Google, please bring the next Pixel Fold to Canada because it’s awesome

Back in May, I went hands-on with Google’s Pixel Fold, the company’s first-ever foldable smartphone. I was left impressed by the experience, but I wasn’t sure how using the phone every day would feel.

However, my two weeks with the Pixel Fold have been great, to my surprise. And while the handset isn’t coming to Canada, I really hope that if there’s a successor, we’ll see the Fold 2 in the North because I can’t even get enough of this first iteration. However, with my love of foldables and Pixel’s admirable user interface, it makes sense that I’ve fallen in love with the handset. 

The Pixel Fold isn’t the best foldable in the world, not even the best in the U.S., one of the only four countries where Google sells the Fold. But despite what it lacks, it’s still my favourite Android device from the past couple of years.

Compact design

For me, the Pixel Fold’s design is quite strange. I love it so much, but there are one or two things I’m not a fan of.

My favourite aspect of the Pixel Fold’s design is its 5.8-inch front screen, which features a 17.4:9 aspect ratio similar to the 18:9 aspect ratio on many modern-day smartphones.

The Chinese foldable market has a variety of devices like the Oppo Find N2 and the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 that both utilize somewhat normal aspect ratios (Oppo Find N2 uses 18:9, and the Xiaomi Mi Mix 2 uses 21:9). The Canadian market lacks diversity and only has the Galaxy Z Fold series to compare with. Its most recent iteration, the Z Fold 5, uses a 23.1:9 aspect ratio, which is incredibly tall. Due to this, I’ve been quite pleased with the Fold’s larger ratio.

The design leads me to use the front display more than the larger screen, but that’s not bad because that’s actually how I want to use a foldable. Use the cover panel for my normal day-to-day smartphone needs and open up to the larger one for entertainment purposes, like watching content, reading books and taking incredible selfies using the cover as the viewfinder and capturing photos with the main camera. 

Speaking of that larger inner display, the Pixel Fold sports a 7.6-inch panel that’s great for your landscape content needs. The Z Fold 5’s orientation when opened is actually more vertical, which is great for app usage, but you’ll want to turn your phone when watching content or reading – while not necessary, it helps. Because I’m not really scrolling through Twitter or Instagram on the larger display, I like the landscape orientation; it works for my needs.

However, when opened, the Pixel Fold is plagued by two somewhat large bezels on the top and bottom, with thinner but noticeable bezels on both sides. Sure, some say that it makes the phone easier to hold, and Google itself says it helps make the phone so thin as it avoids a hole punch camera, but I believe it makes the phone look outdated. Another problem is the handset’s weight; why is the Pixel Fold so heavy? The device weighs 283g making it 30g heavier than the arguably bigger Z Fold 5 and 50g heavier than the Oppo Find N2. It’s even heavier than the Xiaomi Mix Fold 3, which weighs 255g.

The Pixel Fold is a premium device, but I think these things keep it from feeling like the most premium foldable. While the device itself is actually thinner than the Z Fold 5, it doesn’t feel that way due to its compact size. Further, to avoid damaging the Fold, I used a case, and that really didn’t help.

I like the design of the Pixel Fold, but I can admit that it’s not perfect. Making the bezels smaller and the device thinner and lighter can help the phone look and feel more premium.

I also think an under-display camera or just ditching the inner camera altogether would look much cleaner. And furthermore, water resistance like the Z Fold 5 would help prove it’s engineered like a flagship.

The Pixel Fold comes in ‘Obsidian’ and ‘Porcelain’ colour variants. I have the Obsidian option. The device has a matte back which is nice to avoid fingerprints and smudge marks, and of course, it has a modern Pixel camera visor. Similar to the Pixel 7 Pro was quite easy to scratch.

The displays aren’t the best in the market, but both use OLED panels with a 120Hz refresh rate. The inner screen features an 1840 x 2208-pixel resolution, and the external display offers a 1080 x 2092-pixel resolution. The colours are nice, making videos and social media look smooth. I also noted that I often need to increase the inner display’s brightness when outside, as if the adaptive brightness feature isn’t quite tuned for that screen.

When unfolded, many have noticed that the Fold doesn’t lie completely flat, which can be annoying for some. I haven’t had much of an issue, though, as I typically hold the device when I use it. I like that the device naturally doesn’t want to be flat, as I often read when I use the larger screen, which helps the phone feel more like a book.

When I’m watching content, I’ll add a bit of pressure to make it flatter so that the crease isn’t as visible. Speaking of the crease, you can feel it more than on the Z Flip 5, and it’s slightly more noticeable, but after a while, it’s easy to ignore. It’s similar to the state of the crease on the Z Fold 3, which is by no means bad, but definitely not the best it can be. Still, I haven’t had too much concern.

