Pixel 11 Pro Fold
blog.google
blog.google
It’s funny how trends like this are a circle sometimes.
Google can't seem to decide on a direction and stick with it. Years of new features that inevitably ended up abandoned 2 versions later resulted in a constantly changing and unpredictable user experience.
It was fun while I had free time in college and enjoyed flashing ROMs, but as I got busier with life this lack of refinement pushed me away.
The RGB leds were one of my favorite features of early Android phones. I even backed a terrible Kickstarter campaign that synced those colors to an RGB wristband (this was before smartwatches were a thing).
I'm guessing cultures that reward shipping new products (e.g. 67 different messaging apps) don't turn out great for consumers.
Right man. I had forgotten that my nexus 7 had this kind of LED and I really liked it and missed it later.
That sensor would be much better if it was integrated with the camera and LIDAR, so that you could "paint" a scene with thermal data by moving the phone around.
also use it to measure the temperature of the bath, things like that.
definitely could do without, but its a fun feature.
Google only controls Pixel, but why did Samsung, and Lenovo, and Xiaomi and Motorola remove the LEDs?
Case in point, the latest Samsung foldable that just happens to be the exact same unseen before form factor as the upcoming Apple foldable, released the month before, even though Android has been “innovating in the foldable space” for like 10 years now.
Because until now no one working on those foldable phones had the guts to say “wait let’s not just the take the existing phone screen aspect ratio and make it foldable, this new screen technology should make us rethink the overall form factor” - it took Apple to make that step.
I don't want my phone to be innovative anymore, I want it to be good and reliable. And Apple has remained so consistent on that, their 2 notable stumbles over the past 2 decades (antennagate, bendgate) are still remembered as notable while Android devices from all manufacturers regularly have major issues like that and no one thinks twice because it's business as usual.
My old Blackberry Bold had this feature and I loved it! I had it customized so it would pulse a different color depending on who had messaged me.
I do still miss mine, though, slightly.
Maybe I take this a little too close to heart.
This is also my problem with people saying you can vote with your wallet about laptops. No company will ever be able to figure out which features someone bought the laptop for, or which choices caused others to pass it up. Therefore it is impossible for your (or anybody's) wallet to show companies what you want.
This also means it is impossible to vote about software. Or really anything that has multiple features. You can't vote about cars this way. You can't vote about houses this way. You can't vote about fast food this way. You can't vote about online shopping this way. You either buy all of something or you buy none of it. You can't buy into the parts you want while leaving out the parts you don't want. You incentivize the full package, or you don't, and lost sales are invisible and inscrutable.
I can't trust Samsung again after that. So much marketing claiming how good their cameras are, but the Pixel and iPhone both blew it out of the water.
You can even keep the connector on the end of the audio cable permanently.
https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/242221770?pli=1
After Google discontinued their own adapter, Apple's might be the next best alternative. But not with that issue unfixed.
Why shame a customer because they have a preference ?
The reality of consumer audio in 1950s was closer to a physics lab than a residential convenience. The expectation for the end user was an understanding of impedence and ohms in order to pair up an amplifier with passive speakers, terminating bare copper wire with Spade/Pin Connectors or Binding Posts to connect same, dealing with phase cancellation and ground loop issues, maintaining and operating valve based equipment... and that's before we even get into the vagaries of the cartridge, stylus and associated maintenance for a record player and its media.
For reference, Vinyl only replaced Shellac records in the early 1950s - with the very first 12-inch 33⅓ RPM vinyl record released in 1948, and the first 45 in 1949. Similarly, it wasn't until the early 1960s that transistor based playback units superseded valve based.
Thus I wholly refute the claim that the OP would manage in a 'convenient' way when compared with a contemporary audio enthusiast, and that even with experience they would struggle to match the dynamic range and fidelity of a mono AM Radio with a significantly larger degree of hassle.
...or they could just buy a $5 adapter.
The problem with this kind of feature is that it falls apart if you're the type who leaves things unread or gets them all the time. Then, it is little more than a beacon to say "phone still exists"...
These updates are so boring now!
If you already know the new phone isn’t going to do anything better for you, why is it time?
I have a Pixel 7 I'm still happy with other than 2 issues. Battery wear is starting to be noticeable. There's a loose cable or something that causes the screen to go to static sometimes. If I press firm on the bottom it's good again. With the cost of getting these issues repaired, I just started looking into getting a new phone instead.
https://www.ifixit.com/products/google-pixel-7-battery-genui...
Given the price increase in storage chips, are 2026 phones even coming with more storage than 3 years ago?
I'm on an iPhone 13 since launch (almost 5 years ago) and still see no reason to upgrade. There just hasn't been anything 'exciting' in phones in many years.
