A Sleek Upgrade with a Few Missing Pieces

Google is fairly new to the foldable game, so seeing such a huge change year-over-year is kind of expected. And we’re seeing just that with the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. It looks completely different from the Pixel Fold that debuted last year, and that’s not a bad thing. Google made the outer display taller, making it essentially the same size as a regular smartphone – in fact it is the exact same size and display panel as the Pixel 9. Also made it thinner and lighter, while changing up the camera bar.

While many of us loved the passport-style of the Pixel Fold from last year, this was probably the right decision by Google. Especially given all the praise the OnePlus Open has received – which the Pixel 9 Pro Fold definitely took inspiration from. But the real question here is, did Google do enough to warrant charging $1,799 for the Pixel 9 Pro Fold? Let’s find out in our full review.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold Review: Design and Build Quality

I absolutely love the design and the build quality on the Pixel 9 Pro Fold – now the name is a different story. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold shaved off about 2mm when folded, and about 0.7mm when unfolded. While also shaving off almost an entire ounce in weight. Despite that weight loss, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is still one of the heaviest foldables on the market at  257g. But I have no complaints with either one. Sure there are thinner and lighter foldables out there – like the HONOR Magic V3. But the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is comfortable.

What helps the Pixel 9 Pro Fold be more comfortable is the fact that the sides are flat, but also rounded. Similar to the rest of the Pixel 9 lineup, the sides are flat, with the edges of them being rounded and melting into the front and rear glass. This helps the phone feel more comfortable in the hand, on top of that, it also makes it more durable, than a rounded frame.

The model I have here is the porcelain Pixel 9 Pro Fold which looks really nice, I have to say. It’s an off-white color for the back, with a sort of, really light gold color on the frame. It’s a really nice contrast, and looks very similar to the Porcelain Pixel 9 Pro XL that I already reviewed.

The bezels are pretty small here, though they do look larger on the front display in this porcelain color, due to that goldish frame. So there is room for Google to make that front display even larger. But it doesn’t bother me much. However, something that does is the power button and volume rocker. For some reason, Google insists on putting them opposite of literally every other Android manufacturer. You’ll get used to them being flipped, but why Google? Why?

There have been some conspiracies out there that Google is actually using OPPO to build their foldables, since the Pixel Fold was a mirror image of the OPPO Find N2, and now the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is a mirror image of the OPPO Find N3/OnePlus Open. If they are, cool. They are great designs and very high-quality foldables. Now, we just need Google to take inspiration from OPPO and OnePlus on software for foldables. But more on that later.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold Review: Displays

When the Pixel 9 Pro Fold launched last year, it was before Google made a number of upgrades to its Pixel lineup. Like the Super Actua displays, the new Tensor G3, and of course 7 years of updates. This year, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold gets all of those upgrades. And the most noticeable upgrade is with the displays. Both displays are now Super Actua displays, hitting peak brightness of 2,700 nits (the same as Pixel 9), with High Brightness Mode or HBM hitting 1800 nits on the front display and 1600 nits on the internal display.

Brightness was a big problem for the Pixel Fold last year. Because foldable displays do use plastic, since glass doesn’t really fold well, and plastic is naturally reflective, it made it pretty difficult to use the internal display outdoors. This was probably the single biggest complaint from the Pixel Fold last year, and I’m happy to report, that is no longer an issue. The screens look great outdoors, under direct sunlight, and are still very usable.

Google touts that the Pixel 9 Pro Fold has the largest internal display of any other foldable on the market, which is true but only slightly. You see, Google is listing the Pixel 9 Pro Fold as having a 8-inch display, when in all honesty, it’s probably like 7.98-inches, as Google tends to round up. While there are plenty of other foldables in the 7.9-inch to 8-inch segment, like the Xiaomi Mix Fold 4 and HONOR Magic V3. Nevertheless, this is a great looking 8-inch display.

