Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold Is So Good! But…

(upbeat music) - All right, so first thing I did when I got back from Australia was start to catch up on the stuff that I missed. And I put my SIM card in the Pixel Fold, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold and I was impressed, really. Maybe I shouldn't have been so impressed given how good the other Pixel 9s already are.

But it's a folding phone, folding phones are hard, but the second generation of anything tells you a lot. And even though this is called the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, it's the second one. The first Pixel Fold is last year and it was solid.

It was one of my favorite foldables to use closed with that passport style aspect ratio, but it had a number of trade-offs with its price. This one makes some big strides forward. So let me just start with the design.

Like there was a lot of chatter about this camera bump on the back just 'cause of the way it looks, which is, yeah, it's kind of weird. But personally this hasn't bothered me. It's not like the biggest wobbler.

I wish it was wider like the other Pixels, I wish it looked more consistent like the Pixel 9 and 9 Pro, but you don't have to look at it much. I'm guessing it looks like this just 'cause of the complicated internals of a folding phone. But then the rest of the design around this thing is pretty nice.

It is much thinner, first of all, and they've flattened the sides all the way around. So it's this more modern like squared off shape a lot of other flagships have. Now, the funny thing is the rounded sides from last year were actually easier to just pry open for a folding phone.

So you'll notice that if you use both phones back to back, but this isn't the end of the world. And then, there's a bunch of other refinements too. The hinge is a bit smaller.

The sides are now sort of matte finish instead of glossy. So now, you have matte sides and a soft touch back. And overall, it just feels much closer to a normal slab when it's closed.

It's not fully there, like we're not quite fooling anybody yet, but it's a little over 10 millimeters thick folded and there are a lot of other phones from the past year that are around that number. The main change though definitely is that it's not that smaller passport size anymore. This is a full on like maxed out flagship size, 6.

3 inch, 1080p, dynamic 120 hertz AmLED display. It's big, the last one was more reachable, for sure. Now it's much more like the OnePlus Open sized.

So it's right around the maximum of actually being able to use the whole screen with one hand. I mean your mileage may vary of course, depending on the size of your hands. But yeah, there's also still real bezels all the way around the screen and it kind of pushes it away from the hinge so it's a little off center.

But in general, I still find it very usable and it just feels more like a regular phone than ever before, which I think is a win. I really like this cover screen. And then when you open it up, that's when the benefits of being taller really start to pay off 'cause now you go from a 7.

6 inch screen to a slightly narrower but taller 8 inch screen that's basically now a square. And the screen is way better, it's up to 2700 nits. It's nice and bright.

It is actually LTPO when the cover screen is not, for some reason and the bezels have tremendously improved from the first folding Pixel. So they're still a little thick, sure, but now they're nicely even all the way around and there's a whole punch cutout in the corner now instead of the selfie camera on the thick bezel. And just look how thin that is.

Like it's barely thicker than the USB C port. This would've been a crazy sentence just a few short years ago, but using this phone I wager almost everything about the hardware of this Google phone is at or above average, which is crazy. It's like the harder the part is to make the better and more above average they are.

Like this new hinge is nice and smooth and the phone opens and closes in a really satisfying way and it unfolds all the way flat easily, unlike last year's phone. The crease through the middle is, you know, average at worst, but very easy to look past when you're actually looking at content on the screen. And they fit in a 4650 milliampere-hour battery inside, which again is a little above average for foldables, even though it's actually slightly less than last year.

The speakers in this thin body are very good and full. The water resistance is here, it's IPX8. The flatter fingerprint reader is easy and quick and fast.

And just this hardware feels actually more deserving of the word pro than ever before. So you know, they renamed the phone, it has pro in the name now, but it feels like it deserves it. But also little things like the outer display not being LTPO feel weird considering that's the one that does the always on thing.

That's the one you really want to be LTPO. And it also doesn't charge particularly fast and there's no Qi2 so the phone has this lower than normal wireless charging coil that can be kind of annoying to line up and doesn't work on certain chargers, which may feel like nitpicking but hey, when it's an $1800 phone, you are definitely allowed to nitpick. Overall though, design wise, I really feel like they got a lot of stuff right.

So yeah, it reminds me of the OnePlus Open from last year, which won my best folding phone of the year. But then this one is a Pixel and this Pixel software experience ends up being what differentiates it over a lot of other folding phone options out there because yeah, there are totally more flashy foldables with more advanced hardware from Vivo and Xiaomi and there's these razor thin pieces of hardware with head turning specs. But if I'm being honest, the software on those typically isn't nearly as good.

So here you basically have all the same features as the rest of the Pixel 9 flagship lineup, which is great. It's call screening, it's the Pixel weather app, it's all the new stuff basically, everything except the thermometer app and that's fine. So Gemini is actually getting good, like I said in the 9 review, and I'm still loving circle to search, although on this inner screen you gotta be slightly more careful because the slight difference between hold to circle to search and the tiny swipe to bring up the dock can kind of take some getting used to.

