Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Google Made a Foldable Phone – Does It Suck?”.
This is the pixel fold, it’s Google’s first ever foldable phone and that’s a big deal. We’Ve had foldables for four years now, but because this is Google, the company who actually makes Androids it’s kind of our first look at what I built from the ground up. Foldable experience can be so. Have they finally perfected the formula? Well, it does get off to a very good start. The second you pick this thing up. You feel instantly reassured. It’S got polished stainless steel all around which makes it strong. It’S got a proper water resistance rating, which again is not an assumed thing for a foldable, a fingerprint resistant matte finish ceramic on the back, which I was just told, was inspired by air conditioners. All I care about is that it does actually prevent my grubby mitts from soiling it within two minutes of picking it up it’s heavy, but because it’s so slim it doesn’t feel heavy in like. Ah, I got ta lug.
This chunk Master around with me. Wherever I go kind of way, it just makes it feel solid and premium what is going on back there for reference. Samsung’S latest z-fold is up to 15.8 millimeters when folded up this thing is just 12.1 which to give you an idea, feels a about what it’s like to have just a normal phone with a case on it and part of how they’ve got to this is by Using a new hinge that lets the screen fold completely flat, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve opened up my other foldables just to find like random pieces of pocket, lint or even sand inside the phone, because there’s often this Gap here and then because these Inner screens are made of plastic so that they can fold they’re, especially vulnerable to damage by Rogue particles like this still have no idea where the sand came from.
I never like the least beachy area in the world. I think we might have to pixel rate. Oh yeah and the hinge itself is good they’re calling it a fluid.
Friction hinge. I guess, because it does move very fluidly, there’s no creaking or squeaking, but with enough friction to be able to almost lock in place at any angle, between zero and 180 degrees. I just wish it kind of snapped open and closed towards the end of the motion, a bit more like Samsung. Does the power button doubles as a fingerprint scanner, love that and look at this curves everywhere? This is how you make a foldable, that’s holdable, as opposed to so many phones that basically shave off every single edge to the point where you’re left with something that feels more like a kitchen Implement, there’s also a set of dual speakers. There’S one at the bottom.
Here, one at the top and they’re a very respectable seven out of ten. It’S separated spatial sound, the point being that, if we’re solely looking at the Core Construction of this device, it is bordering on the elite here. But then you do start to look at the rest of the hardware and the specs that you’re getting for a phone. That’S effectively eighteen hundred dollars and you do think um.
Okay, I think she’s checking out his Hardware like the cameras, for example, on paper. This is not close to the quality of cameras that last year’s Google pixel 7’s had don’t get me wrong. Google’S camera software is magical and they can do a lot with a little more on that in a minute. But Hardware does also matter, and you can literally see how this camera setup is like that camera setup, but with each individual camera paired back in terms of synthesize and remember, that’s not compared to one of this year’s Flagship phones.
That’S compared to last year’s Flagship, which I mean, I guess that’s just the limitation of having to fit all the camera Hardware into a space with so much less physical depth and, let’s just say that the front cameras don’t exactly sound like they’re going to set the World on fire either the one on the very front is 9.5 megapixel. With a pretty small sensor and the inner one is an 8 megapixel. Then you’ve got the power of the phone. I mean the memories grapes you get 12 gigabytes of fast RAM and a minimum of 256 gigabytes of fast storage, but then the core chip that’s going to be doing all the heavy lifting. Is Google self made tensor G2 the same one on the pixel 7, which is you know not exactly the beef Master you might be hoping for for an 1800 phone, not to mention the fact that it’s probably not going to be the latest Google chip for long They’Ll probably release the tensor G3 later this year. It’S a very intelligent chip, though, and it has tons of cool implications for the software which I’m getting to and even comes with its own completely separate security processor, the Titan M2, which basically has its own separated memory. That’S used purely for storing your sensitive data because it’s a physically separate chip that most software on your phone can’t interact with. It just reduces the potential of you downloading a dodgy app and then you getting your bank accounts rated, it’s a nice to have, but it’s just that in terms of raw grunts, if all you wanted to do is to just blast out some Apex Legends on maximum Settings this chip is trailing most top-end phones by a good 20 to 25 and it will get royally plastered if you put it up against something like the M2 iPad Pros. The screens are nice, I mean both outer and the inner panels are bright and they’re high res and they can scale their refresh rates all the way up to 120 hertz and all the way down to say battery. But we need to talk about the bezel in the room elephant, it’s the bezels now this is either going to really bother you or you’re just not going to care, but for me I can’t help but feel like every time I open this up, that I’ve just Opened up a portal back in time like even just putting aside the fact that the crease is still quite prominent. It’S more that I mean a very original Samsung Galaxy for old from 2019 that phone had Slimmer borders than this does, which I could maybe forgive but they’re, not even even here the top and the bottom are noticeably thicker than the sides to be clear.
