Google Pixel Fold review: Folding phones finally start making sense

Thinner and wider than Samsung’s rival foldable, the Pixel Fold is as practical as folding phones get

The Pixel Fold is available in two colourways: porcelain and obsidian (The Independent)

Google’s first ever foldable, the Pixel Fold is a long way from perfect. But it could turn out to be the best folding phone you can buy today.

The design fixes two big issues with the leading Samsung Galaxy Fold (£1,649, Samsung.com). Firstly, the Pixel Fold is noticeably thinner. Nowhere near as thin as a traditional phone, of course, but a lot less chunky than its main rival. If you tend to keep your phone in a trouser pocket, for example, this phone won’t make you look like you’re smuggling a shoebox.

The Pixel Fold is also wider than the Galaxy Fold when closed. As soon as you pick it up, you’ll notice that its 5.8in outer screen is roughly similar in size and shape to a normal phone display. This makes typing and interacting with apps feel familiar and less squished.

But the Pixel Fold struggles with many of the same issues as all other foldables. While Google’s own apps look great on the foldout display, at launch time, third-party app support is still poor. The bezels surrounding the displays are thick, the crease on the inner screen is as apparent as on the Galaxy Fold, and the price? Well, it’s a little spicy.

Read more: Samsung Galaxy Fold 4 review

How we tested

We’re still in the process of testing the Pixel Fold, putting it through its paces and using it as our everyday device. We stress test battery life with continuously playing video, and pay particular attention to performance when multi-tasking. Software is the biggest weak point when it comes to folding phones, so we test the most popular apps on the Google Play store to measure compatibility and usability. Here’s how it’s faring so far...

Google Pixel Fold: From £1,749, Google.com

(Google)

• Rating: 9/10
• Main display: 7.6in AMOLED, 2208 x 1840, 120Hz
• Cover display: 5.8in OLED, 2092 x 1080, 120Hz
• CPU: Google Tensor G2
• RAM: 12GB
• Storage: 256GB / 512GB
• Battery: 4,821mAh
• Size (unfolded): 139.7mm x 158.7mm x 5.8mm
• Size (folded): 139.7mm x 79.5mm x 12.1mm
• Main camera: 48MP wide, 10.8MP ultrawide, 10.8MP telephoto
• Selfie camera: 9.5MP folded, 8MP unfolded

The wider design of the Pixel Fold puts clear space between this device and most other foldables. It’s immediately more comfortable to use than the Galaxy Fold’s cramped and narrow outer screen. You can use it one-handed, as you would a standard 5.8in phone, which makes it easier to pick it up to fire off a quick reply or check a notification.

Open it up and you get the tablet-style 7.6in main screen, where you can get more done or read longform content more comfortably. In apps like Gmail, the contents of your inbox appear in a navigation pane down the left edge of the screen. Touching one opens the email on the right hand side. Spotify appears as it does on desktop, with your playlists visible on one side while tracks and episodes are listed on the other.

(Google)

Some apps that are designed for a standard phone screen get thick black bars on either side, which is a workable enough solution until more apps support this kind of display. Tap in the empty space beside them and they snap to that side of the screen, so you can more easily reach them one-handed, or avoid having them display under the crease.

Google is pushing Android developers to design tablet- and foldable-friendly versions of their apps, but they’re still a long way off at launch. Notable holdouts are the likes of Twitter and Instagram, which awkwardly straddle the main screen or get padded out with white space. TikTok sort of works, with the user interface running to the edges of the display but the current video crudely plonked in the middle of everything. Even the Google-owned Fitbit app – the semi-official app of the Pixel Watch – doesn’t resize to fit to the screen.

Read more: Google Pixel Watch review – Android gets an Apple Watch

While unsupported apps can look a little funky, it’s important to note that they still function perfectly well on the Pixel Fold, especially if you snap them side-by-side in multitasking mode. Google’s own suite of apps looks fantastic on the bigger screen too, taking full advantage of the added real estate to offer an improved experience, extra information and more comfortable navigation. Even the new weather app looks swish, gushing with detailed forecast data without looking cluttered.

The folding design of the Pixel Fold also unlocks a few cool tricks. Partially unfold it like a laptop and you can watch YouTube videos hands-free or take a video call without having to prop your phone up against something. You can also use this mode to take pictures without a tripod, whether of a group of friends or of the night sky with the phone’s astrophotography mode. Like other folding phones, you can take high-quality selfies with the rear camera by opening the phone fully and using the outer display as a live viewfinder.

(Google)

We’re still early days with our review of the Pixel Fold, but in our limited time with the cameras we were impressed with the overall quality and the speed of launching the camera app and snapping pictures.

There’s nothing too surprising here if you’ve played around with premium smartphones before, in particular the Pixel 7 Pro. The 48MP main camera is supplemented by 10MP lenses capable of 5x zoom. The wide-angle lens captures a great big wodge of your view, while the selfie cameras (one outside, one inside) do a decent job. Cameras aren’t the headline feature of the Pixel Fold, but they’re definitely not slouching.

Read more: Google Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro review

Performance is also strong. The Pixel Fold is powered by the same Tensor 2 chip found in the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, and it happily juggles multiple apps and high-resolution video while staying responsive. In early testing battery life is decent, a full charge lasting well into day two with regular usage in tablet mode.

We noticed some visual glitches here and there, single-frame flickers when rotating the display or moving from the outer screen to the main screen, though they’re rare and likely just to do with the Android OS needing a bit more interface polish rather than a shortfall in specs.

(Google)

The upcoming launch of Android 14, which will be geared towards folding displays and tablet displays as well as standard phone screens, should alleviate those last few rough edges and elevate the Pixel Fold’s feel and functionality. It will add new features like a Live Translate mode that uses both inner and outer screens to effectively add real-world subtitles between two people speaking different languages.

(Google)

The Pixel Fold isn’t cheap though, starting at £1,749 for the 256GB version and heading up to £1,869 for the 512GB option. That’s £100 more than the Samsung Galaxy Fold 4, but in this dizzying price range the £100 difference isn’t what will sway you towards one or the other.

The verdict: Pixel Fold

Google’s first folding phone impresses with an intuitive, wider-format design that gives the Galaxy Fold 4 some serious competition. This is a truly impressive and well-constructed piece of technology: a miniature tablet that folds down into a genuinely useful phone. Contrast that with Samsung’s foldable, which feels compromised when folded.

There are drawbacks. The thick bezels that surround the Pixel Fold’s main display spoil an otherwise premium-looking handset, interesting showcase features like dragging and dropping documents and pictures between multitasked windows are limited to just a few Google apps, and third-party app design in general will be playing catchup for years. We also can’t test Google’s claims of having made the most durable hinge on a foldable – that will only shake out in the coming months and years.

But if you’re willing to pay the premium for a luxury smartphone, the Pixel Fold is the best argument yet that folding phones are much more than just an expensive techy novelty.

Buy now £1,749, Google.com

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