The Pixel Fold shows how far ahead Samsung’s folding phones are

finally, finally, some competition in the US foldable mobile phone arena. Google’s long-awaited Pixel Fold has emerged to compete in the pocketable tablet market that Samsung has basically hogged for his four years.

The Pixel Fold is great and has some real advancements for a foldable phone. But, of course, there are many areas where it lags behind Samsung. It turns out that a four-year jump start really makes a difference.

My colleague Allison Johnson wrote a full review, and I encourage you to read all the nitty-gritty details. I’ve been here with Alison testing her Pixel Fold for a week or so with a slightly different approach. As someone who owns three generations of Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold devices and still uses the Z Fold 4 regularly, my goal was to see exactly how far Google’s efforts go. was to do Spoiler alert: For now, I prefer Samsung.

The Pixel Fold and Z Fold 4 share the same overall concept (a phone-sized device that opens into a small tablet), but they do it differently. The most obvious difference is that the Z Fold 4 takes a portrait-first approach. When you open your phone, the screen default mode is portrait. The Pixel Fold is flipped 90 degrees, and when opened, the inner screen is landscape.

This difference has a noticeable impact on the experience each device offers and determines the size and shape of the outer display. Pixel Fold’s orientation makes the cover screen shorter, wider, and more convenient. The familiar proportions are exactly what “looks right”. The app performs as expected and is easy to type. Samsung’s cover screen is tall and narrow, which makes it feel noticeably cramped and makes it difficult for some apps to flow the layout.

But when I open the Pixel Fold, this landscape-first orientation often gets in the way. This is fine for apps optimized for it (mostly his own Google apps), and works great for watching videos and playing most games. Splitscreening two apps at the same time also works well here. But many third-party apps don’t expect landscape smartphone screens, so they end up launching in a pillarbox window on the Pixel Fold. Rotating the phone 90 degrees often fixes the problem, allowing most apps to fill the screen. But that means I spend a lot of time laying the Pixel Fold on its side to do my daily tasks and it gets boring.

Samsung does not have this problem. Apps launched in default orientation work fine most of the time. Z-fold should be rotated 90 degrees for the best experience watching videos or split-screening two apps. This is not my main activity, but it is done occasionally. Since most of the time I use my phone is with a single vertically scrolling portrait app, I prefer to use the default mode which works best for most apps.

Since the Pixel Fold is oriented horizontally, it works better with shapes like a laptop folded in half. It’s nice to have this to prop the phone up against when watching videos, but I personally don’t use this feature much on either phone, so the Pixel Fold’s advantage is lost to me.

For me, the biggest point of buying a phone like this is having the screen on the inside instead of spending most of your time using the display on the outside. The Z Fold 4’s outer screen isn’t as comfortable as the Pixel Fold’s, but it works well for short-term use. However, its internal screen is much more suitable for most Android apps and is more fun to use as a result.

The two phones also hit other hardware areas. The Z Fold 4 is lighter and smaller than the Pixel Fold, despite having exactly the same in-screen dimensions. I noticed this difference every time I used the Pixel Fold. It’s only 20 grams more, but the added weight and larger footprint make it unwieldy. Z-fold is easier to hold.

I didn’t observe much of a performance difference between the two devices, despite the different processors, but I did notice that the Samsung’s screen was a bit better than the Pixel’s. I’m not saying the Pixel is bad, but both screens on the Z Fold 4 are bright. I noticed this as soon as I used my phone outdoors. It seems like the Pixel Fold is using a screen from a generation or two ago, but that’s likely since Samsung bumped up the display brightness for the Z Fold 4.

The Z Fold 4 also has more predictable and reliable battery life than the Pixel Fold, but in about the week I’ve been using it, battery life was all over the place. In some cases, even after 5-6 hours of use, you can still use it until bedtime. Other times I need a charge during the day to get through dinner. Pixel’s standby time seems to be very bad, observed on multiple test devices. The Z Fold has louder and better-sounding speakers than the Pixel Fold, with both speakers in the same “half” instead of being split in two halves like the Pixel. so it’s less likely to bother you. Block when you have your phone. Both of these things are important when one of the most common use cases for these phones is watching a lot of video.