Yes, the crease is still there. And honestly, it’s not that noticeable. Only when the screen is off will you really notice the crease. In day-to-day usage, I’ve actually forgotten that there was even a crease there. It’s nowhere near as deep as the Galaxy Z Fold 6’s crease but more prominent than some other foldables we’ve recently used from China, including one that I can’t yet talk about.

Both of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold displays get a big thumbs up from me. And are some of the best I’ve ever seen on a foldable (so far).

Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold Review: Performance

Let me start this section out by saying, performance is another huge improvement for the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. The Tensor G2 in the Pixel Fold last year was a major let down. It would get warm for no reason at all, it was pretty slow, and the modem sucked, all of which has been well documented. But the Tensor G4, fixed all of that.

After using and reviewing the other Pixel 9 models, I was even more excited for the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. Why? Because almost every performance issue we had, was solved. The Tensor G4 is pretty speedy, not quite as speedy as the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, but I don’t think most would notice the difference. It’s also much more efficient, though that could also be thanks to the vastly improved modem. With this new modem, I’ve gotten around a 20-30% increase in signal strength and speeds, compared to the Tensor G3, and it’s an even bigger improvement from Tensor G2 (closer to 40%).

The other upgrade in the performance department is the RAM, it’s now 16GB instead of 12GB. Though, keep in mind that around 3GB of that 16GB of RAM is being reserved for AI and Gemini. So it’s not that big of an upgrade, however it is still noticeable.

In day-to-day usage, I honestly didn’t notice much of a difference between this and the Galaxy Z Fold 6, in terms of performance. The one area where the Tensor G4 does fall short, though, is with graphics. Qualcomm’s chipsets always outperform ARM’s GPUs for mobile devices. So if you’re a heavy gamer, this is likely not the phone for you.

Benchmarks

So how do the numbers of the Tensor G4 stack up? Well, we tested it. We ran three benchmarks, Geekbench 6, 3DMark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test, and a video export test with Capcut. Normally, we compare this with 3 other devices, but we’re actually going to do two different comparisons here. Comparing the Pixel 9 Pro Fold with the other Pixel 9 devices and then comparing it with 3 other foldables – Pixel Fold, Galaxy Z Fold 6 and OnePlus Open.

First up is Geekbench 6. As most of you likely know, Geekbench is a good indicator of the raw performance of single-core, multi-core and the GPU. Above, we can see that the Pixel 9 Pro Fold scored pretty evenly with the other Pixel 9 models. The only major difference being the single-core on Pixel 9, and that’s due to the lack of a vapor chamber there. Otherwise, everything is pretty close here.

Now when we compare it to other foldables, like the Galaxy Z Fold 6 (Snapdragon 8 Gen 3), Pixel Fold (Tensor G2), and OnePlus Open (Snapdragon 8 Gen 2), we can see that the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is pretty close to the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 and even a bit ahead on the single-core score. It’s also a nice upgrade over the Pixel Fold from last year, but still quite a bit lower than the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3, which is about to get replaced by the Snapdragon 8 Gen 4 next month.

The next test we run is 3DMark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test. This benchmark is designed to push the phone to its absolute limit. Running the same 60-second benchmark 20 times, giving us a Best Loop score, a Lowest Loop Score and from those we get a stability percentage. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold had a Best Loop of 2,571 and a Lowest Loop of 1,911, giving us a stability of 74.3%. While the scores are lower than other recent foldables, the stability score is far higher. Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 6 had a stability of 65%, and OnePlus Open of 66%. These scores are also very similar to the other Pixel 9 devices.

Finally, we run the video export test. We’ve run this test the same way on each phone we test. We load up the same 60-second long video, and then export at 1080p30 (only because not all phones support 4K or 1080p60 on Capcut). Then we time how long the export took. For the Pixel 9 series, they were all very close. Though the Pixel 9 Pro Fold did it the fastest at 12.16 seconds. While the other Pixel 9 models were right around 12.6 seconds. Not bad scores at all.

Now when we expand that to the other foldables – Galaxy Z Fold 6, Pixel Fold, OnePlus Open – we can see that it is a huge upgrade over the Pixel Fold’s Tensor G2. It’s also a nice upgrade over the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 in OnePlus Open. But Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 6 is still the best out of these four. The Pixel Fold last year was obnoxiously slow and still the slowest time we’ve ever recorded on this test. The fact that the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is now roughly 3x faster, is a nice upgrade.