EDIT: should add, I've only used 50% of the 256GB storage and battery life is still fine (comfortably gets through an entire day+night). But I'm not a heavy phone user so that's perhaps atypical for a 5yo phone.
I just checked my phone, the phrasing is "Animation scale .5x" (Among other numbers), meaning it's scaled to take n times the time.
The processing pipeline also started imposing its own opinions on your photos, adjusting the brightness of dark areas and bright areas to even things out, increasing saturation, etc. This has generally trended towards more processing over the years.
In a picture from a standalone camera (or an old phone back when the processing pipeline was basically just debayering, white balance, chroma denoise, and a gamma curve), you'll actually have contrast between shadows and highlights, which, when done well, looks great. When done poorly, it looks terrible (blown highlights, noisy shadows), which is the whole point of the processing pipeline -- on average (random user, random scene), you're better off reducing the overall contrast in the image with local adjustments, even if that turns some excellent photos into boring ones, because it'll turn a lot more bad photos into acceptable ones.
Part of that is due to the larger sensor which no phone is going to be able to compete with, but it’s also because it allows contrast to exist and photos don’t turn into smudge/blotch soup when zoomed in a little. Thanks to that, its photos capture mood better and feel closer to what I see (or remember seeing).
I’ve toyed with alternative camera apps (of which many exist on iOS) and those are a bit better, but still fall short of an decade+ old standalone camera.
Plus, many people who take photos on their phone will upload it to a service like instagram/discord which compresses the photos so you lose some of the quality anyway.
Give it a blast with an air compressor.
The way to solve this is for device vendors and their OS developers to simply stop updating the OS in a way that takes advantage of new models' improved hardware because that same code slows down older devices.
The iPhone 12 was my first iPhone and I've been really impressed by how long it lasted, and I'm only hoping I won't need to upgrade before the iPhone 22 release.
If the upcoming folding iPhone supports the Apple Pencil Pro, that'll be the first tempting phone feature in years. It would be fun to have a digital sketchbook in my pocket. Of course the price tag will probably cancel the temptation.
Part of me is sad to see so little innovation in new phones, but another part of me enjoys keeping my money.
My last Pixel was rendered useless by a software update though.
Also, more than 5 yrs after Galaxy Fold (I've never seen or held one IRL):
is it really that valuable to have "marginless" foldable displays?
Often times, users will divide the screen into halves, at least, when using large resolution.
And users are also not too interested in curved or mangled output surfaces, the ideal is an evenly lighted 2D surface.
If you were working on military technology, that's irrelevant of course. Then, the consumer tech is just a small venture capital driver.
No "foldable" real currently comes close to two flexable screens placed close to each other.
Consumers have repeatedly rejected this hype.
The only interesting value is in completely flexible material with fixed-distance OLEDs on it, and that's a very complicated engineering problem approaching a digital "invibility coat".
In-between these extreme uses, I struggle to see the benefit of foldable screns.
A cheap and robust e-ink screen would be a welcome exception, but I have no idea how much the science overlaps with marginless, foldable LED panels.
That said, I hardly think that foldable is the peak. I'd prefer a rollable phone that I can expand the screen on, with maybe an edge display.
And the price is the real kicker. For the vast majority of the Android population, a phone at a price point about $1000 is just a non-starter.
Back in the day there were no updates anyway, until Symbian or Windows CE/Pocket PC became common, and even them had at most a single firmware update during their lifetime, which had to be installed via the developer tools SDK.
Let's hope we can have phones that last 10+ years.
But the P11 Pro is now 6.3" and the P8 Pro was 6.7" meaning you have to go up to the P11 Pro XL (for another $200) for the same size. Well technically its 6.8" vs 6.7 but I feel this is just a form of shrinkflation and enshittification. Literally no other improvements on the XL as far as I can tell from the specs, not even a larger battery.
While I certainly don't need a bigger phone, I would be pissed if I just hit the buy button and what came out of the box was half an inch smaller.
I find my 6.1" Pixel 6a way too big already. I really loved the size of the Samsung Galaxy S6 that preceded it, I think it was the sweet spot at 5.1", large enough to read text, navigate on a map or watch a video while still being pocketable and light.
I'm also looking forward to nomenclature settling so the horizontal-folding passport-style folding phones (like this, which I find interesting) can be more clearly distinguished from the vertical-folding flip-phone style folding phones (which don't remotely interest me).
Also isn't that terminology settled? Fold for passport, flip for flip phone. I'm sure Apple will invent a new word but everyone doing foldables seems to use those consistently.
And in many contexts yes, but I still see plenty of articles listing best/cheapest foldable phones that conflate the two. I can't even fully fault them either, because the "flip" ones do "fold".
If I can ruin the screen with my fingernail, I'm completely uninterested.
