I have a love-hate relationship with the Google Pixel Fold

Foldable phones have been around for a few years, but they still make up a fairly small portion of the mobile market. One major factor is price, with many foldable devices costing at least $1,800. Although Samsung has been making foldable phones longer than anyone else, Google released its first foldable device last year with the Pixel Fold.

Back then, and for the company’s first attempt, the Google Pixel Fold was a pretty solid folding phone. But not long after, OnePlus also appeared in the foldable space with It is first foldable device, the OnePlus Open – and it was a hit.

I decided to give the Pixel Fold another try a year after its launch, having also used the OnePlus Open and liked that device much better. So how does the Google Pixel Fold hold up after all this time? It’s complicated.

What else I like about the Google Pixel Fold

When the Google Pixel Fold was first unveiled, I was pretty excited. I’m a fan of Google’s Pixel devices because they offer the stock Android experience and tend to take pretty good photos. While I’m not as excited about the Google Pixel Fold as I was when I first used it, it still has good points.

The cover display on the Google Pixel Fold is still one of my favorite aspects of using the phone. Google opted for a 5.8-inch cover display on the Pixel Fold, which I find very usable. I had missed the size of the iPhone XS display, which is also 5.8-inches, so it’s always a pleasure to go back to something similar on the Pixel Fold. I have more petite hands than most people, so the 5.8-inch size is much more usable for me when I want to use the phone one-handed.

The Pixel Fold’s cover display feels like a regular phone to me, making it easy to type on. This is unlike the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5, which is tall and narrow, resulting in a smaller, more cramped keyboard that I often make a lot of typos on.

While I like the OnePlus Open hinge that makes it easy to fold it completely flat, it is a bit looser, making it difficult to use in clamshell mode (like a mini laptop). The Pixel Fold, on the other hand, has a nice and solid hinge that doesn’t just pop open. It can hold its position pretty well, as it requires more force to make it completely flat. It’s a double-edged sword, but offers more versatility.

One of the annoying things about the Android platform as a whole is the fact that not every app is optimized for large screens, whether it’s a foldable device or a tablet. This is a problem that’s more common on Android than iOS, at least in my experience.

With the Google Pixel Fold, Google optimized its first-party apps to take advantage of the foldable’s larger screen size. However, because the Pixel Fold uses a horizontal/landscape orientation on the inner display (other foldables use a vertical orientation), this affected how third-party apps appeared when the Pixel Fold was originally launched. They had black bars on the side of the app, or the app might take up half or two-thirds of the screen.

Thankfully, Google seems to have fixed this issue. Google has added a new experimental setting in the Apps section of the Settings app, aptly named “Aspect Ratio.” This setting must be enabled for each app individually. Each app will be set to the “app default” and you’ll need to enable the fullscreen option for each app individually. I wish there was a way to just have a blanket setting to enable fullscreen for all apps at once, but this is an improvement over before. It’s also currently in the experimental phase, so it may change before it’s finalized.

What I don’t like about the Google Pixel Fold

While using the Google Pixel Fold this time, I noticed more things that I just don’t like about the phone.

Although I like the size, I hate the weight of the Pixel Fold – 283 grams. For comparison, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 weighs just 253 grams, while the OnePlus Open and Galaxy Z Fold 6 weigh just 239 grams. I can use the 5.8-inch cover display just fine with one hand, but I can’t do it for long, simply because the Pixel Fold just weighs so damn much.

I’ve also used the Pixel Fold to take product photos of other phones in my hand, and the weight makes that difficult when I try to do it one-handed, especially when trying to reach the shutter button. I really hope Google makes the next-gen Pixel Fold lighter, because right now it’s a big miss.

Having used the OnePlus Open with its anti-glare interior display, I found the Google Pixel Fold’s display a little difficult to use. It’s unfortunately very reflective, and when you combine that with the maximum peak brightness of 1,450 nits, it’s pretty hard to see outdoors. And while it’s down to the design of the hinge, the chunky bezels of the interior display are, well, a little unsightly. This is another area Google needs to focus on making improvements in the next version.

Another problem that people may have with foldable devices is the crease on the inner display. Although companies do their best to mitigate the visibility and feel of the crease, it will always be there. Unfortunately, the crease on the Pixel Fold quite striking, both in appearance and in feel.

It’s not that it’s impossible to reduce the fold. After all, Motorola’s latest Razr phones – like the 2024 Razr Plus – have virtually no fold, so why can’t Google do the same with the Pixel Fold? I hope the Pixel Fold 2’s fold is drastically reduced.

The Pixel Fold has not aged well

When the Google Pixel Fold was released, the Galaxy Z Fold 5 and OnePlus Open had not yet been released. Before these competing devices, the Pixel Fold was the only foldable device that had no gap when closed, which was an advantage. But since then, the Galaxy Z Fold 5, Galaxy Z Fold 6 and OnePlus Open have come out, and they are also gapless when closed, offering even more advantages over the Pixel Fold.

That’s to say that the Pixel Fold is hard to recommend at this point. It’s still a perfectly good folding phone, but given that the competition has much better options available—and that Google will likely announce a new Pixel Fold in August—the original Pixel Fold just doesn’t make sense anymore.