The very first piece I wrote for XDA was a review of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 2 back in 2020. That device represented a significant leap forward in hardware over the first edition. So much, in fact, that the Fold 2 immediately made the first one look like a cheap toy. Google’s own second attempt at a foldable, the awkwardly named Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold, has made a similar leap.
The big difference, however, is that Samsung’s first Fold, however rough it was in hindsight, was a pioneering device with no peers. So Samsung’s second generation improvements were new innovations. That’s not the case with Google, whose first foldable had noticeably inferior hardware to rival devices, and as such, this new second-gen Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s improvements are mostly just Google playing catch up to the best foldables on the market. Don’t get me wrong, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold looks great and feels great in the hand, but the hardware isn’t heads and shoulders better than Samsung’s Z Fold 6, and it definitely falls behind the latest batch of foldables from brands like Xiaomi, Honor and Vivo.
The good news is that Pixel fans tend to prefer Pixels not because of hardware, but software. And the Pixel 9 Pro Fold mostly delivers here. Overall, it’s still a very Pixel-like experience, and that alone has a lot of appeal.
About this review: This review was written after using a self-purchased Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold for a week. Google had no input in the article.
Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold
Google’s much improved new foldable
With all-new screens, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is automatically a huge upgrade over the original Pixel Fold. It also comes with a more powerful Google Tensor G4 chip and new features that make use of the dual screens.
- Overall pretty good hardware (much better than first Fold)
- Thinner than Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 6
- Pixel UI has some exclusive AI features
- The outer display is not “Pro” at all: low PWM, not LTPO panel, etc
- Compared to Chinese foldables, it’s still heavier, thicker, with smaller battery, and older camera sensors
- Zoom lens quite bad for video in low light
Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold: Pricing and Availability
The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold is officially on sale in 19 countries (full list after this paragraph). In the US, the phone starts with 256GB of storage, priced at $1,799. Double the storage, and the price bumps to $1,919. These prices are mostly similar across the other markets after conversion. In the US, the phone is available via Google’s online store, as well as all major carriers and Best Buy.
The list of markets the Pixel 9 Pro Fold officially sells in: US, Canada, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, the UK, Australia, India, Japan, Singapore and Taiwan.
Hardware overview
I had a love/hate relationship with the first Pixel Fold. As mentioned, the hardware was quite behind the competition, with a very reflective and flimsy looking main display wrapped by uneven bezels, and it tipped the scales at about 20-30g heavier than everyone else. But I liked its shorter and wider form factor, which resembles the rough shape of a passport or Moleskine notebook, and different from what all other foldables were doing. I enjoyed holding its wider form when reading, feeling like I’m holding a notebook.
The Pixel 9 Pro Fold screens look great to every casual user, but there are areas where they’re inferior to competition
All of those aforementioned hardware traits are gone. The new Pixel Fold now have larger screens that saw most of the increase go vertically, so that when folded, the device has a conventional smartphone aspect ratio of 20:9. In fact, the outside cover screen use the exact same panel as the standard Pixel 9 series. And since the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is relatively thin at 10.5mm in folded form, the device essentially takes the shape of a normal slab phone when closed.
This approach still differs from Samsung’s elongated TV remote shape, so it’s still quite fresh in North America, but it’s the same form factor used by almost all Chinese foldable phones since 2020. So for a chunk of people outside North America (or someone like me who tests all the phones), the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s new form isn’t breaking new ground. In fact, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold reminds me of the OnePlus Open (which did in fact launch in the US).
Open the device up, and you’re greeted with an 8-inch 2076×2152 OLED display. This is an LTPO panel, with a refresh rate up to 120hz, and a maximum brightness of 2700 nits. This screen is a gigantic upgrade from the first Pixel Fold’s display, which was too dim and had a very reflective coating that looked terrible outside. This screen looks great and mostly holds up against the best foldable displays.
I had to italicize “mostly” in the last sentence because there is a potential glaring flaw to the display, though it’s one that doesn’t affect most people (me included). You see the image above, with the gray streaks that run across the screen? That’s caused by display flickering, the result of a low PWM (pulse-width modulation). To be fair, I cannot see those gray bars with my eyes, and neither can most reviewers given the overall great reviews this phone has garnered. But there are a small percentage of humans who are sensitive to display flickers and get headaches staring at screens with low PWM. And the Pixel 9 Pro Fold screens (both main and cover display) have the lowest PWM among all recently released smartphones at 240Hz.
