Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold Review: A folding delight!

1 month ago 6

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Google’s first-generation foldable which was launched last year showed a lot of promise but slightly paled in comparison to its direct rivals – Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5 and OnePlus Open. With the second-generation Pixel 9 Pro Fold, it feels like Google’s foldable has finally arrived. The tech giant has ditched the passport-style design and opted for a book-like form factor for the foldable. Its inner display spans 8 inches from edge to edge and is considerably brighter than its predecessor. When we got our hands on the Pixel 9 Pro Fold earlier this month, we were curious to see if its software could get the most out of its screen real estate. The right utilities can make a foldable greater than the sum of its parts. After using this foldable for almost a month, we have some thoughts on this matter. Let’s dive into our review of the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold and see if it is worth the Rs 1,72,999 price tag.

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Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold Review: Design and Display

Here’s what you get inside the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold retail box:

Smartphone
USB Type-C cable
SIM ejector
Safety guide

If the first-generation Pixel Fold’s design kept you on the fence, you will like what Google has in store for you this year. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold has a taller, book-like form factor and a slimmer profile. In its folded form, the smartphone is just 10.5mm thick. While regular smartphones fall between 8-9mm in thickness, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold does not feel bulky or excessive. It weighs 257g, making it 36g heavier than the Pixel 9 Pro XL. We did not face any trouble fitting it into our pockets and walking around with it.

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Design and Display

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold borrows some design elements from its Pro XL sibling. It has a glass back with a matte finish and glossy metal rails. The aluminium frame is rounded along the right edges and has pointed corners on the side of the hinge. The hinge has a glossy finish as well. The square-ish camera panel is different from the rectangular bars we’re used to seeing on Pixels. While it isn’t a complete eyesore, we would’ve preferred the classic visor on this foldable.

design

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The bottom edge of the aluminium frame houses two microphones, a SIM tray, a speaker grille, and a USB Type-C port. The top edge contains another speaker grille, a secondary microphone, and a 5G band. The volume rocker keys and the side button lie on the left edge of the frame. The side button doubles as the fingerprint scanner.

Design and Display

The 6.3-inch OLED cover display has a 120Hz refresh rate and can hit a peak brightness of 2,700 nits. This display is protected by Gorilla Glass Victus 2. The uniform bezels around this display are slightly thicker than what we’re used to seeing in flagship smartphones. The left edge has an additional metal casing that is attached to the hinge. The touch sensitivity and response rate of this display are top-notch, leaving no room for complaints. 70-80% of our daily usage required the cover display and it perfectly rose to the occasion.

display

It takes both hands to unfold the smartphone. A faint ‘crack’ sound escapes the device every time it is unfolded. It never fails to make us nervous – even after a month of using the device. The 8-inch inner OLED display has a similar refresh rate and peak brightness as the cover unit. However, this panel lacks Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protection as its plastic material makes it more conducive for folding purposes. This means that the inner display is more susceptible to scratches. The plastic bezels around the inner panel have been trimmed down to a more suitable size. These bezels reduce accidental touches by a considerable factor.

display

Foldable smartphones are a game changer when it comes to consuming media. Not only is the larger inner display more favourable for watching videos, but the folding form factor allows you to prop up the smartphone in a tabletop position. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold does this quite well. The camera panel causes it to bump against the rest surface, but it wasn’t a considerable issue for us. The image quality across the two screens was rich and detailed. The OLED panels bring out the deep blacks, leading to a high-quality viewing experience. The only drawback of this fine viewing experience lies with the audio output. Despite having two speaker grilles, the intensity of the audio output is quite low. We hope Google fixes this in the next iteration of the foldable.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold Review: Performance and Cameras

The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold draws power from the Tensor G4 chipset under its hood. Google’s in-house Tensor G4 SoC powers the rest of the Pixel 9 lineup as well. The foldable Pixel is available in a single RAM + storage configuration – 16GB + 256GB. It remains to be seen whether Google will introduce a 512GB variant in India later.

Performance and Cameras

On the Geekbench 6 app, the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold scored 1,554 points in the single-core test and 3,421 points in the multi-core test. These numbers are remarkably lower when compared to Snapdragon 8 Gen 3-powered smartphones, but the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s general performance does not reflect the gap at all. Our daily usage experience with this smartphone was smooth and jitter-free. Apps did not take any time to load on the screen and switching between the two displays did not produce any glitches. It was smooth sailing for us all the way through – even while running two apps at the same time on the larger display. The smartphone didn’t feel the need to shift from the first gear.

However, the gap in benchmark numbers becomes apparent while gaming on this device. The smartphone runs a little warm while playing titles like Call of Duty Mobile and Asphalt Legends Unite with high graphics and maximum frame rate. This is a common issue across all Pixel 9 smartphones. Google should look into fixing its flagship smartphone offerings with a state-of-the-art cooling system.

