The Pixel folding phones are showing how far behind the other phones

The Pixel Fold: The Case for a Long-Term Battery Liquid and Charged Devices. An Overview of Early Results from the Razr Plus

I ended up making it through that day with about 25 percent left at 10PM, but without the late-morning recharge, I would have been hosed. Our team also noticed unusually high battery drain from the Pixel Fold in standby, which could be a bug. I usually got through a day of moderate use on a single charge. I think we can learn from long-term testing but if I planned to use the Pixel fold for a long time, I would keep a battery pack and a chargers in my house.

The most anticipated phone release of the year is the AMOLED version of the Pixel Fold, but it comes on the heels of another: the Rar Plus. The Razr is a flip-style foldable with a big 3.6-inch cover screen — basically the first of its kind. The contrast between my experience with the flip-style foldable before and after use of the Pixel Fold sums up the problem of the foldable.

Using the Z Fold to Reclaim Your Google Assistant: How Many Times Have You To Hit ‘Agree’ to Use Your Devices?

As far as image quality goes, it’s a Pixel camera, through and through. Color and details look amazing with bright lighting, while the processing is a little cool. Even though people are moving a bit, it still handles dim light and night mode is always handy for low light. Portrait photos from the main camera look convincing, but I still hate the crunchiness of the 2x portrait setting, and there are some real weird artifacts in one of my shots in this mode.

You can use the front-facing screen of the camera to take portrait selfies, but only if you have the main camera with you. It’s one of the benefits of a folding phone since the main camera is way better for portraits than the selfie cam, and it’s a nice option to have in your back pocket.

If you want to go to 4K, you can use any of the rear-facing cameras, and you can also choose to use the HDR10 option if you want it. I kept the video stabilization on because it’s pretty good and it yielded a modest crop.

The Z Fold has a lot of features and capabilities that are better than the Pixel Fold, so it’s not hard to see why it’s ahead of the pack when it comes to software. It speaks to the different approaches by each company: Samsung is willing to let you go fairly wild, while Google is providing a much more gated experience.

Every smart device now requires you to agree to a series of terms and conditions before you can use it — contracts that no one actually reads. We are unable to read or analyze every single agreement. But we started counting exactly how many times you have to hit “agree” to use devices when we review them since these are agreements most people don’t read and definitely can’t negotiate.

Additionally, if you want to use Google Assistant, you must agree to let Google collect app info and contact info from your devices. Additional agreements might be required for features like GOOGLE TWITTER.

Pocket City 2 on the Pixel Fold – How much do I use it for my gaming experience, or how much I need to play it on the big screen?

The screen in the inner can be used for entertainment. I thoroughly enjoyed playing Pocket City 2 on the big screen (I plan to never shut up about how much I love this game). The L shape of the phone makes it easy to put video on top of the screen when I’m folding laundry or eating lunch. The big proportions of the new device make it easier to watch a video like this on a laptop than on a phone.

You can use two apps on the same screen, side by side, in the Pixel Fold. You can modify the split of how much screen each app will take up when you launch them into this configuration.

There are a bunch of apps that have been specially designed to work in the unfolded mode of the Fold. Gmail, YouTube, Photos — they all make use of the full screen by putting information in sidebars and vertical columns. The ability to load full versions of websites is a feature of Chrome, in addition to the desktop-like interface. When I set the phone up in an L-shape, I slid the controls to the bottom part of the screen to show the tiled view of attendees. I didn’t have to change anything.

A lot of the issues with app displays are due to the choice of how the inside screen is set up. Apps that launch with black bars in the phone’s default position look much more normal once you rotate the whole device 90 degrees. But turning the phone every time you encounter an app that doesn’t know what to do with the screen is tedious — and it’s something you end up doing a lot on the Pixel Fold.

Apps that do stretch across the screen don’t always do it in the most useful way. Slack just unhelpfully spreads the phone app across the whole screen instead of utilizing multiple columns, which results in a lot of unused blank space. There is a great app on the Fold’s big screen. I would most definitely use it regularly for quick photo edits if this was my forever phone.

The Design and Performance of the Pixel Fold 4, a High-Resolution Ultra-Dense, High-Brightness, Two-Intensity, Foldable Phone

The screens themselves are nice enough, and there is a 5.8-inch panel and a 7.6-inch diagonal screen with a 120Hz refresh rate. The peak brightness mode of the two models is bright enough for use outside, while the inner screen protectors are plenty reflective. I used the big screen comfortably on a sunny day in some shade, but it wouldn’t be the best experience in direct sunlight.

Foldable phone repairs tend to be more complex and expensive than on a traditional phone, too. It is a fair bit more expensive than the other phones that have a protection plan, but it’s worth it for the two years of protection. With this plan, you’ll pay $29 for a screen repair at a walk-in Asurion uBreakiFix center (or a brick-and-mortar Google Store if you happen to live in New York City). Other covered repairs cost $129. If you don’t live in an area with a uBreakiFix location, you’re stuck sending your phone off to Google, although you’ll get a replacement shipped to you next-day — likely with a hefty $1,800 hold on your credit card. These are important things to consider before purchasing a Pixel Fold, and it would be wise to consider the cost of Google’s repair plan if you’re pricing one out.

The Z Fold 4 also has support for Samsung’s S Pen stylus, which I use frequently for taking notes or signing documents. The stylus support is not available on the Pixel Fold.

Getting the most out of the Pixel Fold: experiences with the first-gen Android devices, including tablets, apps, and smartphone sidebars

There are a couple of practical concerns that came up in my testing, too. Battery life was hit-and-miss, and the phone seems to drain more on standby than it should. I’m concerned about the long-term durability of the first-gen hardware from Google.

Depending on the response of the people who buy the device, SAMSUNG may adjust its hardware to be more like the Pixel Fold. I think it would be a shame that the Z Fold 6 will not have a longer cover screen or a landscape orientation, but I would be surprised if it didn’t. A lot of the positive reaction to the Pixel Fold ahead of its launch has been around the fact that it has a more usable outer display, though my experience shows there are compromises to be had with it.

The floating window option was missed a lot by me when using the Pixel Fold. On the Z Fold, I frequently pop open the calculator when looking at my banking app in the background or grab a code from my two-factor app when logging into another app without having to bounce back to the homescreen or reload the original app, which often happens when putting two apps side by side on the Pixel.

I can plug the Z Fold 4 into an external monitor, pair a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and use a real desktop environment with overlapping windows and all of the productivity and ease of multitasking that brings. I wrote, edited, laid out, and published the article on Z Fold 4 in the dicy mode. The Pixel Fold has no support for simple screen mirroring over itsusb-C port.

But for now, I think Samsung executes on the idea of a folding computer that you can take with you everywhere better than Google. I’m excited to see where we go from here.

There are some differences between the experiences found in software. The Pixel Fold is launching with Android 13, but Android 14 is right around the corner, and it is expected to bring things like a desktop experience and app pair shortcuts.