By contrast, the Honor Magic V3 has a 4,320Hz PWM frequency. Again, my naked eye cannot see the difference between the two displays, but I know PWM-sensitive people, including Android Central’s Nicholas Sutrich, who say the Pixel screens give him headaches.
I don’t know how big a deal I should make about this, because the low PWM does not seem to affect me at all, but Google using the industry’s lowest PWM while rivals are using much higher ones is probably worth noting in a review.
The outside display also has the same low PWM, and it’s not an LTPO panel, meaning refresh rate cannot dip as low as 1Hz to conserve battery. While it gets plenty bright, it’s just technically inferior to the outside cover screens used by the OnePlus Open, Galaxy Z Fold 6, or recent foldables I tested like the Honor Magic V3.
I don’t want to sound too negative here: the Pixel 9 Pro Fold screens will look great to every casual user (and many casual reviewers too). It’s just that I have access to every foldable phone ever made, and there are still areas where the Pixel 9 Pro Fold displays are inferior to the competition.
Inside the phone, we have a Google Tensor G4 silicon, paired with 16GB of RAM and either 256GB or 512GB of storage. These are all great. I am glad to see the base storage is 256GB and not the insulting 128GB of the Pixel 9 series. Tensor G4 is not a big leap over the G3 in terms of raw power, but it does have noticeably better thermals. Considering the fact the first Pixel Fold ran on the Tensor G2, this means this new Fold has two-generation silicon jump, and it’s noticeable. The first Pixel Fold got hot all the time; that’s not the case with the Pixel 9 Pro Fold.
The 4,650 mAh battery here is another one of those things where, if I narrow my view and just focus on devices selling in North America, then it’s fine — it’s a larger battery than what Samsung uses in the Z Fold 6, for example. But 4,650 mAh is still smaller than the batteries in all other Chinese foldables in recent years, including the OnePlus Open.
What’s not fine is the annoyingly slow 21W wired charging and 7.5W wireless charging. It takes an hour and half to top up the phone from zero to full with a USB-C cable and charger, and that’s just slow in 2024.
Galaxy Z Fold 6 review: Other Folds are thinner with better cameras, but Samsung’s Fold is most polished
Cameras
The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold brings back the exact same camera hardware as the first Pixel Fold, relying entirely on the new ISP and software processing to bring improved camera performance. For the most part, the new Pixel foldable does snap slightly better photos than the first Pixel fold, with better HDR, and zoom photos have more (artificially added) details. I think most people will be perfectly happy with camera performance here. Especially if you have good lighting, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold can capture some very fine images.
Looking at the above samples, you can see colors and exposure are consistent across all three lenses, the HDR is on point as always, and I must give special shoutout to the Pixel’s selfie algorithm. In my Pixel 9 Pro XL review, I praised its selfie camera, which gained a new sensor. But even with this relatively weak (and old) 10MP front-facing camera sensor in the foldable, selfies still look great, with accurate skin tone and exposure.
Most people would be happy with the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold camera performance
Like I said, most people would be happy with camera performance here, but I am not most people. Not only do I have access to every foldable phone, I am also a mobile photography enthuasiast, so here comes nitpick time: the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s camera sensors are tiny, even by foldable phone standards, so images are always soft on details if you were to blow up the images to view on a larger screen like a laptop. In every side-by-side sample against the Honor Magic V3 (whose cameras have larger and newer sensors), if I zoom in, the difference in details are noticeable.
The smaller sensor size also means the Pixel 9 Pro Fold cameras have to rely on night mode very liberally anytime lighting isn’t sufficient. In every night shot in the city, I have to hold still longer than I usually do for Pixel’s 1-2 second night mode to finish. And if I forget to hold still, I get blurry images like below.
And here’s a side-by-side between the Pixel 9 Pro Fold and the Honor Magic V3, at 5X zoom. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s measly sensor really struggled while Honor’s larger and newer Periscope zoom lens captured a superior shot.
