Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold: Two-minute review

The Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold is a phenomenal smartphone, and one of the best foldable phones you can buy, but after reviewing the phone for a week, I was left wanting more… or maybe less. Big tablet foldable phones still have a hard time justifying their mountain-peak prices, and while I love Google’s latest Pixel 10 family, as a foldable phone, it just doesn’t offer enough extra appeal to justify paying so much more for the privilege of a Google tablet inside.

Before I talk about what I like or dislike about the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, I need to get the price out of the way, because this is one of the most expensive phones you can buy, and it’s even more expensive than most laptop computers. It gives you an outer display that is nearly the same as the display on the Pixel 10, but the new Pro Fold costs $1,799 / £1,749 / AU $2,699, which is $950 / £750 / AU $1,000 more than the Pixel 10 Pro.

How could a foldable phone possibly justify costing twice as much as the flat phone from which it evolves? You can buy a Pixel 10 Pro and two iPad mini tablets for the same price as a Pixel 10 Pro Fold. If the Fold is going to be worth the high cost, it needs to be special. It needs to be a better choice than buying a phone and tablet separately.

That means it needs to be thin and light – impossibly so. The magic trick of producing a tablet from within your smartphone is dazzling, but it only works if the folded phone is the size of a normal smartphone.

Sadly, Google hasn’t made the Pixel 10 Pro Fold any thinner this year. It’s even taken a step back, while Samsung has blown us away with its super-thin Galaxy Z Fold 7. To be fair, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold was the thinnest phone you could buy when it launched in 2024, but this is the year for thin phones, and the new Pixel Pro Fold has been snacking between meals.

A foldable phone also needs to do things that a flat phone cannot do. The Pixel 10 Pro Fold doesn’t just have a bigger display inside. It also folds in the middle, so you can use the two sides for different functions. You can also use the inner and outer displays simultaneously.

I wish there were a lot more features that took advantage of the unique foldable design, but sadly, Google hasn’t added much excitement to the Fold over the past few years. Now, when you open the camera on the big inner display and take a photo, you’ll see the pic you just took on one half of the screen with the camera app on the other half. Big deal? Hardly.

There is nothing the Pixel 10 Pro Fold lacks – nothing missing that I loved on the Pixel 10 Pro. The flat Pixel Pro phone is one of the best you can buy. But without adding standout features that take advantage – and justify the cost – of the folding display, the Pixel 10 Pro Fold is much harder to recommend than its flat siblings.

If you’re settled on a foldable tablet, there are only two phones worth considering – the Pixel 10 Pro Fold and the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7. I have both of these phones (that’s almost $4,000 worth of folding glass in front of me), and the differences are more interesting than I imagined.

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 is technically superior in many ways – it's faster and has much better cameras than the Pixel 10 Pro Fold – but Google has some distinct advantages that are firsts for a foldable of this size.

Foremost is the IP68 rating, which means the phone won’t be destroyed by dust and sand. I don’t know how Google did it, but the new hinge is more tightly sealed than ever before, and that means you can take the Pixel 10 Pro Fold to more places than Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 7.

Google also includes its new Pixelsnap magnetic charging on the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, which opens a world of accessories, including charging stands, wallet cases, and magnetic tripods. That also means my Pro Fold fit neatly into my world of iPhone MagSafe charging and accessories. The Galaxy can’t do that.

Finally, my disappointment over the lack of big-screen features aside, the Pixel 10 Pro Fold is much more attractive and comfortable to hold than other big foldable phones like the Galaxy Z Fold 7. It keeps most of the Pixel 10 family design – a winning look that Google refined this year – and offers more durability and better battery life instead of shaving off another millimeter.

I’d recommend the Pixel 10 Pro Fold over other foldable tablets like the Z Fold 7 because I like those priorities – durability and battery life – and because Google’s version of Android remains the most polished and friendly on any phone, foldable or flat.

Still, despite its advancements, the Pixel 10 Pro Fold struggles to justify the premium price for its unique form factor, making the more affordable and traditional Pixel 10 Pro a better choice for anyone who doesn’t have money to burn.

Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold review: Price & availability

• Starts at $1,799 / £1,749 / AU $2,699 for 256GB of storage and 16GB RAM
• Available in Jade or Moonstone, but 1TB size only comes in latter

The Pixel 10 Pro Fold is the most expensive phone you can buy… from Google. It keeps the same price as last year's 9 Pro Fold, while Samsung raised the price on the Galaxy Z Fold 7, making the latter the most expensive smartphone you can buy (outside of China, where the tri-fold Huawei Mate XT laughs at our poverty).

This is the third Pixel Fold, but that sticker price is no less shocking. You can get a Pixel 10 Pro and an iPad mini with a cellular connection for the same cost, and still have hundreds left in your bank account. Is it really so convenient to have both devices in one? Yes, but not twice-the-price convenient, and certainly not more than that.

Of course, most people won’t pay full price, and I’m seeing carrier deals that will drop the Pixel 10 Pro Fold to around $25/month in the US – if you sign a three-year contract. Google is promising seven years of Android OS updates and security patches, but I’m sure this phone will feel aged in three years, considering the super-thin new phones just hitting the market.

• Value score: 2 / 5

Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold review: Specifications

With a Google Tensor G5 chipset inside, the Pixel 10 Pro Fold doesn't veer far from the rest of the Pixel 10 family, and it isn't a major upgrade from last year, at least not on a spec sheet. Durability and resilience count for more than megapixels, in my opinion.

The numbers to compare will be the camera specs. The Pixel 10 Pro Fold features a 48MP main camera and a 5x optical zoom. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 steals the 200MP sensor from the Galaxy S25 Ultra. I'm the first to say that megapixels don't matter as much as sensor size, and the Galaxy also uses much larger sensors than Google on all three cameras: wide, ultra wide, and zoom.

Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold review: Design

• Kind of like the Pixel 10, with a camera block instead of a bar
• This design was impressively thin last year

We can't expect phone makers to come up with new designs every year, so I don't fault Google for making the Pixel 10 Pro Fold a more refined, more durable version of the Pixel 9 Pro Fold. Unfortunately, in the interim, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 arrived and redefined what I expect from a foldable tablet.

A foldable tablet is the thinnest phone you can buy, at least when it's unfolded, but which foldable tablet is actually the thinnest? Last year it was the 5.2mm Pixel 9 Pro Fold. This year, the Fold gains a hair of thickness, while the Galaxy slips under the gap with a 4.2mm frame that, while closed, is nearly as thin as an iPhone 17 Pro.

Tick-tock, maybe next year Google will win. Maybe it will be Samsung. Maybe Apple will have a foldable phone that's thinner than the iPhone Air. Don't let these complaints distract you. The Pixel 10 Pro Fold is already thinner than the iPhone Air when it's open.

Even though it's thicker and heavier than the Galaxy Z Fold 7 – by a noticeable degree – the Pixel 10 Pro Fold is the nicer looking phone. It has gently curved corners, pleasantly rounded edges, and a beautifully machined camera block, atop the gorgeous Jade green or alluring Moonstone blue-grey. The Galaxy feels sharp and edgy by comparison.

• Design score: 5 / 5

Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold review: Display

• Excellent displays inside and out, sized perfectly
• I wouldn't mind less bezel on the big display, not gonna lie

Both of the displays on the Pixel 10 Pro Fold are excellent; they're bright and colorful even on a sunny day. I loved using the inner display to take photos with the camera – I'm definitely the dork who wished my old iPad had much better cameras. The camera also has more dual-screen features than any other app, so it was the most fun app to use during my review.

The outer display is pretty much the same screen as the Pixel 10 Pro. It's the exact same size and resolution, unlike the Galaxy Z Fold 7, which still uses an unusually narrow cover display. I was always happy to use the front screen on the Pixel – it felt natural. On the Galaxy, the front display is just an appetizer for the big main course inside.

The inner screen on the Pixel 10 Pro Fold is enormous. I love using it for reading, and web pages get blown up so much bigger than on a normal flat phone that it's an entirely better experience. Then I open the crossword, or doomscroll my socials writ large, and this foldable tablet wins me over.