Google has one absolute advantage over the Z Fold 4. That’s because the Pixel Fold closes completely flat, with no visible gap between the halves like the Samsung. It’s pretty thin even when closed, so it’s easy to put in your pocket. This is one area where I wish the Z Fold 4 was better. But all reports point to Samsung catching up here with the Z Fold 5, due to be released in about a month.

The Pixel Fold has a better camera system than the Z Fold 4, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. I’ll put my prejudices on the table here. At the moment, I’m so bored with my phone’s camera. And since the differences between most cameras are negligible or seen only in special cases, the Pixel’s advantage is less significant. to me. If so, I encourage you to read Allison’s Pixel Fold review. This review has lots of camera samples and details. I like her 5x telephoto on her Google phone, but otherwise both do the same thing for me.

The Pixel Fold has some advantages over the Z Fold in terms of design and layout, but the Z Fold is by far the superior in terms of software and feature richness. This speaks to the different approaches of each company. Samsung is willing to let users have a lot of freedom, while Google offers a more gated experience.

Pixel Fold has a very simple multitasking system that lets you run two apps side by side on the inner screen. Launching apps in this configuration is easy, you can drag and drop content between apps, and adjust how much of the screen each app occupies.

Z Fold, on the other hand, lets you split the screen with up to three apps before launching them. another Add apps on top of apps in floating windows. Doing all this at once is often overwhelming (I like to call it a “full Samsung”), but there are options if you want to. Pixel Fold doesn’t let you go beyond basic split screen.

I really missed the floating window option when using the Pixel Fold. With the Z Fold, you can open the calculator frequently when you’re looking at your banking app in the background, or code from your two-factor app without returning to the home screen or reloading the original app when logging into another app. to get It often happens when you put two apps side by side on your Pixel.

The Z Fold 4 also supports Samsung’s S Pen stylus, which I use frequently for taking notes and signing documents. Pixel Fold doesn’t support a stylus at all.

You can connect Z Fold 4 to an external monitor, pair a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse, and have a real desktop environment with overlapping windows and all the productivity and multitasking ease it brings. I wrote, edited, laid out and published this article in Dex mode on the Z Fold 4. The Pixel Fold has nothing of the sort, and doesn’t even support simple screen mirroring via the USB-C port.

With Samsung’s years of developing foldable products, there are other software features that make life easier. Z Fold’s cover screen allows you to set a different layout for widgets and app shortcuts than the inner screen. This makes sense since we use it for a variety of tasks. Pixel Fold simply mirrors the layout between the two screens. And while Samsung always makes it easy to save pairs of apps to launch simultaneously in split view, the Pixel doesn’t have such an option.

The software differences are obvious, so using the Pixel Fold feels like you’re using a larger phone. Z Fold makes you feel like you have an entire computer in your pocket.

It’s no surprise that Samsung is ahead of Google in many of these areas. Samsung released its first foldable phone in 2019 and has improved it every year since. And while this is Google’s first effort, it’s off to a much better start than the first Z Fold model.

Many of the differences in experience are found in software, and Google may catch up soon. The Pixel Fold will launch with Android 13, but Android 14 is expected to arrive soon, offering desktop experiences, app pair shortcuts, and more.

However, various choices in hardware design and features cannot be fixed right away, so we’ll have to wait to see if any adjustments are made in subsequent generations of the Pixel Fold. First of all, if you can’t connect an external monitor to your phone, desktop mode is completely useless.

Samsung, which has been a copycat so far, could tweak its own hardware to something similar to the Pixel Fold, depending on how Google responds to the device. It’s a shame, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a Galaxy Z Fold 6 with a shorter, wider cover screen and a landscape-oriented inner display within a year. Much of the positive reaction to his Pixel Fold before launch was about the fact that the outer display is more usable, but my experience has shown that compromises are needed. increase.

I’m glad I finally made it Any Competition with Samsung in the US foldable phone market. Each generation of Z Fold has made progress, but it’s been slow, and the Z Fold 5 doesn’t seem all that different from the Z Fold 4 (the Z Fold 4 itself was very similar to the Z Fold 3.. .) There were only minor differences from the Z Fold 2. Samsung desperately needs another player ready to take close to $2,000 from prospective foldable phone buyers to shake Samsung out of complacency.

But for now, I think Samsung has executed the idea of ​​a foldable computer you can take anywhere better than Google. I can’t wait to see where it goes from here.