Video recording is also disappointing if you shoot with anything other than the main camera. The ultra-wide camera is practically useless for low light videos, and the periscope zoom has very poor stabilization if you try to walk and film. I need to reiterate I’m being picky here: most people probably aren’t shooting telephoto video clips while walking at night, or inside a moving car. But I do, and I can get much better results when shooting with a Vivo X Fold 3 Pro.
Software and overall performance
The Pixel 9 Pro Fold ships with Android 14, but it should be first in line for Android 15 update in a few weeks. The current UI honestly does not change much from what’s running in the first Pixel Fold, and all the software pros and cons I had last year apply here. I like the Pixel UI is optimized for the larger screen, like a notification panel that divides into two panes in open form (but single pane in folded form).
The notification panel splits into two panes when shown in unfolded form to take advantage for wider screen
I like the whimsical animations, and excellent split keyboard that separates further than others (for even easier two-hand typing). But I also dislike how Pixel UI is not as customizable as other Android skins. For example: there are two widgets on the homescreen that cannot be removed (the Google search bar and “At a Glance”). They must sit in their designated spots, taking up space on the homescreen whether you like it or not.
In terms of multi-tasking, the phone also only offers split-screen solution, in which two apps run at the same time in a grid, separated by a digital border. You can adjust the size ratios a bit to give one app over the other, but that’s it. You cannot open an app in a completely resizable floating window, which all other foldable phone makers from Samsung to OnePlus to Honor offer.
I mostly used the phone for productivity tasks, like sending emails, texting, and reading word documents, and the phone gave me no issue
Being able to open apps in freeform window I can shove anywhere on the screen, make larger or smaller depending on need, greatly improves multi-tasking, and I find it frustrating that with such a large screen, Google still doesn’t allow us to do this on Pixel devices.
Elsewhere, there are the new Pixel AI features that have been covered to death, such as “Reimagine,” which uses generative AI to drastically change a real-life photo; or Pixel Studio, which allows the user to create original artwork or graphics with text prompts. These features work well, and I enjoyed them, but they’re not for everyone. Quite a lot of my peers find them pointless or problematic.
Overall performance as a portable computer has been fine. Battery life is solid, able to last a solid 11-12 hours outside, and thermals are in much better shape this time, without the constant throttling issue of the first Pixel Fold. I mostly used the phone for productivity tasks, like sending emails, texting, and reading word documents, and the phone gave me no issue (other than the fact I cannot multitask as fast here as I could on rival foldables).
Should you buy the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold?
You should buy the Pixel 9 Pro Fold if:
- You enjoy the Pixel phone experience and want it on a larger, more versatile screen
- You like Samsung’s Z Fold series but wish the outside screen was wider and not as cramped
- You want a foldable phone with the latest Google software features
You should not buy the Pixel 9 Pro Fold if:
- You want the best foldable phone cameras. The Vivo X Fold 3 Pro has a significantly better camera, and even the OnePlus Open, which sells stateside, is better in low light conditions
- You value multi-tasking and doing heavy productivity tasks — the Z Fold 6 is still better with Samsung DeX, resizable windows, and S Pen support
- You like the Pixel experience but don’t really need the larger screen — get the Pixel 9 Pro instead in that case
The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold is an excellent glow up from the original flawed Pixel Fold, and those who enjoy Pixel devices overall should really like this device too. But the Galaxy Z Fold 6 is still the more polished all-rounder, with superior multi-tasking capabilities and stylus support. So if getting work done is your top priority, the Z Fold 6 is still better.
Likewise, if you live somewhere in which foldables from Xiaomi, Vivo, and Honor sells, you may want to consider those devices because the hardware is a bit ahead of what Google and Samsung are putting out. Thinner, lighter, higher-res screens, larger batteries with faster charging.
Even within North America, the OnePlus Open still holds up very well today against the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, and it can likely be had for much cheaper.
But in a vacuum, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is very good, and I think Pixel fans, like iPhone fans, have already decided they will stick with Pixel regardless. I think this phone will sell quite well compared to the first one thanks to wider availability and much better first impressions in the hand.
Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold
With all-new screens, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is automatically a huge upgrade over the original Pixel Fold. It also comes with a more powerful Google Tensor G4 chip and new features that make use of the dual screens.