• Display score: 5 / 5

Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold review: Software

• Excellent Pixel software is the most refined version of Android you'll see
• Not enough Fold-specific features, and too many bugs

I love Google’s Pixel software, from the way it handles notifications to the way it answers my phone calls for me. The latest Android 16 version of the Pixel interface is gorgeous yet refined, with bubbly clocks and other widgets that change color to match your wallpaper, then get subtly darker as the sun goes down. I'm just scratching the surface; I really like what Google is doing with Pixel.

What Google is doing with the Pixel 10 Pro Fold specifically? Not so much. Like, there isn't much that takes advantage of the big screen inside. Not even one big widget that would span the whole display. Zilch.

Take my Calendar (please!). I can place a widget showing an entire month, but it will only fill half the big screen. I can't stretch it further. This is convenient when I close my phone and I only have half the area to work with, but I want a full-screen widget or two. I'd also like to place a widget across the crease, but widgets lie on one side or the other, never on the gap.

I want a lot more features to make the Pixel 10 Pro Fold feel truly special – more than the sum of its parts. Otherwise, I'd recommend buying a Pixel 10 Pro and an iPad mini – you'd save money and you won't feel let down by either.

Maybe I should count my blessings. The Pixel 10 Pro Fold is very buggy right now. I'm hoping future software updates fix these glitches, but I had trouble during my review time.

The app taskbar at the bottom of the big display would occasionally persist and block my view of important app features. Google-owned Waze would sometimes stop showing me buttons or information, but only when I used it on the Pixel 10 Pro Fold. A few times, my timer would go off, but when I asked Google to stop it, it would say – on top of the alarm sound – that I had no timers ringing or music playing.

These are minor inconveniences that are usually resolved in an update or two, but the first Pixel Fold had similar software glitch problems. You hate to see it.

• Software score: 3 / 5

Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold review: Cameras

• Not the best camera phone, especially for a Pixel
• Camera Coach is fascinating and worth exploring

In the past, I might have been more forgiving of sub-par image quality from a foldable phone, but Samsung had to destroy expectations by slapping its full-grown 200MP sensor on the Galaxy Z Fold 7. So, now I want my $1,800 phones to have a good camera, is that so wrong? The Pixel 10 Pro Fold camera is fine, but it isn’t very good.

Google is using the same sensors as last year, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Apple famously uses the same Sony sensors for years on its iPhone models, and with experience, its Camera developers continually refine the images you get from those cameras. That’s not the case with the Pixel 10 Pro Fold.

What I like about the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, like the Pixel 9a, is that Google seems to be carefully tuning its cameras so they produce images that all look alike. A photo taken with the Pixel 10 Pro XL will have the same color balance and lighting as a photo taken with the Pro Fold. Zoom in close and you’ll see the problems.

Google is applying a heavy dose of AI enhancements to its photos. So much so that I wonder if every photo from the camera shouldn’t come with Made with AI Content Credentials.

When you zoom in on a photo, especially photos taken at night, it looks smoothed out and painted over. On the phone screen, images look clearer when taken with the Pixel Fold versus other foldable phones, like the Galaxy Z Fold 7. When you zoom in, however, that clarity starts to look artificial.

If you don’t need the absolute best photos from your smartphone camera, the Pixel 10 Pro Fold has a fascinating new Pixel feature that could make you a better all-around photographer. When you have your shot lined up, instead of pressing the shutter, press the Camera Coach button, and Google will use its AI to analyze your photo and offer advice.

I don’t mean simple advice, either, like ‘use Portrait mode.’ Rather, Camera Coach is an AI instructor. First, it gives you three or four suggested themes for your photos. Then, it takes you step by step through the shot. It highlights the right camera mode to select, and it tells you where to move for the best angle.

In the end, it really did help me take better photos if I was willing to take the time to walk through the steps. Camera Coach is one of Google’s newest and most advanced AI features. Sometimes it simply would not load, complaining of bad network problems, even though I had a few bars. Other times, I just got a generic error.

