You can’t judge a book by its cover. Like many, we were very excited to get our hands on and test the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, Google’s new foldable. A second model, which succeeds the more soberly named Pixel Fold, which is hugely accomplished on several points. Much less on others.
Let’s quickly run down its specs first. The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold is a premium foldable smartphone with a 6.3-inch exterior display and an impressive 8-inch main display when unfolded. It’s powered by the Google Tensor G4 processor and has 16GB of RAM. It’s equipped with a 5,000mAh battery and a total of five cameras, including a 48MP main sensor and a 10.5MP ultra-wide-angle camera.
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It must be said and emphasized, the design of this new Fold has been completely revised and it is a real success. Folded, it looks like a Pixel 9, it also has the same screen, with a left edge for the hinge and its mechanism. Because it has the same format as a classic Pixel, the handling (in the singular) is very natural and intuitive. It is more pleasant than a thinner foldable, like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 released very recently. Open, we are facing a small 8-inch table, more comfortable to use to read an article, a video, play or, more generally, navigate. The device is particularly light and thin. Barely heavier than a Pixel 9 Pro XL, that is to say. Barely thicker too! On this, Google has learned from its first draft and is releasing a new Fold among the most elegant on the market, if not THE most elegant.
In terms of performance and camera, it holds up. Without excelling. We are quite far from the very high-end like the other Pixel Pro or other flagships. It is more like the “small” Pixel 9: same cameras (except for the telephoto lens, absent from the classic 9), same performance, same external screen resolution. Which is good, but still disappointing: for the price (starting at 1,899 euros) we would have liked photo sensors closer to the Pro models… The photos remain very appreciable, thanks in particular to the software processing and the AI functionalities linked to the photos, and we succeed almost every time. A little tip specific to the Fold, “Catch the eye” allows you to take a photo with the phone unfolded and attract the attention of a child for example by displaying funny figures on the external screen. Practical!
The Pixel 9 Pro Fold also comes with its share of AI and Gemini novelties. Concretely, these are the same features as the rest of the Pixel 9 range. Again, very successful overall, although Belgium misses out on most of them (Gemini Live, Screenshots, etc.).
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Cruel lack of optimization
But then… what’s wrong with this Pixel 9 Pro Fold? The answer lies in one word: optimization. The Android OS and apps, even those from Google, are not optimized for the large 8-inch screen. While we could expect a tablet version of Gmail, for example, with a column on the left that takes up the inbox, and the rest of the screen dedicated to an open email, no, the Fold offers a stretched smartphone version. The inbox and the email, depending on which one is displayed, are stretched horizontally. Some apps are, of course, adapted to this larger screen. Let us mention, for example, Phone, Messages, Keep… The control and notification center is adapted, as is the screen for switching from one app to another. The office suite (Docs, Sheets…) has a few shortcuts placed on the left or right edge in order to be easily accessible, but the content displayed on the screen unfortunately remains stretched. The same goes for third-party apps, such as Instagram, Facebook, for example. Consulting certain sites or apps is therefore sometimes painful, it must be said.
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Settings are available to reduce this feeling of stretching, by changing the display format of apps to either full screen, 3:2, or half the screen, to be placed on the left, right or center as desired. We would have liked to see such an effort made to actually adapt the apps, rather than ending up with black borders on a large screen. Because in the end, this general lack of optimization of the tablet version pushes us to use the small external screen. Which is counterintuitive for this type of device.
Regarding multitasking, disappointment again. Where competitors can display up to 4 applications on the large screen, the Pixel Fold only offers 2. It is indeed easy since the apps then take up half of the screen and, fortunately, it is the classic “phone” format. We can adjust the size of both, but we would have liked to have more possibilities.
The good news is that this is a software issue that can therefore be fixed more or less quickly. The bad news is that this product is available from 1,899 euros and, at this price, we would have liked a completely finished and accomplished product, not just in terms of hardware. Who knows, Android 15 or 16 will solve the problem, but in the meantime, we end up with a smartphone-tablet device with a premium design that in reality offers almost only smartphone content and… large smartphone.
The +
-The most elegant foldable on the market
-How subtle!
-Quality screens
-Practical (closed) phone format
THE –
-Lack of OS optimization
-Its price (from 1,899 euros)
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