I feel like I’m pretty lucky because I get to review a lot of phones and I have seen a ton of different phones in 2024 and I walk away from most reviews thinking yeah that’s an okay phone but It is rare that, I walk away from a review where I think I absolutely love that until now because this is my long-term review of my favorite phone of the Year.

I’ll start by saying that this isn’t a review device from Google this is mine I bought it with my own hard-earned cash and yeah it is very expensive and arguably it’s not as good as the pixel 9 Pro XL, but it does have something that. Those phones don’t have and for me it’s the excitement there isn’t a second that I’ve been using this phone in the last couple of months where, I haven’t been excited every time I pick it up its kind of hard to put into words.

DISPLAY

I fold it open and see that in display I just think that this is like a work of art from Google and every time I close this phone that little clap it’s really satisfying I do feel though that you never truly know a phone until you’ve had it in your pocket been away with you on trips and you’ve dropped it once or twice and how have done absolutely all of that with Google’s second gen foldable and let me just start off the whole video by saying that this phone it looks so good the camera design the matte back finish and just the thinness of all of this makes it feel like such a premium phone there are definitely some compromises when you pick up a folding phone and the pixel 9 pro fold, it definitely has them but for the most part this has been an absolute treat to use and surprisingly.

I feel like the pixel 9 pro FS display is almost there and I say almost because sadly it doesn’t have ltpo so it’s always 120 HZ and the screen doesn’t reach those corners and bezel wise they are just a little bit big but if you look past all of that this feels like a regular phone when you don’t want to use that inner display and I really do think that this is a sweet swap because most of the time I can kind of reach this with one hand which is an added bonus oh and when the phone is closed it is barely thicker than a regular style slab phone I mean just look at this you can just see now that that is really it’s quite thin on some foldables not naming any names Samsung but I feel like you compromise when you use that main screen for the bigger inner display but Google have done such a good job here it’s nice and bright for using Outdoors it’s durable I mean I barely have any scratches on mine which I’m a big fan of and overall it just feels like using a regular pixel 9 Pro.

 

When that phone is closed but I have to say that the start of the show here is of course that big folding display with any folding phone, I feel like there is just a bit of time to get used to using and folding open a phone but once I started I just couldn’t stop I just B that this made me more productive so replying to emails writing, scripts for videos and being able to truly multitask on. That 8 in display has been a breeze because dragging and dropping text just from one window to another, I absolutely love it and only having two windows side by side might not be an ideal situation for a lot of people using a folding phone because there’s no way you can have a floating window here but for me I’ve never needed the reason to have more than two windows open at the same time.

 

There was one thing that I found a little bit annoying when I started using the pro fold and that was the fact that you had to have the same home screen for the cover display and the folding display and I really like Google to add this as an option so you can have separate ones on each display I mean now I’m kind of used to it and I don’t really mind it but Google if you’re watching that would be a really nice thing to add in an update the pixel 9 pro fold has come into its own in one aspect though and that is when I travel so usually I will take the big Galaxy Tab Ultra with me and it’s heavy and you know it’s it’s just a bit inconvenient to take around but having an 8 in Oler display that can fit into your pocket.

WHAT MAKES THIS SPECIAL

I found with that inner display when traveling and watching content is that it’s a bit of a fingerprint magnet there are so many fingerprints on this and those plastic bezels around the side of the phone they do help minimize the fingerprints but honestly I feel like, I’m constantly wiping this down there is one thing that I really wish Google would include in the box. So, when you pick up a folding phone from them and it is a case with a kickstand a lot of other folding phones come with that kicks and case.

I really do wish and I hope that Google include in the next Pro fold and this is not a long-term review of a folding phone unless you talk about the crease and yet there is a crease here and I’m not going to speak about it for a long time because when you buy a folding phone it’s one of the compromises that you have to live with because there’s always going to be a crease and I feel like the crease on the pixel 9 Pro fold it does show up fairly prominently like it can be a bit of a bigger crease than other phones that I’ve used. However I feel like you just get used to it it’s like a notch it’s like a whole punch cutout in the end you just don’t see it when you first look at it yet you see it but in the end you just don’t realize it’s there and let me just be honest for a second because as much as you don’t notice that crease my crease seems to have got a little bit sticky near the middle now.

 

I don’t know if you can hear this or see this but just here on the crease let’s just see whether you can hear it or not so I don’t think you can pick it up but if you press hard enough on that screen then you can hear the crease stick just a little bit and I don’t know if that is a bit concerning I don’t know if it’s happened to anyone else’s profold so I’m curious to know whether it’s just mine and I should speak to Google about it but it does leave me with a little bit of concern about how long that falling display might work for there is one big compromise though when you pick up the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

CAMERA

it is is the cameras I feel like if you haven’t ever used another folding phone or even another pixel phone in the N9 series then these cameras they might seem great and pictures on the main lens are okay they’re vibrant they have a decent amount of detail dynamic range is also pretty good and for the most part there really isn’t a huge amount of complaints and you could be pretty happy with these it is though when you go to the ultra-wide camera or the five times camera where you feel like. You’re just being let down a little bit this is $1700, and you’d expect the cameras to be the best they can be but sadly they’re just not I found the five-time lens to be pretty bad when the lighting isn’t perfect.

 

And overall the photos just look a little bit soft and they do lack any of that detail and it’s really a little bit disappointing and this is a really similar story with the ultra-wide lens as soon as you look at the photos for a few seconds you start to see where it lets itself down there just isn’t any real detail on it especially in the highlights and the shadows and when you turn to video the story here follows a similar pan shooting on the main lens at 4K is mostly okay stabilization is pretty solid. And as you’d expect you get some good details in the images that you take but it’s the ultrawide and telephoto cameras that cause the problem if you aren’t in perfect lighting conditions then it can be pretty noise heavy, and I feel like it’s really obvious in fact even in good light you still suffer with the same issues. And it just is the biggest let down when you pick up the pixel 9 pro fold. And I question the pro name in the Pro fold because yes, I know you’re going to compromise with cameras on a folding phone but you just have to look at any other folding phone out there and I feel like most of them do a better job at taking pictures than the pixel 9 pro fold there are a couple of other compromises as well.

SPEAKERS & BATTERY

So, the speakers I don’t feel sound great the fingerprint reader is a little Annoying and don’t get me wrong it works brilliantly but the placement is just a little bit too high so I’ve turned to unlocking it with my left hand just to make it a little bit more seamless so it’s a compromise, but I can live with it. And early on with my time with the pixel 9 Pro fold battery was a real problem, I felt like it was just getting to the end of the day especially when you’re mixing the usage between that cover display and the folding display.

 

Let me tell you it has got better with the last couple of updates but the battery on this isn’t as good as I’d want it to be and it would be wrong with me not to mention the biggest failure when it comes to this and it’s the wireless charging if you have a flat charging pad it’s absolutely fine but if you have the pixel stand this just doesn’t work the coils don’t line up with it.

UI & UPDATES

Is so disappointing especially when you pay $70, $80 for the pixel stand, I mean Google you’ve got to sort that out on the next pro fold because this is really disappointing look. If you’re going to pick up the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold, then expect some compromises and while I don’t think any phone that comes close to $1,700 should have any compromises. I think Google has done just enough here to help you look past them and I still absolutely love this phone there’s just something about it, That I love it might be the design or the inner display and the pixel hardware and just how this feels in the hand it is really enough to make you fall in love with this. And the fact that it’s got things like an Ip 8 rating means you can almost treat this as a normal phone however I would be interested to see how this phone’s Hardware survives the 7 years of soft software updates, That Google has promised it I’m curious though what would it take for you to pick up a folding phone.