The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold improves on the original in almost every way | CNN Underscored

Last year, Google introduced the Pixel Fold, which was a departure from most other foldables on the market. It was squat and a bit heavy, and when opened, it turned into a landscape-oriented mini tablet. The outside screen had an odd 17.4:9 aspect ratio which, as it turned out, was pretty easy to use when the phone was closed. When opened, some apps were able to take advantage of the larger screen, but most could not. The best you could do was move the app from one side of the screen to the other.

This year, Google has taken a newer and more well-established approach to both screens. When closed, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold has the same 6.3-inch screen as the Pixel 9 Pro. When opened, you get a positively palatial, nearly square display that its closest competitors also sport. It’s also the largest of such screens, and the phone is the thinnest of its US counterparts.

It’s easy to dismiss this as an “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mentality, but I prefer to see it more as a maturity that is letting the market decide what’s best. But how does this phone stack up against the competition, and is it ultimately worth its $1,799 price tag? I’ve spent the last two weeks using the Pixel Fold around Chicago and in Berlin, Germany covering IFA 2024 to figure that out.

One of the best parts about the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is the build quality that went into it. Last year’s Pixel Fold felt like it had a bit of Surface Duo 2 DNA in it, which was great, but it fell short in a few key ways. There’s none of that this time around. If anything, it feels like the OnePlus Open might have been the inspiration for this design. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold fits very nicely in with its brethren in the Pixel 9 heritage — up to and including the volume rocker and power button which maddeningly remain in reverse order from every other smartphone in the universe.

When closed, the phone feels like a Pixel 9 Pro in every way, except for the redesigned camera module on the back. But if someone were to glance at the phone in your hand, they might think you’re carrying the Pixel 9 Pro. The only hint that something is amiss is in the corners of the left side of the phone which are filled out with extra material to complete the hinge.

Google says that, when opened, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is the thinnest foldable you can buy in markets where it’s available. That does not include, for example, Honor’s latest Magic V3 which is mind-warpingly thin. So, that’s fair enough. But the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is still ridiculously thin, which is delightful.

Meanwhile, on the inside, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold runs on Google’s latest Tensor G4 processor, along with 16GB of RAM and 256 or 512GB of onboard storage. That’s all powered by a 4,650 mAh battery.

That build lends to the awesome screens that this phone sports. Both screens are stunning and bright with 2,700 nits of peak brightness. End up with this phone on a deserted island, and you can use it to signal passing boats. The outside screen is a 6.3-inch delight, which is right in my preferred wheelhouse (though 6.1 inches is my ideal size). When you need the extra screen real estate, the 8-inch inner screen is downright opulent.

When navigating Berlin (my first time in the city) I used the phone in its folded-out state quite often both for getting around and for navigating my show schedule I’d written up in Google Sheets. There is plenty of room for whatever you need. Reading on the Kindle app is equally enjoyable.

The screen crease is noticeable but like with any other foldable, it’s easy to ignore unless you’re looking for it. Truth be told, the crease is probably the most noticeable of all the book-style foldables that are out there, but it’s still not bad.

Pixels are known for their cameras, and so the tradition continues on the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. You get a 48-megapixel main camera, a 10.5-megapixel Ultrawide camera, and a 10.8-megapixel 5x optical zoom camera. Overall, I’d like to see Google build more versatility in the camera set by including larger sensors for the ultrawide and particularly the telephoto, but it’s really hard to complain. The cameras are very good.

In daytime conditions, when pitted against the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 and the OnePlus Open, there is virtually no difference. Yes, the OnePlus Open has larger sensors in terms of megapixels, but when lighting conditions are good, any of these cameras will perform great.

The two standout areas where the Pixel camera performs particularly well are in low light scenarios. Panoramic photos and nighttime video are both excellent. We discussed the panoramic photos when I reviewed the Pixel 9 base model, but that tradition continues here.

Adam Doud/CNN Underscored

Unfortunately, my best evening panoramic photo opportunity came at the top of Berlin’s TV Tower, which is enclosed in glass — so reflections are no joke in this space. But I still took the opportunity to compare the panoramic capture with the others, and the results are night and day, with the Pixel producing the best panoramic photo, the OnePlus slotting in the middle and the Z Fold 6 bringing up the rear.

I took quite a few photos at the top of the tower with the OnePlus Open as well. It’s hard to say definitively which phone performed the best, mostly because I was shooting through glass, and the reflections were not kind.

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold has night sight video capture capability, which makes a remarkable difference. Previously available on the Pixel 8 Pro, this feature uses cloud-based processing to clean up videos frame by frame in order to make them much better when the lights go down. The difference is pretty stark. Very few phones — let alone folding phones — can manage decent video capture at night, and the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is one of them.

Overall, the camera here is a win — enough so that I took the phone to IFA to serve as my primary camera for the show floor. That’s a lot of confidence, and I was not disappointed. The only quibbles I have with camera performance remains in moving subjects with less-than-perfect lighting. Someone waving their hand indoors will be a blurry mess. That’s really it though. Again, I’d like to see Google include larger sensors just so that, as a photographer, I can have a bit more flexibility in which shots I can take.

