In the foldable phone race, Google arrived relatively late to the market with its Pixel Fold released in 2023. But the company almost released another phone a year earlier, before abandoning the idea.
It’s hard to deny Samsung’s overwhelming dominance in the world of folding phones today. The Korean manufacturer may well face competition from OnePlus and Motorola, but it remains master of the sector with its Galaxy Fold 5 and Galaxy Flip 5 – and soon Fold 6 and Flip 6. Even Google has not managed to overshadow the company, and it’s not for lack of trying.
Even before the 2023 Pixel Fold, the search giant was working on a foldable phone known as the “Passport” and then the “Pipit.” Rumors of the product began to emerge in late 2021, with its release expected in 2022. But months passed and no foldable phone was announced by Google that year. Abandoned along the way, Pipit was quickly forgotten, and its existence swept away by the release of the real Pixel Fold a year later.
A skinny technical sheet
3 years after the emergence of the first rumors that said, Android Authority managed to get their hands on photos of this never-announced phone. Retrieved from XDA Forumsthese images provide a glimpse of what Google had in the pipeline at the time and a better understanding of why this model never left the company’s labs.
At first glance, the Pipit looks pretty much like the original Pixel Fold, with a similar screen-to-body ratio and an identical hinge and glass back. Only the camera island seems to have evolved, going from a look close to what we find on the Pixel 6 (released in 2021) to something less imposing. Clearly, this phone seemed to be a foldable version of the Pixel 6, in the same way that the Pixel Fold took a lot of inspiration from the Pixel 7.
Unfortunately, due to the time it takes to develop such a complex product, Pipit’s spec sheet seemed outdated before its official release. The phone’s camera modules were notably the same as those on the Pixel 6a (released in May 2022 for less than €500), a relatively difficult pill to swallow for a phone that was intended to be ultra-high-end.
Software not up to par
The release of Android 12L (specially designed for foldable phones) was also supposed to coincide with the release of Pipit, but the software was still fragile, Google put its phone in the closet, leaving Samsung to wipe the plaster before launching its Pixel Fold a year later. Please note, however, that many Googlers used the prototype on a daily basis, a sign that the prototype was quite close to a final model.
If Google was surely right to delay the launch of its first foldable phone, we cannot say that this brought it luck. The first Pixel Fold of the name experienced many problems when it was released and left the memory of a prototype that left its factory a little too quickly. In hindsight, putting Pipit on the shelf seems to have been a good idea.
