Elegant and stylish debut for the foldable smartphone

Pixel Fold is Google’s first foldable smartphone. It is mine too.

It’s no small feat that Samsung, Huawei, Motorola or Royole released the world’s first foldable phone in 2018, but the fact is that they are a dropper.

Yes, you can get covers for them, but the phones are still mostly north of 1,500 (for book folding, clamshells are cheaper) and they simply can’t be trusted not to try and text while they’re on the run . Along the pebbles.

That’s not to say I wasn’t impressed with the Fold. First impressions are of a clean, light, elegant and intuitive device.

Offering a 5.8-inch external display made from (more droppable) Corning Gorilla Glass with up to 1,550 nits on a 17.4:9 aspect ratio, when folded the device is a good size, only slightly shorter and wider than an iPhone 12/ 13.

When unfolded, it transforms into a 7.6-inch display and a 6:5 aspect ratio, with up to 1,450 nits at maximum brightness. The phone itself opens to a perfect 180 degrees, but the camera bar makes it wobbly when lying flat on a surface, but it takes a lot to avoid given the outrageously good three cameras the bar contains.

The 48MP main camera has an f/1.7 aperture, optical image stabilization, and an 82-degree field of view. Records in 4K, with 1080p footage at 30 and 60 FPS.

The 10.8 MP ultra-wide-angle camera has an aperture of f/2.2 and a field of view of 121.1 degrees.

Finally, the 10.8 MP 5x optical zoom and 20x Super Res Zoom telephoto lens have an aperture of f/3.05 and a field of view of 21.9 degrees.

Well, not finally, because there’s also a 9.5MP front selfie camera and an 8MP internal selfie camera.

While it’s sadly not possible to test Pixel’s popular Night Sight mode for some astrophotography due to terrible light pollution in London (and this week the International Space Station passed overhead, the perfect subject), there’s no shortage of other features. to play with, including long exposure, time lapse and panoramas plus of course Google’s brilliant Lens feature, which continues to amaze.

While the cameras can’t be faulted, the app itself wasn’t completely foolproof, occasionally getting stuck in a crash loop when trying to switch between the front, internal and rear cameras.

Similarly, the internal screen may occasionally go gray when you swipe up to view apps, but overall navigation is straightforward and as with all Google devices, it’s a snap to set up if you’re signed in to your main account ( which is not unique to the giant Silicon Valley).

There have already been reports of screen cracking, including from one reviewer, but perhaps one of the foldable’s best features is that it can be fixed at home, which is huge.

According to Google, through 9to5Google, Pixel Fold owners will be able to access repair guides and order replacement parts including batteries, display and camera. Together, Google and iFixit will also offer kits that include the tools needed to get into the Fold and get to work.

We live in both a cost-of-living crisis and an age of massive e-waste, so that’s good news everywhere, though of course users shouldn’t expect to have to fix a 1,700 phone themselves in the first week.

Let’s go back to the specifics.

Pixel Fold works with Google’s Tensor G2 chip and Titan M2 security chip.

It offers hours of battery life on minutes of charging with a separately purchased 30W charger, and reports battery life of over 24 hours, with up to 72 hours on the Extreme Battery Saver.

Memory and storage come in the form of 12 LPDDR5 RAM and 256 and 512 GB of UFS 3.1 storage, and are water resistant (IPX8).

I’ll be honest, in the time I had to test the Fold, the battery wasn’t put to much use, I was in the office most of the time, so sadly no chance of extended streaming. However, while attending a panel, I recorded a full hour of voice recording in low-power mode (at which point I was still promising another five hours), but that wasn’t the impressive part.

Coming back to the office and having the entire transcript at hand was a game changer for someone still slavishly devoted to their dictaphone.

The transcription wasn’t perfect, but I was sitting at the back of a packed room. A second close-up test offered nearly 100 percent accuracy, though humorous blunders like mistaking medical and magical could get a writer into trouble. The AI ​​behind it, however, is undoubtedly incredibly powerful, and it’s fascinating to watch it retroactively change words as it receives further context. AI may one day cause journalists to lose their jobs, but for now it’s really making life easier.

But for the main event, the internal screen. It’s large, but not too large as comfortable to hold and easy to type once you get used to the split keyboard. I’d say offensively split given the repetition of gev to even out the keys, but it’s not something that would bother most people, and it’s well-designed ergonomically.

It works well for work as well as play, the tabletop design means you no longer need to find random things to help prop up your phone while watching videos, and it works well as a split screen. The design is also relevant to selfie lovers, which I am not.

Overall, the Pixel Fold is a more than solid first attempt from Google. There are parts to tweak here and there, but the device itself looks and feels good quality, is well designed and is a pleasure to use.

As well as having to hit enter after entering the passcode, which will never cease to annoy me.

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