It’s all about the Outer Display

Heading into Google I/O in May, we knew that the Pixel Fold was being announced. It had leaked numerous times, so we knew what to expect from this device from Google. And when I finally got hands on with the device after the keynote, I knew this would be the one to dethrone Samsung. In fact, I even said as much in the hands-on article. But now that I’ve been able to spend some time with it, making it my daily driver, do I still feel the same?

Actually, I do. In fact, my opinion on the Pixel Fold is even stronger than before. And that really all comes down to the display. But before I spoil this review, let’s get started with the hardware.

Google Pixel Fold Review: Hardware

From the moment I first picked up the Pixel Fold, it felt like a high-end piece of jewelry. Something I used to really only feel with the iPhone, or with Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold devices. Of course, with a phone that costs $1,800, you’d expect that. But then again, this is Google.

Google used an aluminum frame for the Pixel Fold, and Gorilla Glass Victus on both the front and back. Now the back is a frosted glass, similar to what the Pixel 4 had a few years ago. And that’s something I wish Google would go back to with the regular candy-bar sized smartphones. It makes it feel really good in the hand, and it’s not slippery at all. Of course, you can also rest your finger below the camera bump, making it even easier to hold onto.

What Google has done really well with the Pixel Fold is, that hinge. The hinge allows it to fold completely flat, so there’s no gap in there. Like there is with Samsung’s foldables, which is a bit crazy since every other smartphone maker has managed to get rid of that gap. But that does help you have some peace of mind about dirt and dust getting in there and possibly breaking the display.

Google was able to manage an IPX8 rating for durability here. Which basically means that it is water resistant, not dust resistant. And considering we’ve already seen a couple of Pixel Folds break due to dust, that sounds about right. Foldables aren’t the most durable phones out there, but they are improving, which is good to see.

The Pixel Fold is one heavy beast

It’s something I’ve grown accustomed to dealing with, buy the Pixel Fold is super heavy. In the Galaxy Z Fold 4 review, I complained about the weight. That was a pretty heavy phone, but the Pixel Fold is even heavier. About 20 grams heavier, weighing in at 283g.

Now, despite it being heavier than the Galaxy Z Fold 4, it doesn’t seem heavier than it. Now, maybe this is because the weight is more evenly distributed compared to Samsung’s phones. Which have that massive hinge, and likely uses a good amount of the weight.

Honestly, the phone feels heavy, but it doesn’t feel so heavy that it’s a dealbreaker for me. For reference, I carry an iPhone 14 Pro which is also quite heavy at 206g. That’s still considerably lighter than the Pixel Fold, but still quite heavy for a 6.1-inch phone.

You’ll get used to the weight, perhaps faster than if you had bought a Galaxy Z Fold 4. But don’t forget, you’re basically getting a phone and a small tablet here, so the weight makes sense, especially with aluminum and glass.

Google Pixel Fold Review: Display

Perhaps my favorite feature of the Google Pixel Fold – the displays. Let’s start with the outer display. This is the display that you’ll likely use the most. This is a 5.9-inch 17.5:9 aspect ratio display. It’s basically the same size as a regular smartphone display, and a bit wider than most current-day smartphones. Bringing us back to the display sizes of about 5-6 years ago, and I for one, love it.

This display is actually usable, and during the week I spent with the Pixel Fold, I’d say I probably used that display about 80% of the time. There just wasn’t much reason to open it up and use the wider 6:5 aspect ratio display. This is also part of the reason why the Pixel Fold battery life is actually pretty good, but we’ll talk about that in a bit.

So why is this display better than what the Galaxy Z Fold 4 offers? Well, the Galaxy Z Fold 4 has a very skinny front display. It’s a 23.1:9 aspect ratio. Which makes it very cramped, and very tall. Making it hard to do well, really anything. The Pixel Fold is quite the opposite actually. And that’s what makes it so great.

The main display is great for multi-tasking

The other issue with Samsung’s foldable is that, the main display is pretty close to being a square. It’s a 21.6:18 aspect ratio display, which means that using apps side-by-side can be a real pain as well, since they are still going to be skinny. About as skinny as the outer display. Or if you use a single app, it’s going to be stretched out, which is also not a great experience.

Google has done better here with that internal display, making it a 6:5 aspect ratio. Still pretty close to a square, but it’s wide enough (without rotating it) to run two apps side-by-side, and keep them at the same 17.4:9 aspect ratio as you’d see on the front screen.

