The Pixel 9 Pro Fold is official: The Pixel 9 family flexes its muscles with a new member

Design

One of the biggest changes compared to the original Pixel Fold is also one of the most obvious ones. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold has an upgraded design in line with the whole Pixel 9 family. It sports a redesigned camera bump, flatter sides, and a brand-new hinge. Google calls it "a fluid friction hinge," and it opens with a snap to reveal a sleek and modern-looking foldable.

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold is also thinner and lighter than the original Pixel Fold, at only 5.1 mm when unfolded, and 10.5 mm in a folded state, weighing 257 grams. It comes in two color options: Porcelain and Obsidian. Google has chosen matte glass for the back of the phone, a similar satin finish for the metal frame, and a polished look for the hinge of the phone.

Display

When you open the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, a new Super Actual Flex display stares back with its 8-inch gorgeousness. Google says it's the largest display ever on a phone, and while this probably won't hold in a courtroom, it's a real beauty to look at.

The inner display now boasts 80% more peak brightness than the original Pixel Fold, and a quick calculation leads us to the number 2,700 nits (the Pixel Fold sported 1,450 nits of peak brightness). The resolution is 2076 x 2152 pixels, resulting in around 373 PPI pixel density, and the screen is also a LTPO panel capable of doing 1 to 120Hz with everything in between.

The new Pixel 9 Pro Fold also comes with a different aspect ratio, and the phone is taller and narrower compared to the original Pixel Fold. The cover screen is a 6.3-inch, 20:9 LTPO panel with a resolution of 1080 x 2424 at 422 PPI and a dynamic 60-120Hz refresh rate.

Thinner and more uniform bezels run around the inner and cover screens, and there's Gorilla Glass Victus 2 on protective duties on the back and over the cover screen of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold.

Hardware and features

The new Tensor G4 chipset is the beating heart inside the Pixel 9 Pro Fold's chest. This fourth generation Tensor has been designed with Google's Deepmind team (the guys behind Gemini and other AI projects), and according to the company, it's 20% faster in web browsing and 17% faster in apps. The phone is available with 16GB of RAM and either 256GB or 512GB of onboard storage.

What's more important, though, is that this is the first chip to offer on-device Gemini Nano with multi-modality capabilities. What's that, you may ask? To put it simply, your Pixel 9 Pro Fold has the capability to understand not just text input but also image, audio, and speech.

Google does this by dedicating a specific part of the Tensor chipset called TPU (Tensor Processing Unit) to dealing with machine learning tasks. And in the new Tensor G4, the output rate is up to 45 tokens per second. Tokens represent the smallest units of data that an AI can process, such as words or characters in natural language processing. Google calls this performance "industry-leading," and we can't wait to test it out.

Thanks to this new multi-modal approach, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold is able to handle day-to-day tasks such as booking a hair appointment, or getting directions, looking up car service options, or drafting a video or text message in an organic and natural way.

Google also introduced a subscription-based version of Gemini called Gemini Advanced. There are some very neat and interesting options inside that package, one of which is Gemini Live, a smarter version of Google's digital assistant that you'd be able to hold sophisticated conversations with.

When you buy any of the Pixel Pro models, you automatically get one year of Gemini Advanced for free, and it includes Gemini in Workspace and 2 TB of storage in Drive.

Cameras

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold comes with a lot of cameras. There are three on the back, one inside a punch-hole in the cover screen, and another one nested in the main screen. The triple main camera system consists of 48 MP wide, 10.5 MP ultrawide, and 10.8 MP 5x telephoto cameras. You can find detailed information in the specs sheet, but what's more important is that there are a ton of AI-infused features and tricks you can do with this hardware.

In addition to known features such as Magic Editor, Best Take, Photo Unblur, and Super Res Zoom, Google is adding a couple of new ones. There's a new feature called Add Me that allows you to snap a photo of your friends, then trade places with someone, get inside the frame, pose in the second shot, and then the AI will make a composite image with everyone in it! Amazing!

Auto Frame will frame the picture for you, and if you still don't like the photo, there's a new feature in Magic Editor called Reimagine, which will let you change pretty much everything in post.

Another big feature concerns the video capabilities, and it's called Video Boost. What it basically does is allow you to shoot 20x high-res zoom videos, upscale videos to 8K, and extract 30MP still images from any video you record.

Of course, stay tuned for samples and the full camera score once we're done putting this device through our rigorous testing procedures.

Battery and charging

Google somehow slapped two batteries with a combined capacity of 4,650 mAh inside the thin body of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. According to the company, this capacity should be more than enough to get you through one full day, but we will test this and report some hard numbers in our review.

The Pixel 9 Pro Fold supports wired charging with power up to 45W, and also wireless charging. Google says "hours of power in minutes of charge," but again, we will test how fast this phone charges and report back to you in our full review.

Pricing and availability

The Pixel 9 Pro fold is available for pre-orders starting August 13, and the base 256GB version starts at $1,799.