all right hear me out I got my note 9 6 years ago so by my rough math if I were
to buy a pixel9 pro fold today and use it for 6 years that's
only3 $300 a year good Lord is that ever
a lot to spend on a phone and if I end up needing to buy a subscription to the
Gemini features that are included for now it could be even more it's really
frustrating because other than the price man is this thing ever temped D is that
is that the general consensus on this thing because I'm tempted but then again
you guys already know that I'm a bit of a sucker when it comes to foldables
Let's pop this open oo they say it's the thinnest
foldable phone which is another way of saying it's not a very thin phone but
actually ooh it's pretty handleable also
this front screen dang from our brightness testing and from the spec
sheet it looks like they are actually using the same screen as the regular
pixel 9 which means that in candy bar
form it's as usable as a regular phone
it really is not that thick
ooh guys I kind of like it like this is
this is great the only question being if
I like this so much why I just get a pixel n okay hold on hold on hold on
we'll get to that but first let's talk what's in the box we've got a USB-C Toc
cable a Sim removal tool and that's it so if
you want to charge at the rated 45 WTS H
not bad actually then you will need to get yourself a 45 wat wall wart on the
top we've got one of our microphones one of our stereo speakers over on the
bottom we've got two more microphones the other stereo speaker a USBC input
and our SIM tray on the right we've got a power button and volume rocker and
finally on the left not a whole lot just a couple of antenna bands they're using
war in victus 2 glass on both the front and the back you know I always forget
how big pixel camera bumps are and then I get my hands on and pixel and I'm like
wow that's a big camera bump uh maybe it's Justified though you get a pretty
decent camera array for a foldable even if it doesn't hold up to the pixel 9 Pro
you get a 48 megap wide camera approximately 10 megapixel Ultra wide
and telephotos and then you've also got two more cameras so one on the front and
an inner camera in here now I have to confess I've done my usual thing with
this launch where I've tried to learn as little about it as possible so I don't
actually know if it's a pinhole camera or a through screen camera and I'm about
to find out if I can figure out how to close this app
hello I've tried swiping from every Edge
okay I can see from a security standpoint how that's kind of useful if
you just double tap to open the camera you cannot interact with the phone in any other way but you'd think it would
just it would just prompt you for the pin if
you sure I think they could improve that
it's a pinhole okay so you just have a hole in your display but I mean
realistically for a lot of the types of content that you would consume you're
not going to need that part of the screen anyway because even 4x3 video is
going to be like this this is practically a square display it's like
having two phones side by side it's what the surface doer wanted to be of course
the question is how well did they execute front screen I've already said
what I need to say it looks great and we were able to verify Google's claims with
respect to Max brightness both in standard dynamic range and in high
dynamic range this is a really nice display of course you don't spend this
kind of money on a phone so that you can just use the front display and I have
some good news here the folding inner display also hits those impressive
advertised brightness numbers meaning that HDR content is really going to pop
off the screen oo now that's pretty but
there's some issues here like any folding display there is a crease you
could see oh yeah there you go if I catch the light with it you can really
see it with that said when I'm watching a video and I'm looking at it head- on
I'm really not noticing it unless I'm looking for it or unless there's a
distracting reflection that's nearby of course the bigger issue for me is that
with 16x9 content is that that much bigger I mean it's bigger but
like man I don't know that's a tough one
to justify I mean YouTube TV has that thing where you can watch more than one
video at once that's not available in Canada so I can't try it
but ultimate brain rot no it's going to
come down to multitasking so you're able to set up apps side by side let's
actually have a quick look at that uh super cool we actually talked in
more detail about some of the AI features of the pixel9 lineup in our
pixel9 and pixel9 pro video so you guys can go check that out in the meantime
let's tuck this away I can't take video while I'm watching video hello there we
go just a little interface bug there don't worry I'm sure Google will figure
that out at some point so that's a use case I can I can take video while I
watch video wow that looks like hot
garbage there's no way the video recording on this thing is that bad no
no it's smudgy it's smudgy hold on hold on okay that's
better oo stabilization is pretty nice yeah man
Google's got work to do still when it comes to video can we Le take a decent
photo though oh so much better do you
see the saturation keep changing as I zoom in and out you can really see it in
the skin tones cuz I was trying to see like did it do a better job of actually
like making you look alive and it does but only sometimes super weird anyway
this looks really good this looks really sharp I would consider this to be
extremely acceptable for sure what about the selfie camera I guess there's more
than one selfie camera definitely going to take some
getting used to if you haven't sideb sided on a folding device
before how's this guy she's soft she's
real soft which makes the Aging marks look even more jarring cuz like my skin
is super smooth except for like giant crows feet M bokeh effect not bad though
not bad Google look at that it even nailed the
earrings that's a really tough one let's go ahead and switch to the other more
different selfie camera good enough
and same thing portrait pretty good maybe even great but I feel like I've
gotten distracted a little bit here what am I supposed to be talking about uh oh
yeah let's talk about the hinge so as someone who daily drove a fold three for
a couple years actually now I think about it one of the things that drives
