our links, Insider may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more.

Since their release starting in 2019, foldable smartphones have been a niche, expensive intrigue. Rather than foldable phones, they’ve acted more like foldable tablets, and the traditional phone experience has felt like an afterthought with oddly shaped exterior displays tacked on to the front.  

The exterior display on Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 4, for example, is awkwardly narrow and doesn’t offer a good experience when you want to use the phone like a normal phone. As a result, foldable phones have failed to be truly appealing.

However, Google is changing that with the Pixel Fold, the company’s first dabble into the foldable realm.

Make no mistake, the Pixel Fold is still expensive with its $1,800 starting price tag, but Google has successfully shifted the Pixel Fold from another niche intrigue into a viable device with one simple design decision — make the exterior display similar to a normal phone.  

Indeed, the Pixel Fold achieves both a worthwhile traditional phone experience, as well as a stellar tablet experience; as a result, it’s the first foldable phone we can recommend without significant reservations. 

Google’s Pixel Fold is a premium, foldable phone that looks to justify its $1,800 starting price with versatile functionality and multitasking features. It has a stellar five-camera system and runs on the same processor as Google’s flagship Pixel 7 phone series.

Smooth, fast performance you’d expect on a flagship phone

The Google Pixel Fold’s exterior display showing the home screen and app icons against a black mesh background.


The Pixel Fold’s Tensor G2 processor may not technically be the most powerful processor available to Android phones in 2023, but it’s snappy and smooth.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Insider



The Pixel Fold runs on the same Google Tensor G2 processor that’s powering the company’s latest flagship phones, the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro

According to benchmark tests I’ve run with Geekbench 6, that technically means the Pixel Fold isn’t quite as powerful as Samsung’s flagship Galaxy S23 series running on an optimized version of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 2. Nor is it as powerful as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 running its main competitor, the Galaxy Z Fold 4.

In real world usage, however, it’s hard to tell the difference between the Pixel Fold and a Galaxy S23 or the Galaxy Z Fold 4 — the Pixel Fold runs quickly and smoothly and fully behaves like a premium device. I have no concerns whatsoever about its performance.

Typically excellent Google Pixel cameras

Three cameras are on the rear of the Pixel Fold, including a 48MP main camera, a 10.8MP ultrawide, and a 10.8MP 5x zoom camera.

In true Google phone fashion, the Pixel Fold takes excellent photos with natural colors, excellent sharpness, stunning depth and contrast, and proper lighting that keeps details in a photo’s brighter parts while maintaining details in darker spots. 

Photos from Google phones, the Fold included, can appear darker than the competition’s. It’s because the phone isn’t artificially boosting photos with extra brightness and color saturation to make them pop, like Samsung’s phones do.

A photo of a barn taken with the Pixel Fold’s main camera.


The Pixel Fold takes photos with natural colors, and balanced brightness and contrast.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Insider



A photo of a pink rose taken with the Google Pixel Fold’s main camera.


The Pixel Fold took surprisingly sharp and focused photos of this rose that was moving considerably with the wind.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Insider



A photo of a cat taken with the Google Pixel Fold’s main camera.


The Pixel Fold doesn’t overly boost brightness or color saturation, and it was able to keep all the details in the cat’s white fur while revealing intricate details in the stone.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Insider



The exterior selfie camera is a 9.5MP shooter. It’s fine in a pinch, but you can unfold the Pixel Fold and use the rear cameras with the exterior display as a viewfinder for the best result. 

The interior selfie camera is 8MP, which is also fine if you need to take a quick selfie (for some reason) in tablet mode, but its main job is likely for video calls, and it works just fine for that. 

No complaints for battery life, but more testing is needed

The bottom edge of Google’s Pixel Fold, showing the USB-C charging port and overall thickness of the phone in folded mode.


I have no issues with the Pixel Fold’s battery life, but I still need to run a full battery test once the usual apps are available.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Insider



I haven’t been able to put the Pixel Fold through our usual battery test, as the apps I use for the test weren’t available at the time of review. 

However, I found no cause for concern while using the Pixel Fold as a daily driver during the review period. It easily lasted a full day with mixed usage, including in folded and tablet mode, like most premium phones I’ve tested. 

A foldable phone that acts like a traditional phone

The rear of the Google Pixel Fold in folded mode in the black color option.


The Pixel Fold is a gorgeous, sleek device, even if it is rather thick in phone mode.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Insider



The Pixel Fold is an ultra-premium device with its sleek matte-textured glass back and solid metal construction, but that shouldn’t be surprising considering its price. 

The Pixel Fold is the most familiar and usable of the foldable devices I’ve tried in folded phone mode thanks to its exterior display that functions more like a traditional phone screen.

