Google Pixel Fold Mini-Review

I knew my Pixel Fold review would come down to the wire, given Google’s shipping delays and availability issues, and my coming trip to Mexico City. And so it’s time to wrap this one up. But even with just a week of usage under my belt, I feel like I have a good understanding of this important folding smartphone.

And with the very clear caveat that I, again, have only spent a week with the Pixel Fold, this one seems like a winner. This is rare, for me, as I love the idea of Pixel, but most Pixel phones and other hardware miss the mark in some important way, blurring the value proposition. But with Pixel Fold, I can only raise one major concern, and it’s notable: with a starting price of $1799, this thing is just too damned expensive. Beyond that, I just have a few minor concerns. And then a whole lot of love.

Design

The Pixel Fold carries forward with the design language from the Pixel 7 series, and it most closely resembles the Pixel 7 Pro thanks to its double-pill rear camera layout. On this folding smartphone, the camera bump is perhaps less functional than it is with previous Pixels because it causes a bit of wobble when the device is folded open. But it looks and feels handsome and premium.

To date, folding smartphones have suffered from a few common design issues. The outer displays were, at first, too small, and didn’t fill the available space. And both displays have been tall and thin, making them somewhat awkward to use. Also, existing folding smartphones don’t close fully, leaving an air gap that could let in debris that could harm the fragile inner display. But being somewhat late to this game, Google has benefitted from these miscues and the feedback they generated. And as a result, the Pixel Fold is shorter and squatter, with a more normally proportioned outside display and a nearly square internal folding display.

There’s still room for improvement here—perhaps a future Pixel Fold Pro will offer a bigger size, as the current unit’s exterior display is a bit small—and there’s at least one report of a Pixel Fold display succumbing to a speck of debris. But I think Google nailed the design overall. The exterior display is great for those day-to-day “glanceable” smartphone tasks we all engage in, and the interior display is there for those times when you need more onscreen real estate, like reading, watching videos, playing games, and so on.

Like other Pixel flagships, the Pixel Fold offers a polished aluminum frame all around, and its stainless steel hinge has (in my limited usage) worked quite well. It’s a bit chunky when closed, of course it is, but its thin 0.2-inch frame (doubled when closed) is incredibly thin and elegant. And no one will have any trouble pocketing this device or stowing it in a very small bag.

It comes in two colors, the Obsidian (black) that I purchased and what appears to be a pretty Porcelain (light beige-ish). That said, I would always cover a device this expensive with a case, and I understand that Google’s Pixel Fold Case is probably the right place to start.

Displays

The Pixel Fold provides two displays, a small exterior display that’s only 5.8 inches on the diagonal, and a larger 7.6-inch internal folding display. Both are high refresh-rate OLED panels that support HDR and 24-bit color (16 million colors), and both offer a 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio. Beyond that, they couldn’t be more different.

The exterior display is usable but, to my eyes, a bit too small. To put this in perspective, the Pixel 7a, which has the same sized display as the Pixel 6a I reviewed last year, has a smallish (and thinner) 6.1-inch display, and that display is a full half-inch taller than that on the Pixel Fold.

But it’s not a deal-breaker. Thanks perhaps to its squatter aspect ratio—17.4:9 vs. 20:9 for the Pixel 6a/7a—the exterior display feels natural enough and worked well with the many apps I tried. It offers a resolution of 2092 x 1080, so it’s technically only 1080p, with 408 PPI of pixel density. It’s protected by modern Corning Gorilla Glass Victus and supports the familiar Pixel always-on capabilities. And it can emit a very bright 1200 nits when displaying HDR content and up to 1550 nits of peak brightness.

Things are obviously a lot more interesting when you open up the Pixel Fold. The expansive 7.6-inch internal folding display offers a nearly square and tablet-like 6:5 aspect ratio that is in landscape orientation by default and in portrait mode when rotated. The resolution is 2208 x 1840, with just 380 PPI of pixel density, but it is nonetheless a stunner, with sharp detail, vibrant colors, and deep blacks. This display also supports always-on capabilities, interestingly, and it’s also quite bright, with up to 1000 nits of brightness when displaying HDR content and up to 1450 nits of peak brightness.

