• il y a 2 mois
Transcription
00:00All right, so first thing I did when I got back from Australia was start to catch up on the stuff that I missed, and I put my SIM card in the Pixel Fold, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, and I was impressed.
00:16Really, maybe I shouldn't have been so impressed given how good the other Pixel 9s already are, but it's a folding phone. Folding phones are hard.
00:24But the second generation of anything tells you a lot, and even though this is called the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, it's the second one.
00:31The first Pixel Fold was last year, and it was solid. It was one of my favorite foldables to use closed with that passport-style aspect ratio, but it had a number of trade-offs with its price.
00:41This one makes some big strides forward.
00:44So let me just start with the design. Like, there was a lot of chatter about this camera bump on the back just because of the way it looks, which is, yeah, it's kind of weird.
00:52But personally, this hasn't bothered me. It's not like the biggest wobbler. I wish it was wider like the other Pixels. I wish it looked more consistent like the Pixel 9 and 9 Pro, but you don't have to look at it much.
01:03I'm guessing it looks like this just because of the complicated internals of a folding phone.
01:07But then the rest of the design around this thing is pretty nice. It is much thinner, first of all, and they've flattened the sides all the way around, so it's this more modern, like, squared-off shape a lot of other flagships have.
01:18Now, the funny thing is, the rounded sides from last year were actually easier to just pry open for a folding phone.
01:24So you'll notice that if you use both phones back-to-back, but this isn't the end of the world.
01:29And then there's a bunch of other refinements, too. The hinge is a bit smaller. The sides are now a sort of matte finish instead of glossy, so now you have matte sides and a soft touch back.
01:40And overall, it just feels much closer to a normal slab when it's closed.
01:44It's not fully there. Like, we're not quite fooling anybody yet, but it's a little over 10mm thick folded, and there are a lot of other phones from the past year that are around that number.
01:54The main change, though, definitely, is that it's not that smaller passport size anymore.
01:59This is a full-on, like, maxed-out flagship size, 6.3-inch, 1080p, dynamic 120Hz AMOLED display.
02:08It's big. The last one was more reachable, for sure. Now it's much more like the OnePlus Open size.
02:14So it's right around the maximum of actually being able to use the whole screen with one hand.
02:20I mean, your mileage may vary, of course, depending on the size of your hands.
02:23But, yeah, there's also still real bezels all the way around the screen, and it kind of pushes it away from the hinge, so it's a little off-center.
02:30But in general, I still find it very usable, and it just feels more like a regular phone than ever before, which I think is a win.
02:37I really like this cover screen.
02:38And then when you open it up, that's when the benefits of being taller really start to pay off.
02:43Because now you go from a 7.6-inch screen to a slightly narrower but taller 8-inch screen that's basically now a square.
02:51And the screen is way better. It's up to 2700 nits. It's nice and bright.
02:55It is actually LTPO when the cover screen is not for some reason.
03:00And the bezels have tremendously improved from the first folding Pixel.
03:03So they're still a little thick, sure, but now they're nicely even all the way around,
03:08and there's a hole-punch cutout in the corner now instead of the selfie camera on the thick bezel.
03:12And just look how thin that is.
03:15It's barely thicker than the USB-C port.
03:18This would have been a crazy sentence just a few short years ago,
03:22but using this phone, I wager almost everything about the hardware of this Google phone is at or above average, which is crazy.
03:35It's like the harder the part is to make, the better and more above average they are.
03:40Like this new hinge is nice and smooth, and the phone opens and closes in a really satisfying way,
03:44and it unfolds all the way flat easily, unlike last year's phone.
03:48The crease through the middle is, you know, average at worst,
03:52but very easy to look past when you're actually looking at content on the screen.
03:55And they fit in a 4650 mAh battery inside, which, again, is a little above average for foldables,
04:01even though it's actually slightly less than last year.
04:04The speakers in this thin body are very good and full.
04:07The water resistance is here. It's IPX8.
04:10The flatter fingerprint reader is easy and quick and fast,
04:13and just this hardware feels actually more deserving of the word pro than ever before.
04:19So, you know, they renamed the phone. It has pro in the name now, but it feels like it deserves it.
04:23But also little things like the outer display not being LTPO feel weird,
04:27considering that's the one that does the always-on thing.
04:30That's the one you really want to be LTPO.
04:33And it also doesn't charge particularly fast, and there's no Qi 2.
04:36So the phone has this lower-than-normal wireless charging coil that can be kind of annoying to line up
04:41and doesn't work on certain chargers, which may feel like nitpicking,
04:45but, hey, when it's an $1,800 phone, you are definitely allowed to nitpick.
04:49Overall, though, design-wise, I really feel like they got a lot of stuff right.
04:52So, yeah, it reminds me of the OnePlus Open from last year, which won my best folding phone of the year.
04:58But then, this one is a Pixel.
05:01And this Pixel software experience ends up being what differentiates it over a lot of other folding phone options out there.
05:08Because, yeah, there are totally more flashy foldables with more advanced hardware from Vivo and Xiaomi,
05:14and there's these razor-thin pieces of hardware with head-turning specs.
05:17But if I'm being honest, the software on those typically isn't nearly as good.
05:22So here, you basically have all the same features as the rest of the Pixel 9 flagship lineup, which is great.
05:28It's call screening, it's the Pixel Weather app, it's all the new stuff.
05:32Basically everything except the thermometer app, and that's fine.
05:36So Gemini is actually getting good, like I said, in the 9 review, and I'm still loving Circle to Search.
05:42Although, on this inner screen, you've got to be slightly more careful
05:45because the slight difference between Hold to Circle to Search and the tiny swipe to bring up the dock can kind of take some getting used to.