Lovely Pixel shooters

The Pixel Fold features a 48-megapixel primary camera, 10.8-megapixel telephoto with up to 5x zoom and an ultrawide lens with a 121-degree field of view and a 10.8-megapixel sensor. These aren’t the same cameras as the Pixel 7 Pro, but they still take great shots – better than some ‘flagships,’ I should add.

The primary shooter takes fantastic images, beautifully showing colours and detail. Capturing leaves or brickwork can often look overprocessed on phone cameras, but that isn’t the case with the Pixel Fold. It doesn’t oversharpen edges and more naturally can capture its subject’s detail.

Further, the camera has a great dynamic range as darks are dark, and whites are bright. Even its nighttime photography exposes the subject masterfully. Occasionally it has some trouble retaining details at night, and lampposts can mess up the exposure, but it’s pretty good, especially compared to some of the other foldables I’ve reviewed.

With the primary camera, you can take fantastic selfies, wonderfully showing your proper skin tone with Google’s Real Tone feature. You can also make out the hair follicles in my beard since this camera can take sharp photos with lots of resolution.

I also want to highlight the 5x zoom telephoto, which is able to grab great detail when capturing distant subjects. I love it and couldn’t help but wonder why Samsung didn’t bring at least 5x zoom to its Z Fold 5.

Overall, I love this phone’s camera system almost as much as I love the cameras on the Pixel 7 Pro. And in classic Google fashion, the camera is one of the main elements separating the Pixel Fold from its competitors.

Nitty Gritty

The Pixel Fold isn’t the multi-tasking powerhouse the Z Fold 5 is. If you want a foldable to help with your work or other productivity needs, then the Pixel Fold probably isn’t the best option for this. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve written an article or two with the device, but the handset offers a pretty basic taskbar, apps that can have their own pop-up window (Samsung’s Z Fold 5 can have four app pop-up windows), and you can only have two apps open side by side.

Samsung has some better user interface features. The Pixel Fold’s home screen is the same across both the cover and inner displays, meaning apps on your front screen will also be on your main screen. Samsung has it so that these are two displays that offer different homepages, meaning you can have separate wallpapers, apps, widgets and more on each screen. I prefer this method compared to what Google has done, although I made the Fold work for me. When you open up the device, what you have on the cover becomes the left half of your display, and your second page shows up on the right. Knowing that, I was able to set it up better; however, I wish that Google made it separate, similar to Samsung, as I think it’s also better for usability since both screens typically get used for different things.

However, I don’t think productivity is what Google was going for with the Pixel Fold.

Similar to the Pixel Tablet, I think the Pixel Fold is more for entertainment purposes, and it does this quite well with its 12GB of RAM, a Tensor G2 chipset, a 4,821mAh battery and Android 13. I also tried out the Android 14 Beta because why not.

I didn’t have any noticeable slowdowns or issues playing games, watching content, writing or anything else. However, the handset would occasionally get a little warm after a few games or when I had it attached to the charger. With Geekbench 6, the handset scored a single-core score of 1,459 and a multi-core score of 3,753, which isn’t the greatest, especially after reviewing the Z Fold 5 that boasted the best scores I’ve ever seen on an Android. But as always, benchmarking doesn’t actually determine how good your phone will be.

Battery-wise, I was very impressed with the device. It could push upwards of six and a half hours of screen-on time, which is surprising considering it’s a Pixel smartphone. I had a couple of days where I saw seven and a half hours of screen time, which by all accounts, is good for any phone. However, logically speaking, this makes sense. If you’re using a smaller 5.8-inch screen most of the time, it should help conserve battery. Therefore, even when I pull out the larger 7.6-inch display while watching content or reading, it’s not taking up a lot of battery. I haven’t seen a phone utilize its power source this well since a Huawei flagship or the Pixel 5.

It’s also worth noting that I’ve had no issues using the phone in Canada. I’m on Telus, and in my entire time, I didn’t have any problems connecting to 5G, calling friends or anything like that.

My favourite phone

The Pixel Fold isn’t available in Canada, and I think that’s a shame. The handset is great, and again, I can acknowledge that it’s not the best, but with its form factor, great camera and shockingly long-lasting battery, the Pixel Fold doesn’t disappoint.

The Pixel Fold lacks features like waterproofing, has somewhat big bezels on the inside, and is somehow pretty heavy. It could be thinner, and in the U.S. market, the handset costs $1,899 USD (roughly $2,560 CAD), making it just as expensive as the Fold 5 across the border. But despite this, I want it and would probably even purchase it if I could.

Google, if you’re reading this, please bring the Pixel Fold 2 to Canada next year because I want it to be my daily driver. As someone who’s used an assortment of Android devices over the past few years, I’ve never wanted to keep a phone more than this one.

If you want to grab a Pixel Fold, we have a post on how to get the handset in Canada from Google’s U.S. website. 

Photography by Brad Bennett