There are a few notable things to know about the internal display. First, it’s not protected with any kind of Gorilla Glass, which I assume can’t fold; instead, we get what Google calls “ultra-thin glass with A protective plastic layer.” And it doesn’t quite lay flat when fully, at least not without a bit of pressure on either side of the display, an action I’m reluctant to take. I suspect it gets a bit less taut over time.

There is a visible crease in the center of the internal display. However, this crease visually disappears fully in use almost all of the time, and I rarely see it now unless the device is laying open on a table or other surface. Obviously, reliability is a concern with any folding display, with the crease and hinge being the prime suspects. And I hope it’s as obvious that I cannot possibly opine on how this thing will fare in the long term. I had no issues.

And yes, the bezels are on the chunky side. I’m sure it’s obvious that this helps with holding the device.

I wrote extensively in Google Pixel Fold: The Morning After last week about my experiences experimenting with phone apps in both landscape and portrait modes, and how curious it was that different apps behaved differently. To expand on that discussion briefly, I wish I could write something definitive about which orientation works best. But the truth is, it depends on the app. For example, with The New York Times, I prefer landscape orientation because the app provides a tablet-like layout, while in portrait mode it just displays a simple, single-column view as on a traditional smartphone. But other apps, like Kindle, Facebook, and Instagram, work (or at least look) better in portrait, either because they fill the entire screen or because it’s just easier on the eyes. So there’s a bit of complexity there, I guess.

Hardware and specs

From an internal component perspective, the Pixel Fold is modern, assuming you consider last year modern, that is, as it ships with last year’s Google Tensor G2 chipset and Titan M2 security processor, along with a flagship-level 12 GB of fast LPDDR5 RAM and 256 GB or 512 GB of UFS 3.1 storage. In practice, it’s fine, and the Pixel Fold performs about as well as my Pixel 7 Pro. But that means that it experiences the same heat issues and app slowdowns from time to time. For example, the Instagram problem I discussed in my Google Pixel 7 Pro Review and Revisiting the Google Pixel 7 Pro is present in the Fold as well.

Connectivity

Connectivity is modern, with Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.2, Ultra-Wideband, NFC, and 5G (both Sub-6GHz and mmWave).

Audio-video

The audio/video experience is interesting. The Pixel Fold provides stereo speakers, with one above the top left of the internal display and one below the bottom right. This means that the speakers are positioned as they are on other smartphones when the Fold is used while closed, which makes some sense. But it creates a somewhat curious sound field when listening to music when the Fold is opened, as the stereo sides range from the far top left to the far bottom right (rather than left to right). Honestly, it sounds great, as does movie audio, and I suspect that the Fold’s support for spatial audio might play a role there.

That said, I would be a bit nervous using the Pixel Fold to watch videos on the elliptical at the gym. Closed, the device is a bit thick, and I’d be worried about my motion dislodging it. And open, it would feel precarious, with the same fear. I never did test this, however.

Cameras

Given my affinity for Pixel photography, you may be surprised to discover that I didn’t take all that many photos with the Pixel Fold. But this is explainable. First, the Pixel 6a reminded me last year that Google can work wonders even with a device that uses years-old camera lenses and not its most recent components. And second, I was (I hope understandably) nervous about taking the Fold out into the real world, lest I somehow damage a really expensive device that had no case and that I knew I’d be returning.

But here’s the thing. The Pixel Fold does not ship with the ancient camera components found in the Pixel 6a, it ships with a modern triple-lens system that, while not quite on par with what I have in the Pixel 7 Pro, is still an improvement over what Google ships in the Pixel 7 and 7a. All that, combined with the few shots I did take, leaves me with no worries. (Again, my brief time with the Pixel Fold prevented the amount of experience I prefer to have before writing a review.)

More specifically, the Pixel Fold provides a 48 MP Octa PD (photodiode) Quad Bayer wide (main) lens with an ƒ/1.7 aperture and an 82-degree field of view, a 10.8 MP ultra-wide lens with an ƒ/2.2 aperture and a 121.1-degree field of view, and a 10.8 MP dual PD telephoto lens with 5x optical zoom (and hybrid zoom to 20x), an ƒ/3.05 aperture, and a 21.9-degree field of view. None of those lenses matches up exactly with those in the Pixel 7 Pro, but they’re all quite close. The telephoto lens on the Pixel 7 Pro, for example, also provides 5x optical zoom, and its hybrid zoom supports up to 30x, though I found that 20x is the limit for hand-held shots.

