Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold review: I’m not a foldable guy, but if I was, this would be it

I may never have the combination of deep pockets and genuine interest that’ll motivate me to purchase a foldable phone. But if I ever do, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold would most likely be at the top of my list. 

Google’s debut foldable, last year’s Pixel Fold, was a respectable enough effort, but its hefty form factor kept it from greatness, especially compared to the competition (i.e., the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 5).

This year, however, Google may have taken the top spot with the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, a renamed successor to the Pixel Fold with better displays both inside and out, plus a killer redesign that makes it the most comfortable foldable I’ve used yet.

Sure, I’m not a huge fan of Google’s recent AI push, but if you ignore that stuff, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold might be the winner of the whole Pixel 9 family. Just as long as you can swing $1,799 — and don’t mind missing out on a few premium Pixel 9 Pro features.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold price and specs

Just like the Pixel Fold, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold starts at $1,799.

From behind.
Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable

Here’s what that gets you:

• 8-inch interior display

• 6.3-inch external screen

• Tensor G4 processor

• 16GB RAM

• 256GB storage

The only other option when you buy a Pixel 9 Pro Fold is 512GB storage, which balloons the price up to $1,919. It’s a little puzzling that there’s no 1TB option, considering the Pixel 9 Pro XL offers that. One key trend you’ll notice with Pixel 9 Pro Fold is that it’s the most expensive phone with “Pixel 9” in the name, but it’s missing a couple of key premium bonuses that you’d get with a Pixel 9 Pro.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold design

While the other three Pixel 9 phones all feel iterative in terms of hardware redesigns (sporting new flat edges and a different camera visor on the back, but changing little else), the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is a pretty substantial change from its predecessor.

Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

Here are the exact dimensions:

• Folded: 6.1-inch height x 3-inch width x 0.4-inch depth

• Unfolded: 6.1-inch height x 5.9-inch width x 0.2-inch depth

• 9.1 oz weight

When folded, the new foldable is both taller and more narrow than the old one. Aside from that, Google has made it remarkably light and thin. The weight is the most noticeable difference; Google shaved nearly an entire ounce off of this phone from year to year, going from 9.98 oz to 9.1 oz.

Even when folded, it’s thin and light.
Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable

With a shocking 0.2-inches of depth when unfolded (and only 0.4-inches when folded), combined with the new lighter weight, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is easily the most comfortable foldable I’ve ever held. It feels fantastic to use in either configuration, notably moreso than the Pixel Fold did. Last year’s model was just a little too wide and heavy for use as a regular phone when folded, but Google totally fixed that this year.

I found myself using the Pixel 9 Pro Fold in its folded configuration most of the time, barely even noticing I was holding a foldable.

Look at how thin that thing is.
Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable

One ding against the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s design is the choice of colors. You just get Obsidian and Porcelain, or black and white, in other words. Boring!

Pixel 9 Pro Fold displays

Like any foldable in this form factor, the Pixel 9 Pro XL has two displays.

Credit: Kimberly Gedeom

Here are the exact specs for each:

• 6.3-inch internal display with 20:9 aspect ratio, 1080 x 2424 resolution, adaptive refresh rate between 60 and 120Hz

• 8-inch external display with 2076 x 2152 resolution, adaptive refresh rate between 1 and 120Hz

Both of these displays top out at 2,700 nits of peak brightness, which is the same as the Pixel 9 and is remarkably nice for when you’re outside in direct sunlight. I really don’t have a bad word to say about either screen here. The internal Pixel 9 Pro Fold screen is absolutely massive, moving up from 7.6-inches to 8-inches, making it ideal for reading or watching things. Everything looks crisp, smooth, and colorful. It’s just fantastic.

This outside screen is great, too.
Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable

The same goes for the external display. Honestly. I preferred reading articles on that to reading them on my regular iPhone. Google bumped the external display up from 5.8-inches to 6.3-inches, making it identical in screen size to the Pixel 9. This adds to the notion that you feel like you’re using a regular flagship smartphone when the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is folded, rather than using a weird bulky thing that’s a little uncomfortable whether folded or unfolded, as was the case with the original Pixel Fold.

Pixel 9 Pro Fold foldable features

One of the better aspects of the Pixel Fold was its suite of useful and intuitive foldable UI features. Google didn’t reinvent nor even really change the wheel here, as far as I can tell.

Made you look!
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon/Mashable

When unfolded, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold still lets you swipe up from the bottom of the screen to pull up a customizable taskbar full of your most commonly used apps. You can tap an app to open it normal-style, or drag two apps up from the taskbar to have more than one open at once. The display is certainly large enough for multitasking, just as the Pixel Fold’s was. Essentially, what worked well a year ago still holds up today.

