The Pixel 10 Professional Fold gained’t look very totally different in the event you place it subsequent to final 12 months’s Pixel 9 Professional Fold. Apart from Google’s AI chops, there’s not a lot of an overhaul at first look. Nevertheless, that is the primary foldable to obtain an IP68 ranking, and that counts for one thing.
Ever since firms began launching foldables, sturdiness has been the prime concern for customers. The longevity of hinges, safety of the inside display screen, and resistance of those units in opposition to liquid and sand are all the time huge issues when shopping for a foldable as in comparison with a slab cellphone.
Google’s Pixel 10 Professional Fold is the corporate’s try at assuaging these worries. The machine carefully resembles its predecessor, however there are a number of key adjustments that make the cellphone sturdier.
First is a brand new gearless hinge, which provides a little bit of resistance to folding and unfolding the cellphone. Due to the brand new hinge, there’s little or no hole when the cellphone is folded. This ensures that fewer mud particles and different particles can get inside and doubtlessly injury the display screen. Whereas I didn’t get the cellphone in any sand, I saved it in my bag and my pocket a number of occasions to see if lint from both place had any impact. Nevertheless, the cellphone continued functioning as normal.
I didn’t submerge the cellphone in water, both. Nonetheless, having IP68 safety signifies that the cellphone ought to face up to mud and water higher than its predecessor.
Other than the durability improve, the Pixel 10 Professional Fold gained a brand new Tensor G5 processor. Whereas it’s nice for many day-to-day duties, as my expertise suggests, there’s some dialogue about the way it doesn’t perform as well as some other processors in benchmark checks.
Different {hardware} adjustments within the 10 Professional Fold contain a much bigger battery than final 12 months, which is a welcome change. Plus, the cellphone has a brighter display screen, so it’s simpler to make use of exterior within the daylight. One notable factor in regards to the show is that the bezel across the display screen is far thicker than what I’ve seen on different latest telephones, together with each foldables and slab telephones.
Since it is a Pixel cellphone, Google added a lot of AI options to the software program. These additions embody Magic Cue, which surfaces snippets and ideas based mostly on screenshots and knowledge from apps like Maps, Gmail, Messages, and Hold. You additionally get name translation, Gemini Stay with video view, and a digital camera coach to information you to take photographs. (These options are already current on the Pixel 10 Professional, and you may learn extra about how they work right here.)
Cameras
For Pixel telephones, the digital camera has been a central story for years now. The Pixel 10 Fold Professional has digital camera specs much like final 12 months’s machine. This implies there’s a 48-megapixel most important sensor, a ten.8-megapixel telephoto sensor with 5x optical zoom, and a ten.5-megapixel ultrawide sensor. It additionally has a pair of 10-megapixel sensors because the selfie digital camera on each the quilt show and the within show.
This setup shouldn’t be on par with the Pixel 10 Professional’s 50-megapixel most important sensor and a pair of 48-megapixel sensors for ultrawide and telephoto. In the meantime, the Pixel Professional 10 additionally has a 42-megapixel selfie digital camera.
The photographs from the Fold’s most important digital camera present good particulars, however that isn’t the case with each the telephoto and ultrawide lenses. In low gentle, solely the primary digital camera holds some water, however the Pixel 10 Professional cameras outshine it.
One gripe I’ve with the Pixel 10 Professional Fold digital camera is that at any time when I needed to take a photograph of a small object, like an AirPods case, the digital camera triggered macro mode, even when it was not tremendous near the item.
The jury is out on how a lot AI ought to be utilized in photographs, however if you’re a fan of the Pixel AI Zoom function, which might allow you to use 100x zoom, you may be disenchanted to know that the function is lacking on the Pixel 10 Professional Fold.
The complicated “Professional” moniker
It’s laborious to anticipate a cellphone to not have a reputation that could be a mouthful on this period. Nevertheless, Google’s inclusion of “Professional” within the Pixel 10 Professional Fold is a tad complicated. The corporate launched the Pixel Fold in 2023, after which modified the naming scheme final 12 months.
Normally, Professional is reserved for the top-tier cellphone of any lineup. Except you depend the show dimension and battery dimension — which end result within the type issue — the foldable falls brief within the digital camera, cooling, and charging departments.
The digital camera is a step down from the Pixel 10 Professional, as we described earlier. Plus, Google solely included vapor chamber cooling for its Professional slab telephones. And the 25W Qi2 charging is reserved for the Pixel 10 Professional XL. A few of this could be a limitation due to the foldable type. However then, why not drop the Professional title?
Google additionally must encourage builders to undertake third-party apps to suit the foldable expertise, moreover tweaking its personal apps and making the general multitasking efficiency much less glitchy. It will be good to see Google implement one thing like Samsung’s multi-window feature on Pixel foldables.
The place does the Pixel foldable stand?
Amid producers like Samsung, Oppo, and Honor racing to construct skinny foldable telephones, Google has produced a proudly chunky and hefty foldable. The corporate has focused on making it extra sturdy and long-lasting with the brand new hinge and the IP ranking.
The cellphone’s digital camera bump shouldn’t be as huge as a number of the Chinese language producers have on their units. Meaning it holds a bit higher whenever you lay it down on a flat floor. The cameras don’t match as much as the Pixel 10 Professional line, which is a bummer. However if you’re not hung up on digital camera efficiency, Pixel Fold cameras are usually not a nasty guess.
The Pixel 10 Professional sells at a listed worth of $1,799 — $200 cheaper than Samsung’s Z Fold 7 — however you may get reductions on numerous websites. If you would like a completely baked Google or Pixel expertise in a foldable type issue, this machine is for you.