While I’ve been using the Pixel Fold, I’ve mostly only used the internal screen when I need to use two apps at the same time, or for something like Google Maps. Apps like that work really well with this square aspect ratio. As you’re able to see a lot more of the area around you, which is really nice.

Google Pixel Fold Review: Performance

Since the Pixel 6 debuted in 2021, I’ve been quite critical of the Tensor chipset. It’s often times pretty slow, can get hot while doing simple things, and not to mention the battery life. The modem with the Tensor chipset is also not good. Of course, our European friends will just laugh at this since, the Tensor is basically a rebranded Exynos chipset.

However, on the Pixel Tablet and Pixel Fold, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much better the Tensor G2 chipset has been, compared to the Pixel 7, 7 Pro and 7a smartphones. I’m not sure if Google has had time to better optimize the software and the chipset for the Tablet and Fold, or maybe it’s a placebo effect. But it does seem a lot better. However, the usual Tensor problems still exist.

Many have noticed, including myself, that while doing simple tasks on the Pixel Fold, it does get quite warm. I was browsing in Chrome for a few minutes, and I could feel the back of the phone getting quite warm. It wasn’t overheating, but it was warm. Which, honestly, shouldn’t be happening. I feel like it should only get warm if you use the camera for a long period of time, and/or are gaming for a long period of time.

Speaking of gaming, this isn’t a gaming phone. So don’t expect this to outperform something like the ASUS ROG Phone, but it’ll game. Tensor wasn’t made for gaming, it was made moreso for AI and machine learning for Google’s own software features and the Pixel Camera.

Google Pixel Fold Review: Battery life and Charging

Going into this review, I’ll admit my expectations for battery life was not high. Knowing how mediocre the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro battery life was, and the fact that the Pixel Fold has a smaller battery than the Pro, while having a second screen, I was not expecting a lot here. But, the Pixel Fold has exceeded my expectations.

The Pixel Fold was able to deliver to me about 8 hours of screen on time, on multiple days. Now is that the best battery life on a smartphone? No. Of course not. But that is enough to get everyone through a day of usage. Standby has also been pretty decent. Leaving it on my bedside table overnight, for roughly 8-10 hours, it dropped only 3-4%. That’s right on par with the Galaxy S23 Ultra, actually.

I have seen some others claim that standby wasn’t as good, and that is likely due to their carrier and the carrier’s signal. I used the Pixel Fold on Visible (which is on Verizon’s network) and it worked perfectly. Never really lost signal at all. So that definitely did help me out with battery life.

I will use this caveat here though, I did end up using the outer display a lot more on the Pixel Fold. As I mentioned above, probably about 75-80% of the time I was using that outer display. But even on days where I used the inner display heavily, I was still getting well over 6 hours of screen on time. So battery life isn’t a problem, for now. I say that because, Pixels tend to degrade quite a bit over time. The Pixel 7 Pro was decent at launch, but now, it’s pretty bad.

Charging speeds are for the birds

One area that smartphones in the US really lack is, charging speeds. The Pixel Fold is even slower than Samsung’s newest smartphones. Boasting speeds of 30W wired and 7.5W wireless. Which is brutally slow. It takes nearly two hours to fully charge the Pixel Fold, and the battery isn’t even really all that big. It’s only a 4821mAh capacity battery, yet the Galaxy S23 Ultra can charge much faster at its 45W peak speed.

On top of that, after paying $1,799 for the Pixel Fold, you don’t even get a charger in the box. Now, most of us likely have a capable charger laying around already, but at that price, Google could have spent another $5 and put in a 30W charging brick.

The good news here is that the Pixel Fold does have enough battery to get you through the day, most likely, unless you’re a very heavy user. So that you only need to charge at night.

Google Pixel Fold Review: Software

This part of the review is going to sound a whole lot like the software section in the Pixel Tablet review. And that’s because much of the same strengths and weaknesses are present here too.

As mentioned in our disclaimer above, this is running on Android 13, along with the June 2023 security update. So it’s not yet running Android 14, which should bring about some nice changes for foldables and tablets. Really those larger screens. It’s also important to mention here that the Pixel Fold will get three years of OS updates, and five years of Security updates. That means that it should get updated to Android 16. But just miss the cut off for Android 17.

Google has been working on making Android work better on larger screens, since Android 12L released back in 2022. And for the most part, the software works pretty well on the main display. We won’t talk much about the cover display here, as it works as any other Pixel phone. The real thing to talk about is that 7.6-inch main display.