Thermals

Google spent a few minutes in their announcement talking about the vapor chamber inside its new phones. Just to clarify here, it is in all Pro models of the Pixel 9 – that’s Pixel 9 Pro, Pixel 9 Pro XL, and Pixel 9 Pro Fold. There’s been some conflicting information online (particularly Reddit) about whether the Pixel 9 Pro Fold had one or not, and it does. It’s also very noticeable that it does have a vapor chamber in the Geekbench results above, and in the temperature readings in our thermal tests.

The first thermal test we do is, also a benchmark. It’s the 3DMark Wildlife Extreme Stress Test. With this we run the benchmark, and then record the temperature in the hottest place on the phone (typically the camera area). Then we let it cool down to room temperature before performing other tests. On this test, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold hit 109.4 degrees Fahrenheit. That is just point one degree lower than the Pixel 9 Pro XL, and a full degree lower than the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro. Though still higher than the Galaxy Z Fold 6.

The next thermal test we perform is, playing Genshin Impact for an hour at the highest settings and max brightness (with adaptive brightness turned off). On this test, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold performed pretty well, with a temp of 106.7 degrees. That’s pretty similar to the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro. Though a few degrees warmer than the Pixel 9 due to that vapor chamber.

Finally, we do a camera test. Recording video at 4K60 for 10 minutes, however we record the temperatures at 5 minutes and then at the end of the 10 minute test. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold performed very well here, recording a temperature of 84.5 degrees at 5 minutes, and 85.6 degrees at the final 10 minute mark. That is actually a solid 14 degrees lower than the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro.

So where does the vapor chamber really come into play? Mostly in the camera, surprisingly. When gaming, the temperatures are also pretty decent, anything under 110 is pretty good, since a good number of phones are well above that – hell, the ASUS Zenfone 11 Ultra hit 137 degrees. Hopefully, next we get the vapor chamber in all the Pixel models, and not just the pros.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold Review: Battery life and Charging

The big question with the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is, how’s the battery life. Given the fact that, both displays are larger, while the battery is smaller on the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. Surprisingly, battery life is pretty good. In daily usage, I found that the Pixel 9 Pro Fold lasted longer than almost any other foldable I’ve tested (including HONOR Magic V2 RSR, Pixel Fold, and Galaxy Z Fold 6), except for one. That’s the OnePlus Open. For the way I use phones, the OnePlus Open still has the best battery life, even a year later. However, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is not far behind.

I typically wake up around 7AM and unplug the Pixel 9 Pro Fold and start my day. Typically going to bed around 11PM. This is the same schedule I’ve had for many years and the same one I keep for reviewing phones. With the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, I typically have about 20% left by 11PM, after around 6 hours of screen on time. Comparing this to the Galaxy Z Fold 6, which was typically around 5% or had to be charged a bit before bed. The OnePlus Open would typically be around 20-25% in that same time.

During my testing, I probably used the inner display about 40% of the time and the outer display around 60% of the time. So a good mixture of both displays being used. Obviously, using that large 8-inch display means that it’s going to tax the battery more. This was also my daily driver, so it was used on WiFi and 5G throughout the day. If I had to guess, around 80% WiFi and 20% 5G, since I do work from home.

Charging however, that is where things fall apart. Google touts 21W charging speeds on the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. That’s incredibly slow, and the slowest of any Pixel 9 device released this year. That is the same as the Pixel Fold from last year, which sucked last year too. It takes a little over an hour to go from 0% to 100% on the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. That’s unacceptable when we have other foldables that are cheaper, charging fully in about 40 minutes.

Another issue with charging is, the Pixel Stand. Because Google had to move the charging coil lower on the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, it doesn’t work with the Pixel Stand. Which just goes to show that Google really needs to put out a new Pixel Stand. The current model was released 3 years ago, so its time.

