The Duality Of The Foldable

Google stepped into the world of foldable smartphones with 2023’s Pixel Fold. At this year’s Made By Google event, its sophomore foldable arrived.

After the launch of the Pixel 9 Fold Pro, I sat down with George Hwang (Product Manager for Consumer Hardware) and Jon Prowse (Hardware Product Manager for Pixel Phones) to find out more about the idea of a foldable phone, lessons from the Pixel Fold, and the challenges presented by the design.

Let’s start with the name, though. Last year, it was the “Pixel Fold”; this year, it is the “Pixel 9 Pro Fold.” Why the change?

“To us, it’s really important that this is a Pixel 9 Pro device. This device is for the consumer who wants the most from their phone and wants that next level of performance. The Nine Pro Fold is for that type of person: who wants the biggest screen on a phone, the thinnest foldable, and all of the great things? We built this phone, and it aligns to the Pixel 9 Pro.”

Foldable smartphones are not a new idea (you could argue that the original clamshell Nokia 9000 Communicator was the first folding smartphone), but the last few years have seen the form factor move from technology demonstrator, through luxury flagship, to today’s hardware sitting on the cusp of mainstream acceptance.

Yet it is all too easy to look at a foldable smartphone and think, “it’s just a normal phone with a hinge.” While that may be how many want to present the technology, that disguises the effort needed to work with two different form factors, two related but different displays, and the exacting needs to pack everything into a practical shell.

That sort of effort needs to be more than a small team tweaking the regular Pixel phone. It goes right back to the foundations of the phone.

“To get a foldable done is not easy. It’s a Google-wide effort, starting from the silicon level, building off of that to the hardware level, the OS level, the APUI level, the developer relations level… so many teams coming together to build this device, and you see that through the experience and we’re really proud of that.”

Part of the design process is knowing what not to put into a design. It’s an issue that every smartphone has, and the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is no exception. No doubt, the team will work hard to bring their favorite missing features to the next device. Which brings up the question of what missed the cut with the original Pixel Fold that’s been introduced in this year’s model.

“If we think about the Pixel Fold to the Pixel 9 Pro Fold… the Pixel Fold was thi but we could go a lot thinner. A lot of what we did with this product is to push further down that line. And we had already established with the Pixel Fold pushing further into what we can possibly do, how we can eke out that extra space.”

The Pixel foldable’s size came up repeatedly in our interview both as a challenge and as an accomplishment. It’s also a perennial point of discussion throughout the foldable market space and one of the visually apparent elements that show the progress of the space; 2019’s Samsung Galaxy Fold was 15,5mm thin when launched, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is down to 10.5mm. The unfolded depth has a similar reduction, from 6.9mm to 5.1mm.

All of this helps with one of the biggest complaints about those early models—the cover screens used on the older designs were very tall and thin, offering a screen ratio that was usable but awkward. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold team focused on changing this.

“Folded, it looks like the smaller Pixel 9 Pro, so you can get to what you want to do. Whether that be sending a quick text message, writing a short email, or maybe changing the song on Spotify, those things actually should be uninhibited. And then, when you really want to, you unfold it and have largest display of any foldable.”

In addition to informing the hardware choices, what did the user experience of the Pixel Fold’s software teach the Pixel 9 Pro Fold team?

“We run internal studies and feedback groups here. What we saw was that users felt particularly that we still hadn’t made the mark with the Pixel Fold. We needed to push the boundaries there continuously. “

With the outside of the 9 Pro Fold more like the 9 Pro, and offering a more comfortable user experience, the unfolded form factor comes into play. It’s not quite a square profile, but it’s still a world away from the more cinematic layouts seen in the Pixel Tablet or other large-screened Android devices.

Yet the new display size on the outside of the device is also reflected on the inside. The ability to multitask with two windows, both of which are the same size as a “regular” smartphone screen offers a new interface that feels like an old favourite. The use of a split screen multitasking, rather than a larger tablet-like screen was a surprising feature of user feedback.

“We also saw high usage of the split screen software, more than just general tablets; because this is something you have with you all the time.”

The changes on the outside are clear to see, but that doesn’t make them easy to achieve.

“As we thought about moving towards the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, we definitely brought new technical innovation. We were able to get thinner, but we wanted to maintain the rationale of a 20 by 9 aspect ratio, the same size as the Pixel 9 Pro.”

And we come back to that word “thin” again. If there’s one thing that pushed the Pixel 9 Pro Fold further out to the bleeding edge than the regulation candybar Pixel 9 smartphones, it’s having to engineer everything into a much thinner frame. The 5.1 mm of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold compared to 8.5 mm of the 9 Pro. To take one practical area that will impact everyone, the camera needed careful consideration.

“We’re already thinking about what what we can do, what kind of custom modules can we get into a very unique form factor. We really need to think within different constraints than a normal phone does. We want to take our great hardware we put in there and then take it to the next level.

“If you step back and you look at it, we’re talking like tenths or even hundredths of a millimetre. And that’s the level that we have to go to, to ensure we can bring the utmost quality in the images.”

I finished off with a more philosophical question. Is the Pixel 9 Pro Fold a phone? It was the functionality of a smartphone; it has the form factor, but it is also looking to be a tablet and work with a different form factor.

“We kind of abstract that. Suppose you step back to an actual product design perspective… in that case, the design is completely different from a phone because anything you do on the inside of the phone, you actually impact the outside of the tablet.

“We want to build things that people love, that people want to use day in and day out. It’s not “should I use this one? Or should I use that one?” No, it’s just normal to them.”

Sometimes it’s a phone, sometimes it’s a tablet. Yet, it remains the Pixel 9 Pro Fold all the time.

Now read my review of the Pixel 9 Pro XL…