I don't see that as a product video that's telling me why I need one. It's just telling me that they've iterated on the last model. I mean, congrats, well done, but why should I buy it?
You also only get 6 months of a free Google AI Pro subscription (a $120 value) as opposed to the 12 months with the 10 (a $240 value). It's hard to see the 11 as an upgrade.
I was going to buy an 11 Pro, but now I might just grab a 10 Pro instead. What is the 11 buying me, some extra attention grabbing lights and a small redesign? in exchange for less memory? Oy vey.
I moved from high end to a "mid-range" Samsung phone that's way better than it needs to be given how boring phones have become. The only upgrade I wish on it was more open source software.
Also, remember the exploding Samsung phone. Experiments with batteries are risky for those companies.
My phone from 2018 it's still working perfectly.
Other than that, the Pixel Fold has been a great phone. It's like having a tiny tablet with me everywhere I go.
Maybe I'm just losing interest in phone tech - but to me, it was only down sides and no upside.
The phone was bulky. Fragile.
The larger screen you get when you open the phone - was absolutely useless for most of the content I watch. The screen is 4:3 and most of the content I watched was 16:9. The black bars at the top and bottom of the video meant that the actual video content is exactly the same size as my non foldable Motorola Edge 40.
Giving it up was tough, as I consume a lot of books and mangas. I’m just waiting for Apple to release their foldable before I ditch this iPhone.
The flip-phone style ones: Excellent! The folding aspect really aids in switching between a small device with minimal controls to a normal phone. I would use these over a standard phone. No question.
The portrait-to-not style ones like pixel fold? Is nice on occasion but the software is a complete let down. For reasons I do not care: The orientation is either wrong or the software cannot handle the form factor. The end result is a poor user experience.
Considering "usable space" as a percentage of the screen that contains useful content these are worse when unfolded than folded. Yes the screen is larger but most of the screen ends up useless. The actual useful chunk suddenly becomes horribly small in proportion.
The default layout showing composing an email in gmail is a prime example. The actual content area of the email: Same size as when folded. The rest of the screen is unused or taken up by the keyboard. Yes the keyboard is now larger but it's somehow weirdly proportioned.
There are adjustments that can be made to improve that. Some have to be applied every time the phone is unfolded or the apps restart (or neither or both who knows?)
Oh and my pixel fold screen has failed 2x in 3 years - I do not treat it gently.
I go on a longer rant about this here https://youtu.be/WHxOosmJt_U
Just to +1 on this; my second folding phone was the pixel 9 fold. That phone was released several _years_ after android OS added support for multiple screens, in preperation for samsung shipping the first ever folding phone before covid!
Despite LITERAL YEARS ELAPSING, a decent number of popular apps _still_ - in aug of 2026 - do not handle the aspect ratio changing well let alone transform to actually take advantage of the additional real estate.
It remains to be seen if apple's rumored folding iPhone will be the catalyst that gets most devs to actually care about this.
The main reason that I do put up with the fragility is because I can do side-by-side multi-tasking and give my aging eyes a break when I need to read something.
They're slowly adding some of that functionality in, but obviously relies on third party adoption for anything more than UI automated control:
https://www.androidauthority.com/gemini-automation-control-o...
https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/products/gemini-app/an...
That is big news if it's actually good enough to use. People have been trying to build sign-to-text and sign-to-speech systems for decades and they've never been usable.
very few have gone with the ultra portable and pragmatic fold like razr-ultra.
hopefully apple comes out with a razr-ultra like fold.
I tried the Clicks keyboard case, and it was cute, but wasn't actually better to type on, especially while the phone was open. It was fun pretending to have a Blackberry / Razr hybrid (2007 called!).
I think it would be neat to have a small square phone like the size and shape of the folded Razr but that doesn't actually unfold, and has the camera on the back. It would be a pretty handy device and encourage me to read more paper books or on a Kindle or something instead of scrolling.
The most popular flip phone is Samsung Galaxy Flip but other brands like Motorola and Oppo make these kinds of phones.
I didn't end up getting one but a friend with the galaxy flip 7 tells me he likes using the square screen when the phone is folded to help reduce his screen time.
Like, of course there are subcultures that love this stuff, and I'm not criticizing that. And these folding phones are neat tech. But at some point phones for the 99% got "good enough", the model to model upgrades aren't even worth it.
And my monthly cost of the cell plan with them is only $30 plus taxes and fees which works out to about 36/mo, so it seems like a great deal in the end.
Basically I pay 36/mo, and every 3 years I trade in my phone for the latest pro model and it only costs me sales tax and some $30 "activation fee".
Exercising less dependence on a single company for everything seems like a good thing, but I'm struggling to really ground that principle against the convenience of just buying "what works." Does it really matter at the end of the day?