So is charging really an issue? For me, no. Unless I’m using it very heavy one day, like I will be this week at IFA. For the most part, it lasts me all day and I’m only charging at night, so the slow charging isn’t a big deal, because it’s still at 100% when I wake up, which is all I care about. The slower charging speeds also means the battery will last much longer.

Benchmarks

This year, battery life has been pretty stellar across the board for the Pixel 9 models. I tend to believe that this is mostly down to the Tensor G4 being much more optimized over the Tensor G3, as well as the much improved modem.  So I wasn’t at all surprised to see how well it performed in our battery test.

In our battery rundown test, which we run the same way on every device we review, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold scored the highest time of any foldable. The test in question, plays a 24-hour long YouTube video from 100% to 1% at full brightness (again with Adaptive Brightness turned off). In that test, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold was able to achieve a time of 18 hours and 35 minutes. That’s lower than all other Pixel 9 models, but higher than every other foldable we’ve tested so far. This leads me to believe that Google did a lot to optimize video playback this year.

The Galaxy Z Fold 6 scored 15 hours and 35 minutes, the Pixel Fold from last year was the worst at 13 hours and 25 minutes, and surprisingly the OnePlus Open was 15 hours and 32 minutes. Surprisingly, since it still offers the best battery life for me.

Now, onto charging. After that battery rundown test is complete, we then plug in the phone. If the phone comes with a charger in the box, we use that. Otherwise, we use a charger that can achieve the maximum charging speed, using a USB-C cable that shows the speed to make sure. With the Pixel 9 Pro Fold charging so slowly, it didn’t really matter what charger we used as long as it was 30W or faster. In our test, we found that it took 1 hour and 20 minutes to charge fully. While that is slower than the Pixel 9 Pro and Pro XL, it’s only slower by a minute or two. Though it is a 10% smaller battery.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold Review: Software

As we reported before the Made by Google event, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold does indeed launch with Android 14. We’ve also heard recently that Android 15 likely isn’t rolling out until October 2024. So we will be updating this review (and our other Pixel 9 reviews) after Android 15 rolls out. We’re hopeful that there will be more foldable features available in Android 15. Right now, there’s not many available, and it feels like Google is very far behind.

I am a fan of Google launching with Android 14 though. I’ve been reviewing Pixels and Nexus devices for the past 12 years, and the Pixel 9 series has been the most stable launch ever. Typically, the new phones are riddled with bugs, which is not something you want to do with your brand new phone. Not the case this year. There’s still an odd bug here and there – for instance there’s one with X right now. But none that really hamper the experience, that I’ve seen.

The bug I’m seeing with X (and to be clear, I think this is an X issue not a Google issue, as I have been able to replicate it on other foldables. When you turn the phone on the main screen, into landscape, the tweets shown on X then appear in the middle of the screen, taking up about a third. It’s really odd, but as I said, I’ve seen this on two other foldables I’ve tried it on. So I believe this is an X issue, get on it Elon.

Android 14, we all know what we’re getting here. So we’re going to focus more on the Pixel 9 Pro Fold exclusive features. You can check out our Pixel 9 Pro review if you want to hear more about things like Pixel Studio and Pixel Screenshots. . One feature that I was really excited to try out, as a YouTube TV user, was multiview on the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. Being able to watch two college football games at the same time on this phone is really cool, and a gamechanger. Since you can also see specs below the game, making it easier to keep up.

Google does also have tabletop mode available, where you unfold your Pixel 9 Pro Fold to about 90 degrees and the lower half of the screen turns into controls. This works in YouTube and also the camera app. It’s definitely useful in the camera app for taking group photos. Surprisingly, many other foldables do not utilize features like this, that work with the phone open part-way. Honestly, it’s really useful, especially with Dual-Screen Mode for Live Transcribe. Making it easier than ever to communicate with those who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Games that are optimized for this nearly 1:1 aspect ratio display are also great to play. I’ve spent a good bit of time playing Wild Rift, and it’s a whole new experience playing it on a foldable, versus a regular slab phone. It truly makes it much more immersive.

