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Pixel Fold: Google’s Foray into the Foldable Smartphone Market

Google's first foldable phone is now available for pre-order for $1,800.

Pixel Fold: Google’s Foray into the Foldable Smartphone Market
Pedro Domínguez

Pedro Domínguez

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Expectations were high, but finally Google knew how to live up to them with great announcements. On Wednesday, May 10 at 19.00 hours (Spanish time) took place the Keynote of the Google I/O 2023, its annual conference for developers. The event was held at the Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California, and could also be seen in streaming.

A live show packed with news where PaLM 2, Google’s new language model, was announced; the public launch of Google Bard, until now accessible through a waiting list; AI integrations in Google Workspace; new features for Google search that make use of AI; and the official launch of Pixel 7A, which is already on the market for $499. All this and many more new features, including (as everyone knew) Google’s highly anticipated Pixel Fold.

Pixel Fold is Google’s big bet to enter the foldable phone market, currently dominated by the Korean company Samsung. Google’s new device in a 2×1: on the one hand, you have a next-generation mobile and, on the other, a small tablet when you need more space to work, run applications or want to watch multimedia content much more comfortably.

Being foldable, the Pixel Fold is composed of two screens; on the one hand, we find an internal OLED screen of 7.6 inches, 2208 x 1840 pixels resolution at 380 ppi, an aspect ratio of 6:5 and a refresh rate of up to 120 Hz. On the other hand, its rear display shares the specs of the internal one, but is 5.8 inches and has a resolution of 2092 x 1080.

When folded, the Pixel Fold is 12.1 millimeters thick, thus being thinner than Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 3, at almost 15 millimeters. Its hinge is precisely one of the strong points of the design; as Google explained to TechCrunch, the device has a 180-degree fluid friction hinge, which would allow us to place it wherever we want.

The new Pixel Fold includes a three-camera system on the back: a 48-megapixel main camera; a 10.8-megapixel ultrawide; and a 10.8-megapixel telephoto lens with 5x optical zoom and a 20x high-resolution zoom. On the other hand, the front camera is 9.5 megapixels.

Pixel Fold also features a 4,821 mAh battery, 30 W wired fast charging, wireless charging, 12 Gb of RAM and 256/512 Gb of storage (depending on the model chosen). Also, with a Tensor G2 chip that brings great performance, switching between screens is smooth, changing and resizing the size of apps without any problem.

“Multitasking on Pixel Fold combines Google’s largest smartphone screen with the performance of Tensor G2, in all modes,” the company explains. “Do more things at once by opening two apps side-by-side with Split Screen on the large interior display. Drag and drop images, videos, links and text from one app to another for super-fast and easy sharing.”

Pixel Fold is already on sale, although only in some markets (it is not available in Spain, at the moment). In the United States, it can already be reserved for 1,800 dollars, and will be available in June this year. A price not suitable for all pockets, as will be seen, and which will make its adoption by the general public very difficult.

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Pedro Domínguez

Pedro Domínguez

Publicist and audiovisual producer in love with social networks. I spend more time thinking about which videogames I will play than playing them.

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