05:53But then there's also all the foldable optimizations,
05:56the two-column layouts for so many pieces of Android, the notifications, the settings app, so many other first-party apps.
06:03And I've just been generally loving the larger size screen because it feels like multitasking and having multiple apps open at once.
06:09Or, specifically, something I do a lot, which is picture-in-picture with a small YouTube video window somewhere on the screen,
06:15but I'm reading an article or doing something else in a full-size window.
06:18All of that is better on this phone than last year.
06:21And this is all Android 14, which is the same as all the other new Pixels,
06:24but I put Android 15 Beta on my old Pixel Fold, and there are some more folding optimizations.
06:31It's just, it's hopefully coming soon, and they promise seven years of software updates on Pixel 9s, which is pretty elite.
06:40So I've said a lot of nice things about this phone, but going into this, before I even put my SIM card in it
06:44because I'd read other people's coverage and seen stuff about this phone,
06:47is I knew that there would be basically two main downsides to look out for, to keep an eye on.
06:52And those are the Tensor chip being underpowered and the downgraded camera system.
06:58So, OK, it's a Pixel. Let's just start with the cameras.
07:01Basically, my findings are, yes, they are smaller sensors than the main Pixels.
07:07And, yes, they are worse, but they're not horrible.
07:10Like, they're not that much worse that it's a bad camera now.
07:13Basically, you can see the style of the photos is the same.
07:16And it's contrasty, it's high dynamic range, but it's not as sharp, is my main observation.
07:21And this gets exaggerated as the conditions get worse.
07:24So in lower light, the photos get softer and lack details faster as the smaller sensors start to fight for light more.
07:31So it feels on par with like a Pixel flagship, but from a few years ago, like a Pixel 7 Pro.
07:36Now that's about it, and that's always been one of the compromises of these high-end folding phones,
07:42is, you know, they give you all the software features of the other phones.
07:45But for $1,800, you would also hope for the maximum quality,
07:50but they can't fit all of the same camera sensors in a phone that has all this other hardware and a hinge and everything like that.
07:56So if you take a lot of pictures and you're into phones specifically for that, that might be a tough pill to swallow.
08:02But if you're not, if you buy it for other reasons and you're not a huge camera person, then you may be willing to overlook that.
08:08Me, personally, I rely too much on photos and videos for my phone, so that's tough for me.
08:11But the other downside is this Tensor chip, and this is another nuanced one.
08:18See, Google's Tensor chip has never been best in its class, power-wise or efficiency-wise.
08:24I'd argue it's been good enough for the phones it's been in, but if you wanted to do like high-end gaming,
08:30or if you wanted a really extended shelf life for more than a few years, or really amazing battery life,
08:35like Tensor is holding these phones back.
08:38And so people have been trying to figure out, all right, when is Google going to catch up and get on par with like the Qualcomm-level flagship chips?
08:46And the Tensor G4 in the Pixel 9 line of phones, including this phone, is solid, and it's paired with 16 gigs of RAM in this phone,
08:54which is awesome and obviously helps with the AI models, but also running the rest of the phone.
08:59But it's not amazing, and it really makes you wonder, like, okay, it's promised seven years of software updates,
09:04but will the phone last that long? Like, these are real questions.
09:08But word on the street is, next-gen, next Tensor chip, allegedly, maybe,
09:14is going to be the one that finally goes from being designed by Google and manufactured by Samsung
09:20to the first fully custom Google chip with three nanometers and everything.
09:25And that could be the huge jump that this needs.
09:28That could be a big power jump, a big efficiency jump, but that's just a rumor.
09:33So I would say that if you hear that and get excited about that, which, let's be honest,
09:38a lot of the customer base for a $2,000 folding phone actually does care about that stuff, then you should probably wait.
09:45I actually feel like you should wait.
09:47And it's weird to say that this is both one of the best folding phones I've ever used,
09:51and you should probably wait just because you don't want to spend this much and then regret your purchase next year.
09:57But if that doesn't speak to you, honestly, this phone, as it exists today, it feels great.
10:02It looks great. It's smooth.
10:04The battery life for me is consistently like six hours of screen-on time with mostly small screen activities,
10:11but then the sort of 10% of the time that I actually open it and do a lot more big screen use,
10:17then you can eat into the battery a bit more.
10:19But I just feel like I am productive when I have this phone.
10:23Like it really does accomplish the goal of feeling like I have two phones,
10:27the regular size flagship when it's closed,
10:30and then the mini tablet ready to go at any time.
10:33For the multi-column layouts, the multitasking and big productivity apps,
10:37for all that stuff that I really sit down and get stuff done on my phone for, this thing has been awesome.
10:42Oh, and also, speaking of ready to go at any time,
10:45I just wanted to shout out that the new Ridge wallet that I designed is finally here,
10:49and it is a full grain leather soft wallet, and it's sick.
10:53RFID blocking, lightweight, two pockets with easy access.
10:57You can kind of just pop them up from the front or use your finger to glide them up from the back.
11:01Fits up to around eight cards. You could put cash in it if you want to also.
11:05It's everything you need and nothing you don't.
11:08I'll link it below if you want to check it out. I'm really proud of it.
11:10But yeah, look, if you're not a foldable person, then this phone may not convince you.
11:15Like it's the same dimensions, the same functionality, roughly.
11:19Like it's not a game changer by any means.
11:22But if you are a foldable person, this phone has been awesome to use.
11:26Like I've really enjoyed the fact that it really feels like a full-on flagship on the front,
11:31and feels like a mini tablet when I want one.
11:34Two phones in one, that's the ideal foldable phone for me.
11:37And yeah, this is my favorite flagship foldable ever to come out.
11:42So there you have it. Hopefully Android 15 soon.
11:46Thanks for watching. Catch you in the next one. Peace.