So yeah, I kind of mailed that one in a bit. But it’s a Pixel, and one of the few certainties with these phones is that the cameras are always excellent. Plus, it says a lot about this device that I focused more on its unique folding phone features.

Security

In addition to the security core functionality in the Tensor G2 and the Titan M2 chipset, the Pixel Fold provides a fast and accurate fingerprint reader integrated into its power button and Face Unlock facial recognition, and Google promises five years of security updates. Here, I was surprised. The in-display fingerprint reader on the Pixel Pro 6 was dodgy, while the version on the Pixel 7 Pro is a bit better, though I augmented it with Face Unlock. But I have only used the fingerprint reader on the Pixel Fold, and it’s always worked immediately and without fail. As good, the Fold doesn’t prompt me to use my PIN the first time I use it every day as my Pixel 7 Pro does. I very much prefer how authentication works on the Pixel Fold.

Battery

Speaking of Pixel 7 Pro weaknesses, I was curious how the Pixel Fold could possibly deliver decent battery life given that its battery is a bit smaller than that in the Pixel 7 Pro, which can barely last a full day, but has to power a much bigger display much of the time. Too, the Pixel 7 Pro has the slowest wired and wireless charging speeds imaginable. This should have been a disaster.

It has not been a disaster. And with the caveat, again, of just one week of usage, I’ve experienced something I’ve not experienced with a Pixel, like, ever. The Pixel Fold consistently lasted 2 days in (semi) normal usage. And even the wired charging seems faster. (I didn’t test wireless charging because the Pixel 7 Pro is so bad I don’t even have a compatible charger now.) OK, another caveat: I never put this thing on a cellular network, nor did I experience any truly heavy-use days. But seriously, I’m sensitive to this because of my agonizing previous Pixel experiences. There is something going on here.

Software

From a software perspective, the Pixel Fold delivers exactly what any Pixel fan wants and expects, and as I wrote in Google Pixel Fold First Impressions and Google Pixel Fold: The Morning After, I really enjoy how rotating the display reorients the Android home screen correctly, just as it does on the Pixel Tablet. Between this built-in functionality, its updated in-house apps, and a suddenly more mature market of third-party apps, larger-screen devices like the Pixel Fold offer much more seamless experiences than they would have just a year or two ago. Yes, there is still work to be done. But there used to be a huge gulf between iPad apps and Android apps on tablets. It’s smaller now.

Pricing and availability

As I noted up front, the Pixel Fold has one obvious Achilles Heel, and that’s the price. A base unit model with 256 GB of storage will set you back $1799, while one with 512 GB of storage is a brutal $1919. And that assumes you can get one: at the Google Store, the Fold is still described as being on preorder, and certain color and storage combinations are temporarily unavailable. As bad, trade-in values have plummeted from their launch-time heights. My Apple iPhone 13 Pro and my wife’s Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra are both worth a bit more than one-third of what they were back in May. (You can still get a free Pixel Watch with any Fold preorder, a $350 value, but Pixel Watch 2 arrives in a few months. And I suspect most would rather just see a $350 price cut.)

This is a problem, and it stands contrary to Google’s pricing strategy since the Pixel 6 lineup, where it undercuts its competition significantly and often has big sales that make these products even harder to resist. But the Pixel Fold is priced at exactly the same level as the market leader, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold. And while we can debate which offers the better value, the Samsung is the more mature product and is likely a safer bet.

Recommendations and conclusions

I didn’t spend enough time with the Pixel Fold to feel comfortable recommending it in any credible way, but I made my feelings clear about this product in Hybrid (Premium). That is, I feel that foldable smartphones are the future of the premium smartphone market and that the Fold has the right mix of capabilities and design to be considered the top choice. On a more emotional level, I have fallen in love with this form factor and with the Pixel Fold specifically, and the reason I know so much about trade-in values is that I was just looking at what it would look like to buy one so that it could be here when we get back from Mexico.

But without a silly trade-in value, I can’t justify the price and neither can my wife, and she probably wants one of these even more than I do. We’ll pay attention to future sales and wait for Google to see the light on pricing. But maybe that’s the strongest recommendation I can give, with the caveat that this is very much not a recommendation. I intend to buy a Pixel Fold, and so does my wife. And I wouldn’t be surprised that, once that happens, whenever that happens, we will never own a single-screen smartphone again.