Google’s Pixel 10 lineup is seen as a refinement of the formula that the Pixel 9 started, which caught the hearts and wallets of many around the world. We’ve reviewed the excellent base Pixel 10, which proves to be a great value when bought on sale.
On the other hand, you have the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, which, in theory, is supposed to be a huge leap forward for foldable phones in general, thanks to one standout feature, but it seemingly makes you question why you should consider it over the 9 Pro Fold, which looks extremely similar when viewed from the spec sheet and at first glance.
The Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold starts at USD 1,799 (around Php 105,000) for 256GB of storage, pricing it in line with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7, with other foldables from the likes of Huawei, Oppo, and Honor undercutting it.
Design and build
Iterative refinements are the name of the game for the Pixel 10 Pro Fold. It’s the same asymmetrical book-style foldable form factor, with an ever-so-slightly larger 6.4-inch cover display, and two slabs of Gorilla Glass Victus 2 are wrapped by the matte aluminum frame, with a polished aluminum hinge.
The reverse orientation fingerprint scanner/power button combo, and volume buttons can be found on the right, with two ports for your stereo speakers on both halves of the device, a physical SIM slot up top, and your USB-C 3.2 port at the bottom next to a microphone hole.
Folded, it’s a bit of a chunky device, measuring 10.8mm folded, but it becomes a comfortable 5.2mm when unfolded. One of the biggest selling points of the 10 Pro Fold is its IP68 dust and water resistance, thanks to its clever gearless hinge.
This makes it the first foldable to be rated for dust tightness—solving a problem that has always been the kryptonite of folding phones, where dust would make its way into the hinge and end up destroying the fragile 8.0-inch foldable LTPO OLED screen.
However, it’s too early in the phone’s life cycle to find out if this truly works, but if this official rating is enough to give most average consumers peace of mind to make the jump to a folding phone, then only time will tell how it will fare, especially considering that Pixel 9 Pro Folds are having hardware failures left and right in other countries.
Regardless, it’s a very, very hefty device weighing 254g, and the asymmetric design does make it a little uncomfortable in the hand when used folded. The weight becomes evenly distributed once opened, and the camera island gives you a comfortable area to perch your finger under.
Plus, it comes in two not-so-discreet colors: Jade, a green-and-gold, and Moonstone, a lovely bluish-gray color. Plus, this benefits from the built-in magnets that allow you to use magnetic accessories without an additional case.
Display
The Pixel 10 Pro Fold has a 6.4-inch OLED display with a resolution of 1080×2424 as your cover display, and the inner display is an 8-inch LTPO OLED display with a square aspect ratio (1:1) and a resolution of 2076×2152.
Both are capable of up to 2,000 nits of brightness for HDR content, and up to 3,000 nits of peak brightness. Both have selectable color spaces (Natural and Adaptive), both support high refresh rates (up to 120Hz), but the cover display can only go from 60 to 120Hz, while the inner display can go the full range of 1 to 120Hz to help save on power.
Both displays get plenty bright and can be viewed in direct sunlight, but the inner screen does present a few issues that may or may not irritate people.
For one, it being a foldable screen means that the display is soft thanks to the pre-applied plastic screen protector (which should NOT BE REMOVED), and if you do end up pressing on it a bit too hard, like the previous owner of this device, there will be permanent indentations on the screen. Plus, a crease will eventually form and become distracting enough when viewing content not head-on. We simply do not have the technology for a crease-free display, not at the moment, at least.
Camera
If there’s one thing about the phone that disappoints in terms of generational changes, it’s the camera setup.
It carries over the exact same cameras from the 9 Pro Fold: a triple camera layout for the rear with a 48MP f/1.7 wide lens (25mm equivalent), a 10.5MP f/2.2 ultrawide lens, and a 10.8MP f/3.1 5x telephoto lens (112mm equivalent).
As for the two remaining cameras, they’re both 10.5MP f/2.2 selfie cameras up front and on the upper right part of the folding display, and all of them come with autofocus.
Google says that the camera improvements come from the Tensor G5’s better processing chops, meaning that zoom, autofocus, detail processing, and shot-to-shot times have improved. You can notice these if you come from an earlier Pixel, but the camera does keep up with the status quo pretty well.
This comes with the same distinctive cool, contrasty look that you’ve come to expect out of a Pixel, and daylight shots have plenty of detail from all lenses. However, the smaller sensors fitted due to the phone’s foldable nature do affect image quality in low light, where the camera software falls back onto its Night Sight low light mode more often than you’d want it to.
It also comes with other Google processing magic, such as Long Exposure, Camera Coach– a way for beginners to be taught how to take a better photo using AI, and Add Me, a way to add yourself into a group shot where you take the photo.
Oddly enough, it lacks Action Pan, one of my personal favorite modes that makes panning shots of objects an easy affair without having to fiddle with filters, tracking, and shutter speed. The hardware is more than capable, so it’s a head scratcher on why it’s not included in the first place.
However, the foldable-exclusive features make up for that. You can use the entire screen as a viewfinder or use the left portion of the screen to see which photos you have taken without having to jump back into another app.
The option to use the front screen as a viewfinder for higher-quality selfies or a preview for the people you’re taking a picture of are always excellent draws for any foldable, and Google also added a Made You Look mode aimed at taking pictures of children a whole lot easier by displaying a handful of animations with noise, which worked very well in real life. However, you’re confined to the ultrawide camera, which produces a noticeably worse image at the expense of having more things in focus all the time.