As is the case with all foldable smartphones, the gaming experience is heavily dependent on the title you’re playing. Games with refined tablet apps showcase fine graphics and optimised controls. Others are just stretched versions of the standard mobile apps. We’d like to see gaming developers tweak their apps for the foldable form factor by assigning the controls to the bottom screen in ‘handheld’ mode. So far, Disney Speedstorm is the only app that does this.

Google’s decision to launch the Pixel 9 Series earlier in the year means that they ship with Android 14 out of the box instead of Android 15. And while the new Android version is now out, our Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold review unit did not receive it at the time of writing this review. Google has promised 7 years of major OS upgrades for this foldable, but it remains to be seen whether Android 15 will be included in this cycle.

Performance and Cameras

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold gets new AI features like Gemini Assistant, Pixel Studio, and Reimagine along with the new Weather and Screenshots apps. We talked about this aspect extensively in our review of the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL so we suggest you give it a read. In this review, we’ll focus on the software elements that are exclusive to the Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

The option to use the primary camera sensor for selfies is something we really like about foldable smartphones. Using the cover display as a viewfinder, we were able to take superior selfies and portraits using the rear camera array. While taking pictures of other subjects, you can display the image preview in the outer panel. The ‘Made You Look’ feature plays attention-grabbing animations on the cover panel, which makes your pets and kids focus on the camera as you click a quick picture.

Performance and Cameras

Google’s app bar for the inner display is pivotal in maximizing productivity on this smartphone. You can drag any app from this bar and drop it on the screen to open it in split-screen mode. If you want to browse Twitter while watching a video on YouTube, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold makes the task very easy. On top of that, you can save app pairings and access them from the app switches any time you want.

multitasking

The third-party apps resort to their tablet layouts for the inner display. You can take video calls on the larger display and prop it up in a tabletop position to go hands-free. Google’s app suite adheres perfectly to the aspect ratio and allows the user to do more on the larger display. However, as far as email clients go, Microsoft Outlook’s app for foldable phones is still ahead of its peers.

battery

The 4,650mAh battery pack on this smartphone easily lasts an entire on a full charge. We were able to rack up 6-7 hours of screen time on the device before needing to plug in the charger. Our daily tasks on the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold during the review period included video calling, emailing, social media browsing, navigation, gaming, and media viewing. You can maximise the battery life by limiting the inner display usage. The 21W charging speed of this smartphone leaves more to be desired. It took us 1 hour and 45 minutes to fully charge the Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

Performance and Cameras

Interestingly, the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold does not rock the same camera specs as the rest of the series. Its rear camera panel features a 48MP primary shooter, a 10.8MP telephoto lens (with 5x optical zoom), and a 10.5MP telephoto lens. This is the same camera system as 2023’s Pixel Fold. The cover and inner displays have been updated with 10MP selfie shooters. In comparison, the Pixel 9 Pro XL has a 50MP + 48MP + 48MP rear camera setup along with a 42MP selfie camera.

primary camera

The 48MP primary sensor takes delightful images in outdoor daylight conditions. These images are packed with vivid colours and cutting-edge details. The dynamic range and contrast level are ideal as well. Overall, the pictures are warm and showcase a rich colour palette.

The 10.5MP telephoto lens offers 5x optical zoom. The images taken with this camera are notably softer when you compare them with the results from the 48MP unit on the Pixel 9 Pro XL. Having said that, Google’s photo processing skills do a good job of restoring the composition of the image even at the maximum 20x zoom.

The 10.5MP ultrawide lens covers a good field of view and produces life-like colours in outdoor daylight conditions. We would have preferred a higher contrast in these images. Since this is a smaller lens, the results are a tad softer compared to the Pixel 9 Pro XL. Having said that, as far as foldables go, this lens puts up a good performance.

The native camera resorts to Night Mode in limited lighting conditions. You can select Night Sight to further delay the shutter speed and allow the camera to let in more light. The primary shooter performs decently in these conditions. It lights up the subject and minimises the grain in the images. The ultrawide lens, however, lets in a fair bit of noise that leads to visibly softer images.

The portraits taken with the Pixel 9 Pro Fold showcased rich colours and intelligent subject-background separation. We were happy with the background blur that the smartphone applied to the final results. The 10MP selfie cameras on the cover and inner displays take good pictures and keep skin tone correction to a minimum. These sensors can record 4K videos as well.

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Verdict

The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold is as close to the perfect foldable a smartphone can get. Its refined design and sleek profile make it easy to carry around inside your pocket. The stunning outer and inner displays are extremely responsive and showcase incredible colours. Google’s software magic brings the most out of the two displays. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold is more than a smartphone and tablet jammed together in one device. Having said that, there is no getting around the fact that the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s camera system is a step down from the rest of the lineup. It can still hang with the best foldables in its segment, but it doesn’t hit the levels set by its Pixel 9 Pro XL sibling.