While its 5.8-inch display is smaller than the Galaxy Z Fold 4’s 6.2-inch exterior display, the Pixel Fold has a more traditional 17.4:9 aspect ratio that makes it wider and more useful than the Galaxy Z Fold 4’s narrower 23.1:9 exterior display, which presents an awkwardly cramped and unfamiliar experience when using apps. As a result, I never felt the need to take the extra step of unfolding the Pixel Fold simply to get a good app experience.

The Google Pixel Fold and Samsung Galaxy Z Fold4 side-by-side, highlighting the differences between the exterior display.


The Pixel Fold’s exterior display looks more like a traditional phone screen compared to the awkwardly narrow exterior display on the Galaxy Z Fold 4.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Insider



It might seem counterintuitive for a device that offers the option for a larger screen, but I found myself using the Pixel Fold’s exterior display the vast majority of the time rather than the tablet screen — I only unfolded the Pixel Fold for specific purposes, like watching a video or getting a closer look at a photo.

The Google Pixel Fold’s exterior display in folded mode running the Reddit app.


I used the Pixel Fold folded about 80% of the time, if not more, as it was perfectly sufficient for most of my needs.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Insider



The only compromise here is a common one with all foldable phones — the Pixel Fold weighs 9.98 ounces, and it’s rather bulky and hefty when folded, which defeats part of the allure of a smaller phone.

While I prefer lighter phones for comfort, the Fold’s weight was manageable, and I didn’t need to make many adjustments. For example, I was worried the Pixel Fold wouldn’t fit properly in my car’s phone cradle due to its thickness and weight, but it sits just fine. Your mileage may vary with your specific holders and cradles, though.

A slim and lightweight tablet in the body of a small phone

The Google Pixel Fold unfolded in tablet mode, home screen on and app icons visible.


The Pixel Fold unfolds to become a small tablet with a 7.6-inch display, and it’s quite thin and light for any size tablet.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Insider



Once you unfold the Pixel Fold, a shift in your mindset occurs, and it turns from a thick and slightly heavy phone into an incredibly thin and lightweight tablet with a 7.6-inch display.  

The Pixel Fold works beautifully for viewing content and using well-optimized apps that make full use of the unfolded tablet screen by offering more functionality. The Gmail app, for example, shows your inbox on the left side of the screen, while an open email occupies the right side. And the Weather app shows the long-term forecast on the left, with today’s forecast on the right.

The Google Pixel Fold in tablet mode running the weather app, highlighting what an optimized app looks like.


Optimized apps tend to show more information on both sides of the screen rather than simply stretching an app to fill the Pixel Fold’s tablet screen.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Insider



Other apps simply look like stretched out versions of the phone app, which gives you more space, but doesn’t offer more functionality, and that’s fine.

However, many apps still haven’t been optimized to make full use of the tablet mode screen, and some appear like tall and narrow phone apps running on a wide screen, and they’re flanked by large black, unused spaces.

The Google Pixel Fold in tablet mode showing what an unoptimized app looks like.


An unoptimized app will simply look like the phone app with black borders on either side.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Insider



The partial solution to get unoptimized apps to appear larger, especially those designed for vertical scrolling like social media apps, is to rotate the Pixel Fold into portrait mode while it’s unfolded, which allows the app to fill up more of the screen. Black spaces can still flank the app, but they’re narrower, at least.

Pixel Fold with Twitter app in landscape mode


Rotating the Pixel Fold into portrait mode will expand the app a little to make it fill up more of its screen.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Insider



The ultimate solution would be for the apps to become optimized — that’s for Google and the app developers to hash out, and there’s no telling when or if it’ll happen. 

Having a tablet handy with you at all times is a boon for productivity, too, or if you ever wished you could run two apps side-by-side. I often found myself streaming a YouTube video on the left side of the screen while doom-scrolling through Reddit and Twitter, searching something in Chrome, or going into the Google Home app to quickly adjust the thermostat.

Should you buy the Google Pixel Fold?

The Google Pixel Fold unfolded in tablet mode, showing the rear and exterior display.


The Pixel Fold is easily the best foldable phone you can buy thanks to its exterior display.

Antonio Villas-Boas/Insider



If you like the idea of having a small phone that can double as a tablet when you need one, Google’s Pixel Fold is for you — but whether you can comfortably set aside $1,800 for it is up to you. 

I confidently recommend the Pixel Fold against Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 4, however, thanks to the Fold’s wider and more familiar exterior display.

Still, there are compromises to think about, like the Pixel Fold’s extra weight and thickness in phone mode. One of the benefits of a smaller phone is a comfortable, maneuverable light weight, and that’s lost on the Pixel Fold. 

Nonetheless, the Pixel Fold is the best solution I’ve come across so far among foldable phones, as it’s the first to offer a proper approximation of a small phone that can unfold into a tablet. 

[ad_2]

Source link