For example, when you pull down the notification shade, you will get a dual-paned notification shade. With notifications on the right, and your quick settings plus media player on the left side. It does pretty well at taking advantage of the space. The Settings app does the same thing. It has the main settings on the left side, and the sub-menu on the right when you tap on different options.

Split screen is here, just as you’d expect. And Google has made it pretty easy to jump into split screen. You can swipe up from the bottom to open the dock and then drag and drop an app onto one side. Or you can go into Recents and then tap on “Split” then choose the other app you want on Split Screen. From my testing, every app works in split screen, and that’s because it basically shows up as a regular sized phone app.

It’s not perfect, and this does show how far ahead Samsung is here. For example, you can’t keep apps grouped together to open again later. Say I want to open Chrome and Twitter together often, I’d have to drag-and-drop one onto the other side every time. Especially if I opened one of the apps by themselves already. It does keep the groups in recents, but if you had Twitter and Instagram together, then went back later and only opened Instagram, they are no longer grouped in Recents. Hopefully that’s something they’ll add later on.

The home screens do something rather interesting here. And I don’t mean interesting in a good way. Basically, it takes your home screen from the outer display, and puts it on the main display. So the left side is your first home screen and the right is your second screen. If you’re like me and only use one home screen, then this makes the main display look quite awkward with all your apps on one side, but the dock is centered. Samsung let’s you turn this on or off, so you can have a totally different home screen when you open the Fold 4. Fingers crossed that Google adds something like that in a future Feature Drop.

Finally, we have to talk about apps. There’s still not a ton of apps optimized for this display. And then there are some apps that open up in the center of the display – like Twitter, Instagram and Reddit. Google has taken an interesting approach here with the Pixel Tablet and Pixel Fold, where instead of forcing every app to open in full screen, they open at their normal size. Samsung allows you to force them to open at full screen. And honestly, I’m not sure which is better. A phone sized app, or an app stretched across a 7.6-inch 6:5 display. Neither is really a good experience, in my opinion.

Though a lot of Google apps are optimized for the Pixel Fold, there’s still some apps that will likely never be optimized, like Twitter and Instagram. Heck, Instagram won’t even build an app for the iPad, which sells way more than the Pixel Fold and Tablet will, combined.

Google Pixel Fold Review: Camera

Besides the displays, something else I was really excited for with the Pixel Fold was, the cameras. In foldables, often times the cameras are lacking. Whether this is because companies see this as a way to cut costs, or because foldables are so thin there’s no room for these huge sensors. The Pixel Fold basically has the same camera setup as the Pixel 7a. Which isn’t bad, but it’s not on the level of the Pixel 7 Pro.

On the back, you’ll find a triple camera setup. That includes a 48-megapixel main sensor with OIS. There’s a 10.8-megapixel ultrawide, and a 10.8-megapixel telephoto with OIS. On the front display, there’s a 9.5-megapixel sensor and then on the inner screen there’s a 8-megapixel sensor. Only the front display camera can be used for facial recognition, which also can’t be used for authentication.

So yeah, not the most high-end cameras on a Pixel, but it should blow away basically every other foldable right? Right. Every picture I took with the Pixel Fold was impressive. It’s exactly what I expected to see from a Pixel smartphone. It even offers a 5x telephoto option, which still looks amazing. Not quite as far as the 10X we’re seeing on other smartphones, but 5X optical zoom in this thin foldable is still quite impressive. Here are some shots at 5X.

The camera as a whole was really impressive, and for many people, it might be the sole reason to buy this over another foldable. Now, since the sensor is smaller than what the Pixel 7 Pro has, it’s not quite as good in low-light. But then again, we have Google’s computational photography here, so it’s still really good.

Perhaps the best part of the camera, is that you can open the phone up, and push the viewfinder to the front display, allowing you to use those rear cameras for selfies. That’s going to really step up your selfie game and even your vlogging game.

The short answer here is, the camera is still good.

Wrap Up

The Google Pixel Fold is such a good foldable, that I can barely put it down. Which is also part of the reason why I got such good screen on time. It was being used most of the day. It does so many things well, and a few things not so well. You definitely need to be careful with that inner display, as with every foldable.

But if you’re looking for your first foldable, it’s hard not to recommend the Pixel Fold.

You should buy the Google Pixel Fold if:

• You want a usable cover display.
• You want a great camera on a great foldable.
• You want good battery life on a foldable.
• You want the Pixel experience on a foldable.

You should not buy the Google Pixel Fold if:

• You are hard on phones, this is a fragile phone.
• You don’t want to spend $1,800 to be a beta tester.