This does not cause any functional problem with like the aspect ratio of the screens, because, let’s face it with most foldable phones, you do spend most of your time with black bars on the top and bottom anyway, but it is an aesthetic compromise. I did actually ask Google, though, why they decided to go for bezel so thick, and the answer I got was just that the front camera that they wanted to use on the inner display just takes up a lot of room. I mean I would have still personally just preferred a large hole, pent camera, but credit aware dude at the very least. Thank God. This camera is better than Samsung’s inner selfie camera and then the battery should would be fine. I mean Google’s promising Beyond 24 hours of battery life.
Here and yeah I mean the company’s got plenty of intelligent things. They do to save your juice, like automatically figuring out, which apps are important to you and focusing its energy on those not to mention the battery capacity. Here is 4821 milliamp hours, which is quite a bit more than The 4400 of Samsung’s fault.
The only potential caveat I would add to that is having spent quite a bit of time with Google’s normal flagship phone, the pixel 7 Pro and having compared it to Samsung’s normal Flagship, the s23 ultra or the iPhone Google hasn’t been as efficient with the battery. But it does have like, even though this has exactly the same capacity as Samsung slideship. In my experience using the two, the Samsung has legitimately 10 to 15 percent, more output. So I’d love for this thing to have astounding battery life. But my expectation is that it’ll be fairly middle of the pack plus while it does have wireless charging, it doesn’t have fast wire charging or a charger in the box. So the long and short of all this is that, if you’re a spec Hunter, if you’re looking to fiddle extensively with the software on your own terms – and you just want the best bit of hardware for the money, pixel fold – is probably not for you. But the software changes a lot I’d go as far as to say that it’s so good here that it actually turns a lot of those perceived weaknesses into strengths. So you unlock your phone and immediately you see material you Google’s home screen interface. Now, I would say: they’ve gone a little too funky in terms of appearance. The last few years I like order on my home screen, not squiggles and oddly shaped widgets, but it is very customizable which is probably why they call it material you and it it’s just a delight to use it’s bouncy, it’s Lively when you unlock it animates in The widgets change color, based on where on your wallpaper you place them, it doesn’t feel corporate like so many Android skins do and it’s useful. It actually explains itself anytime, there’s something that might not be super obvious with proper visual demonstrations, and this all adds up to mean that pixel phones right now are some of the few phones that I actually feel comfortable recommending to even people who are completely new to Android, you also notice very quickly – and this is a great example of how software can matter just as much as the hardware how fast the thing is, it’s seriously responsive and it opens up Apps noticeably quicker than the technically more powerful Samsung. The phone almost feels like it’s alive, like they’ve, now added quick phrases which are little things you can ask it to do without even needing to wake the assistant like if someone calls you all you need to say, is just answer or decline depending on who’s.
Calling. There’S clear calling which automatically enhances the other person’s voice and reduces background noise, and I know it sounds gimmicky, but it does actually work if there’s a loud noise on the other person’s end of the phone you’ll hear it for like a split second and then it Will just disappear not because the noise has stopped, but because the AI has realized, that’s background noise and that you don’t need to hear it. The recorder app is insane, it doesn’t just record. It gives you a shockingly accurate, live transcription of any conversation and actually probably the best example of technically middling Hardware turned around by strong software is the cameras we know the specs aren’t great I’ll leave them here on screen, so you can see them and yeah I Mean if you side by side, let’s say the main camera of this versus the pixel 7 Pro, which has better Hardware, you will notice some difference, but then, on the flip side, because this is a foldable phone, you can flip your front screen around and use the Main camera for selfies, which instantly makes these the best pixel camera selfies you’ll, have taken if the pixel fold is lying flat on a table and you want to take a photo, you just gesture or even better than that, you know how. If you want to take a proper astrophotography shot at night, you need a tripod well, this hinge is sturdy enough to be on tripod and the software is designed around it being your tripod, and then you get all the other things that I love about. Google’S cameras, Magic, Eraser, no company out there has a photo fixing Solution, that’s as sophisticated and yet uncomplicated.
As this. The fact that the phone can Auto unblur faces using Ai and super rare Zoom, which makes it quite possibly the best phone at further enhancing the already decent five times, zoom camera it comes with. So, even though the camera Hardware that’s in place here, might literally be like 50 less expensive camera Hardware than you’d find in Google’s next flagship phone. It still feels like it might well be 95 of the overall camera experience, so this is still very much an early Hands-On.
The phone is still in beta. Google usually drops quite a few features leading up to the launch and then just continuously after launch too, but my overall impression so far is that I love holding this thing. I love using this thing, but at the same time, I’m finding the super high price tag. Paired with some obvious Hardware, compromises like the bezels, the crease and the chip a little hard to digest, and so the only way I can see this thing really leaving a mark is if there is some sort of big new software feature that we just don’t know About yet it’s possible, we will have to wait and see to find out why my bank account is now empty.
That video is here. .