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While I am an adherent to the “right tool for the job” principle, I am also open to a single device that can replace two other devices. So far, my experience has been mixed: while the iPhone and Android smartphones made dedicated music players like the iPod superfluous, their small displays make them less than ideal for reading or watching videos (at least to my eyes). You win some, you lose some.
But with folding smartphones, the promise is that this one device will be so good for reading and watching videos that it will eliminate the need for a standalone tablet while making phone-centric tasks like email, maps, social media, workplace collaboration, and so on even more immersive and enjoyable. If it works, it’s the best of both worlds. If it doesn’t, well. We’ve been there before.
Folding smartphones have run into some obvious headwinds, of course. They’re very expensive, often twice as expensive as a typical flagship smartphone. The folding display technology has had reliability and durability issues. Developers have been slow to adapt their Android apps to the unique benefits of this form factor. And folding phones, while elegant and fun while open, are thick and heavy when closed, and they don’t close flat. Compromises are everywhere.
And given Google’s unfortunately spotty record with hardware quality, it’s reasonable to question how this company could possibly succeed where its more experienced competitors—mostly Samsung—have so far been hit or miss. It’s certainly been at the top of my mind, and never more so than when my $1900 credit card purchase was completed on Monday as Google shipped its first folding smartphone, the Pixel Fold, to my home.
And … wow.
Put simply, I think I may be looking at the future of smartphones here. Not so much in Google’s v1 outing, which is far too expensive to ever be mainstream, but rather in the way that the online giant pulled an Apple, observed what has worked and not worked in previous folding smartphone designs, waited until it could do better, and then finally pulled the trigger.
In real-world terms, this means that the Pixel Fold is thin—about half an inch or so—for a folding phone while closed, making it feel less chunky and awkward than Samsung’s offerings, and easily pocketable. It also closes flat, with no air gap, and because it features the instant classic Pixel camera bar across its back, you can use it normally, if slightly angled, on a table when closed. (When open, you get some wobble.) And the outside display, while small at just 5.8 inches, mostly fills up the exterior of the device, and is not oddly tall and thin like Samsung’s, helping it look and feel more natural as a smartphone.
When unfolded, the Pixel Fold is unbelievably thin, much thinner than any of my smartphones. Its internal folding display is expansive and a welcome sight to my middle-aged eyes. It’s like a 7.6-inch mini-tablet with a blessedly square (6:5) aspect ratio that I wish Google has used for the Pixel Tablet as well. But that’s the magic here, a big part of why it feels like the future: this is a smartphone that is small and thin enough to fit fine in my front pocket, but it also opens up like a flower into an even thinner device with a much bigger display that is ideal for consuming content. It’s not just two things in one, it’s two useful things in one.
What everyone is probably most interested in is the folding bit. That is, how well does the hinge work and how much rumpling can one see on the screen’s crease? Here, I have mostly good news with the caveat that I just got the thing: the hinge is fantastic and something the Surface team would brag about incessantly, and the folding display is, well, a folding display. You can see the crease clearly when the device is off, but it’s not obnoxious and it does seem to disappear when fully open, depending on the app. Or, apps: when you use two apps side-by-side, the crease disappears as well.
As a Pixel fan, I like how Google has also blended the best of its smartphone platform with this new form factor. Obviously, Pixel Fold benefits from the same work on large-screen Android compatibility as with Pixel Tablet. But unlike with the tablet, the cameras here really matter—they’re not quite as good as the setup you get with Pixel 7 Pro, but close—and you can take selfies with the main cameras thanks to the external display. And can take astrophotography shots without needing a tripod because the device can be angled to the stars and kept steady with that rock-solid hinge. Nice.
The basics are, well, basic. You get the same clean Android image as on other Pixels with the same AI benefits, and the same basic UI found on the Pixel Tablet (when the Fold is open). And I really like its industrial design. But you also get the same acceptable but uninspiring performance, I’d imagine, and I’d be shocked if the battery life was any good given how much trouble my Pixel 7 Pro has getting through a day. (The Pixel 7 Pro has a bigger battery than the dual-screen Pixel Fold, too.) I will find out.
The question before us, then, is whether a Pixel Fold is an acceptable replacement for a Pixel 7 Pro and a Pixel Tablet (or maybe an iPad Mini, if you’re looking for a tablet a little closer in size). Wherever you fall in this debate, the issues I see are price and battery. A Pixel 7 Pro ($900) and Pixel Tablet ($500) are together less expensive ($1400) by hundreds of dollars, and each has its own battery. But then again, you can’t stick a Pixel Tablet in your pocket, can you?
I’ll spend some more time with Pixel Fold and report back soon.
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