Just like its non-folding counterparts, this is a phone that’s great to use as a “point-and-shoot” device, as it handles fast motion pretty well, but you do have access to Pro controls such as ISO, shutter speed, and manual focus this time if you want to get a little more creative.
As for video capture, it can do 4K at either 24, 30, or 60fps, and 1080p at 24, 30, 60fps, with 120 and 240fps reserved for slow motion, just like every other Pixel 10.
Video quality is just like the photos, great in daylight, but slowly falls apart when you start to lose light. The microphones have good audio quality, and the Pixel’s floaty stabilization and jarring transition between lenses are still evident.
Being a Pro device, it supports Video Boost, a way to enhance video quality using Google’s cloud services. The only catch is that processing will take a good while before you can actually see the final video, and you’ll be limited to only the wide lens with a 2x zoom, at most.
Performance and Foldable Experience
This runs Google’s new octa-core Tensor G5 processor, paired with 16GB of RAM, and up to 1TB of storage. Depending on your storage tier, it either uses UFS 4.0 for 256GB or the newer Zoned UFS for the 512GB and 1TB variants, which promise faster speeds and better longevity.
The processing power is fine for general usage, and the large amount of RAM does allow for more apps to stay open for longer, but when you start using this for harder work like editing photos or videos, the device starts to chug a bit, which is a bit disappointing for this device’s price point.
Playing games is an equally disappointing affair. Light to medium games will play just fine, but the lack of horsepower and the thin profile of the phone mean the Tensor G5 will thermal throttle sooner than you think and force you to turn down the graphics settings on more demanding titles.
I’ve encountered a very odd bug with Zenless Zone Zero and Honkai Star Rail, where there are extreme moments of stutter (think slideshow levels), and the game becomes playable after the shaders have been compiled, which just puts me off from playing the game on the device.
Software experience (OS and Apps)
If you’re not a power user like I am, the general experience is smooth, bug-free, and one of the best hassle-free software experiences that just work.
So, if the clean, junk-free, and responsive operating system is one of the biggest draws to the lineup, how does it translate into the foldable form factor? Sadly, it pales in comparison to the likes of OneUI.
You can only open two apps at a time, and you can increase the division between the two up to a 90:10 split, where tapping on the smaller app focuses it in an almost big-screen-like interface. Multitasking does come in handy when writing and uploading articles, looking up references and taking notes, or editing photos with a guide, especially with drag-and-drop support. Adding a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse ups the productivity factor, provided you have the space to set it up.
Of course, you can doom scroll twice as fast or consume media at the same time, but you’ll want to be using the whole screen for the latter. And sadly, not all apps are well optimized for the big screen layout. Watching videos on the big screen means all your content will be letterboxed by black bars, and you’ll also have to contend with the large crease in the middle.
In fact, two things led me to just use the outer screen more: the fact that most of the media I consume simply work better for the taller outer screen, and the lack of horsepower and big-screen optimizations for a device this expensive does get frustrating, especially with the likes of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 just destroying this for almost everything else.
Just like the Pixel 10, the AI features that work depends on where you live. If you use it in an unsupported country like the Philippines, most features like Call Screening, Live Translate, and Magic Cue won’t work at all, but other smarts like Now Playing, Pixel Screenshots, and the transcription work like a charm.
Of course, the seven years of software updates and native AirDrop support via Quick Share is one of the biggest draws, but as of this writing, it has expanded to Pixel 9 users, meaning that this exclusive will eventually make it to the rest of the Android lineup.
You have to do a few things, such as setting the visibility on the Apple device to “Everyone for 10 minutes”, but other than that, it just works.
Despite not being sold locally, cellular and WiFi reception are excellent, no matter what carrier I’m on (tested both Globe and Smart). This also comes with WiFi 7 and Bluetooth 6.0 support, where different devices and access points connect reliably.
Of course, it does telephony very well, with calls being clear for both ends. This does have actual stereo speakers that fire out from both sides when opened up, and they get pretty loud to fill up an entire room. However, the way you hold it while unfolded will also affect the sound.
Battery
The Pixel 10 Pro Fold features a 5,015mAh battery with 30W fast wired charging and 15W Qi2 wireless charging. Google chose to make their foldable a bit thicker in exchange for more battery, and the trade-off is worth it, in practice.
I can get about a whole day’s worth of heavy usage, including media consumption, productivity, and some gaming on the side, while alternating between the two displays. Of course, using it unfolded will kill the battery faster, but that’s the trade-off for essentially having a second device in your pocket.
Plus, the convenience of being able to plop the phone down on any of my existing wireless MagSafe chargers is always a great thing to do after a long day at work, and you don’t want to worry about plugging your phone in.
Verdict
If not for the refinements Google has made to the Pixel 10 lineup in general (built-in magnets, efficiency, and battery gains) and the game-changing IP68 dust and water resistance for foldables, the 10 Pro Fold would have been a lukewarm device at most.
This foldable is basically for the wealthy Pixel fans out there, or for those who want a (slightly) more durable folding book-style phone and want it right now. You don’t care if the device isn’t the fastest or thinnest foldable out there, or if it doesn’t have the best cameras at the moment, but you want something that just works.
I sorely miss the passport-style form factor the original Pixel Fold once had, as it was a more media-consumption-friendly and unique shape that invited you to utilize the bigger screen more often.
With the rumors of the iPhone Fold and a wide Samsung Galaxy Z Fold pivoting to that form factor, it seems like the days of a “slab phone” that opens up to a small tablet are numbered, especially with huge tri-fold devices starting to pop up as well.