The only really unique new addition worth mentioning is “Made You Look,” a frankly adorable feature that is one of the most useful applications of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s outer display in photography yet. The idea is that you unfold the phone, activate the rear camera, and pick from one of a few cute little animations to play on the outer screen. The subject of your photo (ideally, a small child) will look at the animation, at which point it will do something fun and make the kid smile while looking directly at the camera.

I have to be honest: I don’t have any kids, so testing this in the real-world is challenging. But I got hands-on with it at a Google event and it works as advertised on adults, so I imagine it might work on children, too.

Pixel 9 Pro Fold AI features

Pixel Screenshots (seen here on a regular Pixel 9 phone) is the best use of AI on these devices.
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

Unfortunately, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold suffers from the same AI nonsense as every other Pixel 9 phone. I wrote about this at length in my Pixel 9 review, so I don’t want to repeat myself too much. I’ll keep this brief:

Google keeps leaning on generative AI features, largely having to do with photography, that I feel take the zest out of life. Having the ability to take a photo of a road and turn it into a river is cool, but it’s not as cool as just taking a photo of a river. The same goes for using the new “Add Me” feature to create group photos that never happened; a fake will never count as much as the real thing. Rinse and repeat for things like using AI to write text messages or emails for you. 

The Pixel 9 family uses AI to do all of these things and more. Aside from a new Pixel Screenshots app that is a legitimately useful searchable database of all the screenshots you’ve ever snapped, these are all just party tricks with very little real-world use. 

Pixel 9 Pro Fold performance

Performance-wise, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is right in line with the other Pixel 9 phones, in that daily usage feels fine, but the metrics don’t paint a super pretty picture.

Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s external display
Credit: Kimberly Gedeon / Mashable

Compared to the other Pixel 9 phones, the Fold is looking great. Its 4,706 Geekbench multi-core score is the highest of the bunch, as one would expect and hope from the most expensive phone in Google’s lineup this year. The only problem is that 2023’s Samsung Galaxy S23, which isn’t even the newest Samsung flagship, has a higher score at 4,977.

I don’t really know what to make of this, especially considering the Pixel 9 Pro Fold feels great to use on a practical basis. I never noticed any slowdowns; apps loaded quickly. And the phone never got hot on me, which was a problem with the Pixel Fold. I trust my gut on this; I can confidently say the Pixel 9 Pro Fold performs just fine, but the numbers aren’t particularly kind to it.

Pixel 9 Pro Fold battery

On the surface, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s battery life doesn’t look as good as its Pixel 9 brethren, but that’s not actually the case. 

That’s according to our testing, anyway, which involved looping a TikTok video on the internal display at 50 percent brightness until the battery died. This took 16 hours and six minutes, which is a couple hours short of where the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro XL landed using the same testing. My only hypothesis here is that the bigger internal display uses more battery life.

Considering that this is a device with two displays and thus a lot more screen real estate to render at all times, I’d say 16 hours is actually really good.

Pixel 9 Pro Fold cameras

Another weird blip for the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is the camera array. Specs-wise, it’s basically the same as last year:

• 48MP main lens

• 10.5MP ultra-wide lens

• 10.8MP telephoto lens

• 10MP selfie cameras both folded and unfolded

I think it’s strange that the less expensive Pixel 9 Pro has, at least in terms of megapixel counts, a better camera array. That phone has a 50MP wide lens with 48MP ultra-wide and telephoto lenses. It’s also capable of 30x zoom, while the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is only capable of 20x zoom. Both phones have access to all of the same camera algorithms and AI features, at least.

Even if the specs aren’t remarkable for the price, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold does produce some good shots. Having 20x zoom is better than having no zoom.

Left:
No zoom.
Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable

Right:
20x zoom.
Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable

The ultra-wide lens is real nice, too.

Brooklyn at sunset is great.
Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable

After sunset, Night Sight is still able to produce quality low-light shots, though I didn’t notice any particular improvements over last year.

Night Sight had to do a lot of work here.
Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable

Night Sight works with Portrait Mode, too.

Portrait Mode with Night Sight.
Credit: Alex Perry/Mashable

Is the Pixel 9 Pro Fold worth it?

I’m not a foldable guy at heart — and I likely never will be. But if that changes, Google’s Pixel 9 Pro Fold is at the top of the podium — for now.

That’s almost entirely because of how comfortable it is to hold. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold is so light and thin that you almost forget it’s a foldable. Combine that with bigger and better displays inside and out, and you get a device that looks and feels incredible to use. 

Sure, I don’t love Google’s suite of AI features, but they’re easier to ignore on a phone that has a gigantic inner display that you can use for watching movies and reading books. I wish its storage and camera features were at least on par with the Pixel 9 Pro, but those couple of complaints aside, Google made a heck of a jump from year one to year two of its foldable experiment.