If you place most book-style flip phones next to each other, you’ll notice a trend. Most of them are tall and narrow when closed, allowing them to be a little more boxy when unfolded. To me, this has always seemed like a misguided design decision, as it was trying to stick as closely as possible to a “normal” smartphone design rather than taking advantage of the strengths of a book-style foldable.
That’s up to the original. Google Pixel Fold appeared in 2023. Often rumored and substantially delayed after its original launch, the Pixel Fold opted for a wide, squat design that unfolded into a landscape with a nearly 16:9 aspect ratio, much more closely mimicking a tablet than other book style foldables. .
But its sequel, the awkwardly named foldable Google Pixel 9 Prodecided to act more like other foldables I’ve used and forget the unique identity of its predecessor. While Google may have improved many other aspects of its latest foldable phone, the wrong choice was to go with a more “traditional” foldable phone design. Here’s why I want Google to return to a broader design for the Pixel 10 Pro fold.
It is better for applications
One of the key takeaways from my original Pixel Fold review was that the wide aspect ratio was not only great for apps on the outside screen, but also better on the inside screen. But this was not inherently because the screen was wider. Rather, it was because opening the Pixel Fold made apps think you were suddenly using a tablet in landscape mode.
In fact, the only other foldable that was like this was the Oppo Find N2and that device was never released outside of China.
That last part is the most important part of the Pixel Fold’s design, as it ensures that the giant screen is used correctly. Every other foldable on the market still acts like a giant smartphone when opened. It’s essentially a “wide portrait” display and makes many apps feel awkward and useless when opening on the big screen.
Take Gmail for example. While Google worked to ensure that many of its applications started to behave more like tablet apps When opening on large folding screens, Gmail still thinks it’s opening on a tall, narrow smartphone screen, even though it’s displayed on a large, wide folding screen. That is unless you open it on the original Pixel Fold.
On the Pixel Fold, Gmail opens in the tablet’s proper dual-pane landscape view, giving you the list of folders and labels on the left, while the open email or email list is on the right side. Sure, you could get this same view if you turn your open foldable 90 degrees sideways, but I prefer it opened the right way. the first time.
When I have a large foldable screen, I expect to have a more efficient workflow than when I have a smaller phone screen. In other words, you shouldn’t need to open the slide-out menu on the left. It should just be there. This also prevents me from having to constantly navigate back and forth when reading emails, as emails open next to my inbox instead of on top of it.
Another example is the YouTube app, which actually opens in tablet view no matter which direction you turn a foldable device, but the videos themselves work better in the Pixel Fold’s aspect ratio when used in “flexible” mode. . That’s when you fold the screen at an angle and use the bottom half as a stand to watch a video or play games.
The original Google Pixel Fold displays video across half of the screen, while all the other foldables I’ve used have black bars on the sides because the screen isn’t the right aspect ratio for this purpose. The example above is the Pixel Fold next to the Honor Magic V3but this particular problem occurs in all best foldable phones.
One more example is Discord, which is generally a terrible app to use on book-style flip phones because it is so buggy. But using it on the Pixel Fold is less problematic on the big screen because it actually fits all the chat, plus the navigation panel and server list on that nice, wide interior screen.
On the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, chat cuts out due to the narrower aspect ratio. To see the full chat, you actually need to slide the side panel back from the screen to the left, leaving a giant chat window that takes up your screen and wastes a lot of space.
While a notable number of apps have worked to fix these issues over the past year since the launch of the original Pixel Fold, there are still many that don’t behave as expected on large foldable phones.
Of course, developers can choose to display tablet UIs when there are large screens, but that doesn’t solve the inherent problem of screens that are too tall and not wide enough. The original Pixel Fold fixed this problem, but I’m afraid no other company will have the courage (including Google) to try to make the same move again, and that’s a real shame.