Samsung has only just released its foldable Galaxy Z Fold 6 but Google is hot on its heels with a new rival bending phone to compete at the premium end of the market. The tech giant has just unveiled the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, a £1,749 device that Google says has the biggest display on any mobile phone.
That’s not strictly true as the firm is only counting the markets where it sells the new high-tech device, and even excludes India from this claim, but the 8-inch internal screen is larger than the 7.6-inch Z Fold 6 and 7.6-inch original Pixel Fold.
Google launched the Fold alongside the regular Pixel 9, Pixel 9 Pro and larger Pixel 9 Pro XL and has opted to completely redesign this foldable compared to the original Pixel Fold that came out in 2023. We wanted to love the first Fold but thought it was a bit of a mess. It was heavy, didn’t open flat, had a big crease in the screen and average battery life.
The new Fold’s dimensions are less passport-sized, resulting in an almost square internal screen not as short and wide as the last model’s that’s also 80 percent brighter, plus flatter edges to the device and a new camera module.
The new phone, pitched as a folding version of the Pixel 9 Pro given Google has simply added ‘Fold’ to the end of that product name, does not actually have the same cameras as the 9 Pro, though its triple lenses led by a 48MP main sensor should still prove excellent.
Like all the new Pixel phones announced, the 9 Pro Fold is running the Tensor G4 chipset, Google’s latest processor. It’s a big jump up from the G2 found in the first Pixel Fold, and promises to power a ton of existing and new AI features as Google pushes these tools to compete with Samsung’s Galaxy AI and Apple’s upcoming Apple Intelligence on the iPhone 16.
Some of these tools such as Magic Editor are exclusive to Pixel phones, and allow you to edit photos to remove unwanted people or objects, change the size of objects or even make a scene look like it was at a different time of day by changing the lighting.
Google’s big AI push is all centred around Gemini, its AI assistant that claims to be able to answer your queries with more accuracy as it can now draw from more of your personal data across Google apps. Ask Gemini a question either using your voice or typing, and it can search across Gmail, Docs, Keep and more to find the relevant information.
In the battle to find a folding phone that really takes off in terms of sales, Samsung is winning thanks to its cheaper flip-phone style Z Flip 6. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold, like the Z Fold 6, is incredibly expensive and pitches itself as a tablet in your pocket for video watching that you can also run multiple apps on.
It’s not clear this is what people want, particularly at the high asking price, but Google seems to believe there is life in the product line. It goes on sale on 4th September for £1,749.