When it did work, Camera Coach was impressively astute, and it produced interesting results, so I’m willing to be patient and hope this feature improves over the next few updates.

• Camera score: 5 / 5

Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold review: Camera samples

Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold review: Performance

• Better benchmarks than the rest of the Pixel 10 family, for what it’s worth
• Some performance lags on the camera and AI features

Pixel phones aren’t known for top performance, and the Pixel 10 Pro Fold is unimpressive if you rely on benchmark scores alone. In my real-world testing, I found the Pro Fold to be smooth and responsive, especially when switching apps back and forth between the outer and inner displays. That doesn’t mean there weren’t hiccups.

Google’s biggest performance offense is letting the camera lag. If you have too many features enabled, the camera shutter button will stop working between one photo and the next while the phone thinks about things. It happened fewer times on the Pixel 10 Pro Fold than on the Pixel 10 Pro, but that’s probably because the Fold doesn’t have as many megapixels to count.

I also saw things slow down considerably when I tried to use the new AI features. Perhaps someday these AI tools will be a natural extension of the Android OS, but for now, every time I used one of the more advanced AI features, it felt like an event. An event with a line out front and a bouncer who has to check my name off a list.

I can’t blame the network because I had plenty of bars on AT&T, and the phone performed admirably on my new Wi-Fi 7 network. As more of these AI tasks are handled on the phone itself, hopefully we’ll see those response times improve.

• Performance score: 3 / 5

Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold review: Battery

• Battery life wasn’t great, but it beats the competition
• I love having wireless magnetic charging on a foldable

I’ll admit that battery life isn’t a huge priority for me these days as my home, car, and office are littered with wireless chargers, so I’m continually topping up my battery. The Pixel 10 Pro Fold makes doing so especially easy with Google’s Pixelsnap magnetic charging. It’s the first foldable that will stick to my iPhone’s MagSafe charging gear without a special case.

Magnets aside, battery life wasn’t terrible, but a smaller battery is the second sacrifice every foldable tablet makes, after the cameras. Well, a smaller battery than you’d want on an 8-inch tablet. The Pixel 10 Pro Fold actually packs a capacity of around 5,015mAh, which is a big battery, but having two displays will drain that juice quickly.

In our Future Labs battery tests, the Pixel 10 Pro Fold lasted 12 hours and 16 minutes. The Galaxy Z Fold 7 lasted only 10 hours and 44 minutes, but the Pixel Fold comes with an ounce more weight and an extra millimeter around the waistline.

An Apple iPhone 17 Pro Max is thinner than a closed Pixel Fold, weighs more than an ounce less, and managed 5.5 extra hours of battery time – 17 hours and 54 minutes, in fact – in our rundown tests. That’s how long an expensive smartphone should last.

• Battery score: 3 / 5

Should you buy the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold?

Buy it if...

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How I tested the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold

I used the Pixel 10 Pro Fold for a week as my primary work phone, transferring my AT&T eSIM from my Pixel 10 Pro XL to this phone. I used the phone almost equally open and closed, for similar tasks including messaging, reading, playing word games, taking photos, and much more.

I connected the Pixel 10 Pro Fold to my car through Android Auto using USB-C and wirelessly. I connected Bluetooth headsets and my Xbox wireless controller. I also attached the Pro Fold to a large number of MagSafe accessories, including charging docks from Anker, magnetic wallets, and more.

I tested Google AI features using a Google One AI Premium account for Gemini Live Pro 2.5 and other Pro features.

I've been testing phones for more than 20 years, since the days of BlackBerry and Palm OS smartphones and Samsung flip phones. I've tested hundreds of devices myself, and our Future Labs experts have tested hundreds more.

Future Labs tests phones using a mix of third-party benchmark software and proprietary, real-world tests. We use Geekbench, CrossMark, JetStream, WebXPRT and Mobile XPRT, and 3DMark for performance testing. We test a phone's performance on video editing tasks using Adobe Premiere Rush. We also measure display color output and brightness.

For battery testing, we have proprietary rundown tests that are the same for every phone, which we use to determine how long it takes for the battery to run down.

First reviewed October, 2025

First reviewed October, 2025