But the cameras aren’t all great. The selfie cameras both have weaknesses.  Neither camera is particularly good in low light for photos nor for video. Video in particular is a grainy unusable mess, but selfies lack sharp focus as well. That’s not unusual for any phone, which means it’s not a uniquely Pixel problem. But devices known for their cameras really can’t afford to phone it in with any of them — no pun intended.

Meanwhile, the selfie camera in the inner screen is not positioned in the center of one of the halves of the screen as is typical. Rather, it resides in the upper right corner of the screen. Do you know what else usually appears in the upper right corner of the screen? “X” icons to close ads. Sometimes, a close button will be located in part underneath that camera which makes it even more difficult to tap. For the record, the OnePlus Open also places its selfie camera in that corner, but I haven’t run into that same problem.

Nevertheless, that inner selfie camera needs to be repositioned in the next generation. It would also be nice if it could snag a higher resolution and/or night sight video support.

One of the highlights of Made By Google this year was the debut of Gemini Live. It used to be available as part of a $20/month Gemini Advanced subscription, which also gets you 2TB of cloud storage and Gemini features in Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. When you buy any Pixel 9 Pro (including the Fold) you get a one-year free trial of Gemini Advanced. However, Google recently announced that Gemini Live would be included for free going forward.

Gemini Live is Google’s conversational A.I. model which allows you to have a back-and-forth conversation with the AI as you try to navigate a foreign city, or decide what you want to have for desert. The good news is that Gemini Live is fun to use and can lead you in a good direction if you’re stuck for ideas. One night, my wife and I were trying to decide what to take to a friend’s house for desert and Gemini helped us land on fruit with whipped cream, which is honestly not a place we would have landed on our own — turns out it was quite tasty.

But the conversational nature of Gemini Live needs a bit of work. It’s still a touch too slow to call it a real back-and-forth conversation. There’s still a half-second too much processing time, which can result in the two of you talking over each other. That can (and does) derail a conversation pretty quickly. I think this is a minor quibble which could be overcome with software development down the road, but it’s not there yet.

Also, hallucinations are still very much a thing, including when I asked Gemini Live what conversations we’d had, and it reminded me of the conversation we had about how to find good podcasts. The problem is, we never had that conversation.

At the end of each Gemini Live session you get a written transcript of the conversation, which is nice, but when you end up with “Oh wait…I should also…I should also mention…” as part of that transcript, it shows you how awkwardly the conversation can sometimes go.

Traveling to a foreign country where you ride on an unfamiliar network for 18 hours per day is admittedly not the most fair assessment of battery life. Half of my review period for this phone was spent in Germany running on Deutsche Telekom’s network, which is also the parent company of my home T-Mobile. If that was the extent of my usage, I would not ding the battery life, but I also ran CNN’s standard battery test, and the Pixel 9 Pro Fold ended up solidly in the middle of the pack.

That may be because of the expansive inner screen which is among the largest you can buy. In practical use, when traversing the IFA show floor, I only found the need to add some mid-day juice on a couple of the days I was there. And in all fairness, my iPhone 15 Pro needed the same top off on the same days, so it might have just been network weirdness causing the battery to discharge more quickly. On three of the IFA days, I got through the show floor and back to my hotel following dinner before needing a plug.

Put simply, the battery life could probably be better, but it isn’t bad per se. I typically find flagship phones should be able to last about a day and a half before needing the plug; even when I was home, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold couldn’t quite eek that out.

In the United States, you have three book-style foldables to choose from. In addition to Google’s latest offering, you can also go with the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 or the OnePlus Open. Personally, I have a favorite, but all three of these options make solid arguments for your dollars. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 has just as much AI built into it, and Samsung is making AI as big a priority as Google, if not a bigger one. Meanwhile, the OnePlus Open really doesn’t have much AI to speak of.

The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 is the most venerable and well refined of the three options. Samsung offers a great experience across its ecosystem of devices (and your Windows computer, if you have one). It adds a solid support system which has been around longer than the other two combined. Plus, S Pen support is a huge bonus.

The camera set on the OnePlus Open is far more versatile than its two competitors. The OnePlus Open has an ultrawide camera, main camera and 3x optical telephoto lens with more megapixels overall. Higher megapixels aren’t always better, but in this case, you get consistent photo quality through all three lenses. Plus, the 64-megapixel sensor allows you to get a lossless 6x optical zoom by cropping the sensor. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 and Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold has smaller, less versatile sensors. The Open Canvas software on the OnePlus Open is also delightful for multitasking.

Finally, the overall experience on the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is better. You get the extra features that come with a Pixel like Magic Editor and Audio Magic Eraser. Night panoramas and Night Sight for video are both mind-bending and can be extremely valuable if you find yourself in low light situations often. There really is no bad choice among them.

Personally, I’m more of a fan of the OnePlus Open, because of the cameras and the Open Canvas concept. The price of the OnePlus Open (currently $500 less than the Pixel 9 Pro Fold at the time of this writing) is also a major factor.  That being said, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is such a compelling offering, I could easily see myself switching between the two fairly often.

The bottom line is that Google made a lot of right decisions in the development of this phone. It listened to its critics regarding the size, weight and overall build, and it looked to its competitors to see what was working. All that adds up to a very compelling package that no one would regret picking up, even if it is very expensive.