In 2024, we’ve got some impressive foldables being launched in India. It started with the Vivo’s X Fold 3 Pro, featuring a supremely functional cover display and great camera chops. Then came the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 — despite the narrow cover display, it became a crowd favourite loaded with AI functionalities. Closing the year in the foldable flagship category is the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold, marking the tech giant’s very first foldable smartphone launch in India.
Design
A premium build with an aluminium chassis, Gorilla Glass Victus 2 protecting the rear panel and the cover display is a given considering the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold is a uber-premium device. The foldable feels surprisingly light, despite weighing 257 grams. The Vivo X Fold 3 Pro is much lighter at 230 grams as is the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 at 239 grams. Regardless, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, thankfully, doesn’t feel ungainly or heavy in hand.
Display
The cover display spans 6.3 inches while the main display measures 8 inches across. While both displays are stunning, it’s the super-thick bezels that unfortunately catch my eye first. I cued Lovely Runner, a South Korean fantasy romcom with a sprinkle of love, idol culture, mental health struggles and time travel. The visuals are crisp on both the huge inner display as well as the narrower cover display.
When unfolded, the squarish dimensions result in black space both on top and bottom while watching the show. Zooming in to fill the screen avoids the dead space but there’s a fair bit of the frame that I lose out on as a viewer, although the main subject always stays centred. With two speakers, the audio is loud and clear, as is the beautiful track Spring Snow by 10 CM, which keeps recurring throughout the series.
Camera
True to its Pixel genesis, the 9 Pro Fold offers a rather pleasing camera experience. Its primary setup includes a 48 MP main camera, a 10.8 MP telephoto camera with up to 5x optical zoom and a 10.5 MP ultrawide lens with a 127-degree field of view. As is the case with the Pixel 9 series, you get some brilliantly sharp, saturated photos, with a fair amount of detail.
While retaining accurate skin tones and texture, the smartphone tends to favour warmer tones, which almost always delivers stunning photographs without compromising on the original quality of the subject. The Portrait mode offers 1.5x and 2x zoom. While it delivers some brilliant-looking portraits overall, under closer inspection some snaps look hyper-processed where the subject-background separation is harsh. And, in some, the edge detection is inaccurate with the subject’s curly hair being blurred with the background. Again, this is something you see only when you’re reviewing the smartphone and looking for perfection. For general use, say for sharing on social media or even capturing beautiful memories for yourself, the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold does a wonderful job.
There are two 10 MP selfie cameras — one under the cover display and one under the main display when unfolded.
The smartphone can record videos at 4K resolution at up to 60 fps, and the videos I shot at a railway museum while taking a joy train ride proved how amazing the stability is.
AI features
All the AI features launched in the Pixel 9 Pro series find space in the Fold as well. If you’re productivity-focused, the combination of AI-driven functionalities and a massive 8-inch screen could make your life much easier. There’s a new ‘Clean’ feature that gets rid of smudges, stains or fingerprint marks when you’re scanning a physical document. You can also connect your Pixel to a laptop and choose to use the smartphone as a webcam! And I’d highly recommend this, considering how good the camera on the foldable is.
I wrote about the Gemini AI integration in detail in the Google Pixel 9 Pro XL review. It makes crafting and responding to emails, and messages easier and snappier. Pixel Studio is fun to play around with but might have limited practical functionality as you go about your day.
Tech Specs
The Pixel 9 Pro Fold runs on the latest Android 14 OS and might get the Android 15 next month. The device has 16 GB RAM and offers 256 GB and 512 GB storage variants. It’s powered by the proprietary Google Tensor G4, which is a capable-enough processor for non-intensive tasks. There’s no option for expandable memory on-device. The company has promised a whopping seven years of OS and security upgrades.
Battery
The Pixel 9 Pro Fold houses a 4,650 mAh battery, which is pretty average considering many mid-range smartphones pack 5,000 mAh batteries easily. My usage typically involved watching videos for about an hour or two each day, checking emails, streaming from Spotify, lots of photography and the occasional work video call. With this, the phone would have around 20-30 percent battery left at the end of the day. Charging it fully from zero takes close to 1.5 hours.
Verdict
One might think that it’s easy for the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold to stand out in the foldable smartphone space since there are very few players, even in 2024. However, the truth is the couple or more competitors it has definitely have their advantages. The Vivo X Fold 3 Pro, for instance, is much lighter, has a fairly capable camera and better battery life as well as charging time. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 is also lighter, although not many love its tall-ish form factor. It also has certain multitasking features, such as split-screen support for up to three apps at a time. It doesn’t help the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s case that it’s also priced much higher than its competitors. So while the smartphone, by itself, offers a great set of displays, an impressive camera setup and new AI-driven features, when you take into account the price it might not be the most obvious choice for consumers looking to buy a foldable smartphone right now.