But then there's also all of the foldable optimizations, the two column layouts for so many pieces of Android, the notifications, the settings app, so many other first party apps. And I've just been generally loving the larger size screen because it feels like multitasking and having multiple apps open at once. Or specifically something I do a lot, which is picture in picture with a small YouTube video window somewhere on the screen, but I'm reading an article or doing something else in a full-size window, all of that is better on this phone than last year.

And this is all Android 14, which is the same as all the other new Pixels, but I put Android 15 beta on my old Pixel Fold and there are some more folding optimizations that's just. . .

It's hopefully, coming soon and they promise seven years of software updates on Pixel 9s, which is pretty elite. So I've said a lot of nice things about this phone, but going into this before I even put my SIM card in it, 'cause I'd read other people's coverage and seen stuff about this phone is I knew that there would be basically two main downsides to look out for, to keep an eye on. And those are the Tensor chip being underpowered and the downgraded camera system.

So, okay, it's a Pixel, let's just start with the cameras. Basically, my findings are, yes, they are smaller sensors than the main Pixels and yes, they are worse, but they're not horrible. Like they're not that much worse that it's a bad camera now.

Basically, you can see the style of the photos is the same and it's contrasty, it's high dynamic range, but it's not as sharp is my main observation. And this gets exaggerated as the conditions get worse. So in lower light the photos get softer and lack details faster as these smaller sensors start to fight for light more.

So it feels on par with like a Pixel flagship, but from a few years ago, like a Pixel 7 Pro. Now that's about it and that's always been one of the compromises of these high-end folding phones is, you know, they give you all the software features of the other phones, but for 17, $1800 you would also hope for the maximum quality, but they can't fit all of the same camera sensors in a phone that has all this other hardware and a hinge and everything like that. So if you take a lot of pictures and you're into phones specifically for that, that might be a tough pill to swallow.

But if you're not, if you buy it for other reasons and you're not a huge camera person, then you may be willing to overlook that. Me, personally, I rely too much on photos and videos from my phone, so that's tough for me. But the other downside is this Tensor chip, and this is another nuanced one.

See, Google's Tensor chip has never been best in its class power-wise or efficiency-wise. I'd argue it's been good enough for the phones it's been in. But if you wanted to do like high-end gaming or if you wanted a really extended shelf life for more than a few years or really amazing battery life, like Tensor is holding these phones back.

And so, people have been trying to figure out, all right, when is Google going to catch up and get on par with like the Qualcomm level flagship chips and the Tensor G4 in the Pixel 9 line of phones, including this phone, is solid and it's paired with 16 gigs of RAM in this phone, which is awesome and obviously helps with the AI models, but also running the rest of the phone. But it's not amazing and it really makes you wonder like, okay, it's promised seven years of software updates, but will the phone last that long? Like these are real questions.

But word on the street is next gen, next Tensor chip, allegedly, maybe is gonna be the one that finally goes from being designed by Google and manufactured by Samsung to the first fully custom Google chip with three nanometers and everything. And that could be the huge jump that this needs. That could be a big power jump, a big efficiency jump, but that's just a rumor.

So I would say that if you hear that and get excited about that which, let's be honest, a lot of the customer base for a $2,000 folding phone actually does care about that stuff then, you should probably wait. I actually feel like you should wait. And it's weird to say that this is both one of the best folding phones I've ever used and you should probably wait just because you don't wanna spend this much and then regret your purchase next year.

But if that doesn't speak to you, honestly, this phone as it exists today, it feels great. It looks great, it's smooth, the battery life, for me, is consistently like six hours of screen on time with mostly small screen activities, but then the sort of 10% of the time that I actually open it and do a lot more big screen use, then you can eat into the battery a bit more. But I just feel like I am productive when I have this phone.

Like it really does accomplish the goal of feeling like I have two phones, the regular size flagship when it's closed, and then the mini tablet ready to go at any time for the multi column layouts, the multitasking and big productivity apps, for all that stuff that I really sit down and get stuff done on my phone for, this thing has been awesome. Oh, and also speaking of ready to go at any time, I just wanted to shout out that the new Ridge Wallet that I designed is finally here and it is a full grain leather soft wallet and it's sick. RFID blocking, lightweight, two pockets with easy access.

You can kind of just pop 'em up from the front or use your finger to glide them up from the back. Fits up to around eight cards. You could put cash in it, if you want to also.

It's everything you need and nothing you don't. I'll link it below if you wanna check it out. I'm really proud of it.

But yeah, look, if you're not a foldable person, then this phone may not convince you. Like it's the same dimensions, the same functionality, roughly. Like it's not a game changer, by any means.

But if you are a foldable person, this phone has been awesome to use. Like I've really enjoyed the fact that it really feels like a full on flagship on the front and feels like a mini tablet when I want one. Two phones in one, that's the ideal foldable phone for me.

And yeah, this is my favorite flagship foldable ever to come out so there you have it. Hopefully, Android 15 soon. Thanks for watching, catch you in the next one, peace.