me most crazy is that within a very
short period of time often with these phones you go from this super straight
super flat display to one that only opens kind of most of the way unless you
kind of you know force it a little bit and unfortunately that's not something
that I can comment on now having just pulled this out of the box for the first
time but what I can say is that the
spring action feels pretty strong and at least
out of the box it's extremely flat it's just a really big investment for
something that you're not going to find yourself using all the time when I was
dailying a fold for a few years what I discovered was that even media content I
didn't always bother to open up the inner display and especially with a
device like this that has such a good front screen experience I can tell you
guys now I would do a lot of light web browsing on the front screen I would
probably do almost all of my typing on the front screen I know a split keyboard
is okay I don't like it I just don't
find it as comfortable I don't find it as fast I like being able to reach over
to the other side for maximum speed so the folding experience only really comes
alive for me when I am reading a lot and
you can tell man this view is so so much
better you know especially when ads can take up so much of the page when you're
trying to read an article it's an absolute GameChanger and of course for
productivity um anytime you're remote desk topping into a machine or anytime
you're accessing a big Google sheet it is an absolute Game Changer or if you're
looking at reference material while you're you know filling something out
man I absolutely love the foldable display and the good news is the
performance of the pixel9 pro fold is actually pretty okay it's not the best
the tensor G4 lags behind other Flagship chips when it comes to Performance we
saw this with the pixel9 and pixel9 pro but more importantly it legs behind
other chips when it comes to thermals which is why the pixel 9 Pro fold has
even worse gaming performance than the candy bar equivalents and that's just
down to cooling when you're building a device this thin there's nowhere for the
Heat to go it shouldn't affect multitasking too much they managed to
pack 16 gigs of RAM in here along with 256 gigs or 512 gigs of storage along
with Bluetooth 5.3 Wi-Fi 7 which is
pretty cool and a surprisingly similar
capacity battery compared to the regular pixel9 and pixel9 pro leaving only one
major question outstanding how are those stereo speakers man the really Square
form factor I'm really not sure how to feel about it on the one hand it saves
me the trouble of going like this to watch you know landscape content but on
the other side it really makes me wonder wait is that worse I think that's
worse I can't tell here I'm going to use this case box to Landmark I'll I'll talk
about this in a second okay here so it goes to about the zero okay now we go to
landscape mode oh my gosh that's really
close I think it is ever so slightly bigger if you rotate it so that's good
because that's where the stereo speaker are they're on the top and the
bottom that's a pretty big sound for such a skinny thing that's what I tell
my wife when we're arguing she yells at me no no I'm kidding I'm kidding can you
imagine she'd kill me good thing she doesn't watch these
videos having one of the speakers here and one of them here so they're offset
that was a choice it's kind of hard to avoid covering one of them a little bit
let's have a look at this case eco-friendly packaging all paper you
love to see it well I don't know if you do but I do oh wow it uses adhesive you
just stick it on there um there so it
goes like that and now maybe less likely Breaky oh
speaking of it's ipx8 so should be
pretty water resistant which hey if you're anything like me and you break
your folding device by uh accidentally
carefully lowering yourself into a pool
could be good overall though is it time for me to go back to a folding device I
mean there's so many little software things that are so much better thought
out than they used to be right like okay auto rotate whether it's folded unfolded
I can have different settings oh man this is this is cool there's a look here
mode so you can put a little character on here oh yeah there we go made you
look oh I have to rotate the phone there
you go oh there's different ones
are you kidding me why would they do that no that's why the picture sucks I
mean we've had AI change slightly where the eyes are looking since how many
years now just have the oh no have them look over here and then just alter that
oh they Ed the crappy camera for made you look yeah I want the worst possible
textures of the child oh what a downer
to end the video on bottom line though am I going to go back to a foldable it's
tough the prices even if they fix the
minor issues over the seven years they are planning to support this thing with
software it's just so much for something
that can so easily be damaged or or lost
and I think that if you're anything like me might actually be nice to have the
Peace of Mind of just having something that doesn't matter that much so you can
just kind of you know Chuck it down and not really think about it bottom line I
want it I want to use it I want to try it
uh but it's the kind of thing that even if I love it if someone walked up to me
and asked oh wow that's so cool would you recommend it it would be hard for me
to say yes though if you are going to spend that kind of money hey at least
treat yourself to something nice from our sponsor all right here we go I've
got one of dbrands tempered glass screen protectors here and they've given me
full rain to abuse the crap out of it
after I install it on the pixel 9 Pro
fold all right nailed it and even if I
didn't realistically it doesn't matter they include a second one now the
question is what is this doing here Slide the
drill bit along the surface of the glass like slashing a screen protector with a
knife W you got to drill with it on
yeah ha let's put more pressure on it I
think should do
dude damn you can pick up this and uh
you know the same thing but for many other devices at short.com wasn't that
fun or painful or humiliating I don't know I we shot that after um anyways
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