After yesterday’s marketing leaks showing the upcoming Pixel Fold from two angles, the prolific leaker Evan Blass is back with the encore that everyone wanted. Blass tweeted a third picture: the phone unfolded with its tablet mode on full display.
The first thing you’ll notice is the very thick bezel. It surrounds the Pixel Fold’s (rumored) 7.6-inch screen, but is especially prominent at the top and bottom.
That will certainly be offputting for some, especially compared to Google’s soon-to-be rival, the Galaxy Z Fold 4. Samsung has made a concerted effort to minimize the bezel over four generations, culminating in something that’s barely there:
It's also worth noting that the Galaxy Z Fold 5 is on the way, which is supposed to feature a thinner design due to a waterdrop-style hinge (although the bezels might the same).
There are good things to be said about a slightly wider bezel on a tablet. For one thing, it gives you something to comfortably grip without accidentally pressing things. For another, it means that Google requires neither a notch nor an under-screen camera — something debuted by Samsung on the Galaxy Z Fold 3 with so-so results.
Bezels aside, what’s clear is that this looks like a genuine Android tablet experience. There are six icons along the bottom dock and three widgets on screen at once. The At a Glance widget usually takes up half of a screen on the Pixel Launcher for other handsets, but here it’s just one complication among many.
The final thing to note is the area around the hinge, which appears to be protected by plastic bits. That’s an unsurprising safety precaution — and something Samsung added to its foldables after early models proved to have problems with dust and grit getting inside and disrupting the folding mechanism.
This may be what Google meant when internal documents revealed the Fold would have “the most durable hinge on a foldable”. The same leak promised water resistance and Blass reiterated this in a list of specs with the latest shot.
“The 5.8-inch front OLED panel (146.7mm) has a 17.4:9 aspect ratio and 1080 x 2092 resolution at 408ppi,” he tweeted. It features up to 120Hz refresh rate, 1550 nits peak brightness and Gorilla Glass Victus cover glass.”
Here’s Blass’ picture of the front from yesterday as a reminder of what that looks like:
“The 7.6-inch (192.3mm) internal folding OLED display, meanwhile, has a 6:5 aspect ratio and 1840 x 2208 resolution at 380ppi,” he continued. “Same 120Hz refresh as the outer display, but with 1450 nit peak brightness and a plastic protective layer.”
Blass then reiterated some familiar-sounding specs: the Tensor G2 processor will be backed by 12GB of LPDDR5 RAM, 256 or 512GB of UFS 3.1 storage, and a 4,821mAh battery with 30-watt wired charging. The triple camera array will comprise a 48MP main sensor, augmented by two 10.8MP lenses — one ultrawide and one telephoto.
“IPX8 water resistance, USB type-C 3.2 gen 2, and a bunch of other stuff,” he said finishing the Twitter thread. “Ships in Obsidian or Porcelain.”
Expect the Pixel Fold to make its debut at Google I/O 2023 in just over a week’s time. It could be a big one for Google hardware with both the Pixel 7a and Pixel Tablet also expected to feature.