There are a few foldable features here, but Google is still behind in this regard. For me, Samsung has the best foldable software. While I don’t like One UI, Samsung has added a ton of very useful features to help take advantage of that larger display. The same goes for OnePlus with its OpenCanvas that it debuted last year (which I actually like better than One UI). There are still a bunch of weird quirks that Google hasn’t fixed, like the ability to have different layouts on your home screens for the inner and outer displays.

Pixel 9 Pro Fold will get 7 years of updates. So that means you will be getting updates until August of 2031. That puts it up there with the Galaxy Z Fold 6 (and Flip 6) as the longest software support of a foldable right now.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold Review: Cameras

So, the cameras. This is the part of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold that I was the most disappointed in, when it was announced. Giving us a 48-megapixel primary sensor that is about the same size as the Pixel 8a, along with a 10.5-megapixel ultrawide and a 10.8-megapixel telephoto. Technically the only one that changed from Pixel Fold was the Ultrawide. It’s now 10.5 vs 10.8 megapixels, but it is also a little bit smaller and has a wider field of view.

But how does it work with taking photos? It’s the usual Pixel experience for photos. You’ll get some pretty good photos from the primary sensor, and decent ones out of the other two. I have noticed the colors aren’t quite as vibrant on this year’s Pixel cameras as compared to other phones on the market. It seems that Google is preferring to stick with true-to-life colors over a little bit of saturation to make them look better.

I’ve been spoiled, using the OnePlus Open for the past year, which had some of the best cameras on any phone at the time, and I’d say it still up there a year later. While the cameras aren’t bad on the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, I do feel like Google could have done a bit more with these cameras, especially on a phone that costs $1,799 (+ tax). Given the fact this phone has “pro” in its name, I expected more. In some aspects, the Pixel 8a has a better camera setup and the same size primary sensor, though the Pixel 8a does have a few more megapixels at 64.

The front cameras are also pretty good, actually. These did not get the upgrade that the other Pixel 9 Pro models got, so both of these are still 10-megapixel front-facing cameras. But they are exactly the same. So that’s 23mm focal length, aperture of f/2.2 and 1/3.94″. I’m not a big selfie taker, but I did take a few with these cameras, and they looked pretty good. Beauty mode doesn’t go as crazy as it does on some other phones – especially those from China and South Korea. Google still does a good job with portrait mode, cutting everything out, but it does have trouble with my glasses still, if I’m at an angle.

But the camera experience isn’t just about the photo quality. With these dual displays, Google is adding a good bit of features to make them more useful. Of course, there’s the dual display, so the other person can see the photo you’re taking or make it easier for you to take a selfie with the rear cameras. Google has also added “Made you Look,” which is a new feature that plays a funny animation on the rear display to keep your kids’ attention and get a great picture of them. It’s hard to get a good picture of toddlers looking at the camera and smiling at the same time. Unfortunately, I don’t have any kids I could try this on.

Google also has tabletop mode for group shots. So you can easily set a timer and run into the group shot, with the built-in tripod that the Pixel 9 Pro Fold has. Of course, you can also use the new “Add Me” feature that’s on all of the Pixel 9s this year. Though, as we’ve seen, it’s not perfect and does tend to do weird things with arms, hands, and legs.

It almost seems like Google spent more time on making the camera better with this added screen real estate, than it did the rest of the software. Hopefully after an update or two, the rest of the OS will catch up.

Should you buy the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold?

It’s tough to say. If this is your first foldable, this is a great option. I actually prefer the hardware here over the Galaxy Z Fold 6, but it’s not perfect, and at $1,799 you probably want it to be close to perfect. Just keep in mind that this is an early adopter type device, and if you’re planning on keeping this for many years, you might want to wait. At least until a nice discount comes along, and knowing Google, that will happen.

You should buy the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold if:

• You want top-notch hardware, with Google’s flavor of Android.
• You want good battery life with a great foldable.

You should not buy the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold if:

• You want the best camera experience on a foldable.
• You don’t want a big and heavy phone.