The smartphone industry has come a long way in just over a decade. Almost 12 years ago, I was using the Galaxy S4 Mini and was quite impressed by the things a phone could do back then. Fast forward to 2026, and smartphones have evolved into devices that would have seemed almost impossible at the time, specifically foldables. These devices are now commercially available, and what was once an experimental form factor has become far more refined in terms of design, optimisation, innovation, repairability and durability.
That evolution, however, has also left the foldable market with a relatively small group of players. Google, Samsung, Motorola and Vivo are among the brands that have stayed around and continued to push the category forward with regular updates. Google, in particular, is now on its fourth generation of foldable smartphones globally, and it has chosen to stick with the conventional book-style foldable design rather than jumping to the passport-style form factor adopted by some of its rivals.
The Pixel 11 Pro Fold was introduced last month and rivals Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra. On paper, the device brings a lighter design, a new Tensor chip and refinements to its display and camera setup. But beyond the key specifications, the bigger question is whether these changes are enough to make Google’s foldable a compelling alternative. Of course, there is also the price factor. Like several other flagship and foldable smartphones in 2026, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold comes with a price hike and now costs Rs 1,86,999.
I have been using the Pixel 11 Pro Fold for a few weeks to see how it holds up in everyday use, and whether Google’s fourth-generation foldable is actually as refined as it looks on paper. Here is my take.
Google hasn’t completely redesigned the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, but it has worked on the areas that mattered most. The biggest change is the weight. At 239 grams, it is nearly 10 per cent lighter than the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, which weighed 258 grams. That difference is immediately noticeable when you carry or use the phone for longer periods. Don’t get me wrong, it is still a sizable foldable, but it no longer feels quite as heavy as its predecessor.
Compared to the last-gen model, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold is also slimmer, measuring 10.1mm when folded and 5mm when unfolded. However, Samsung has taken things much further with the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra, which measures just 8.9mm when folded and weighs only 215 grams. So, while the Pixel has become slimmer, it is still not the phone to pick if your priority is having the thinnest and lightest foldable possible.
What I like about Google’s approach is the shape. The Pixel 11 Pro Fold has a wider 20:9 outer display, making it feel much closer to a regular smartphone when folded. You don’t get the narrow, slightly awkward cover-screen experience associated with older foldables. The rounded corners and familiar proportions also make it comfortable to hold and use without unfolding it every time.
Google has also switched to a satin-textured glass-fibre composite rear panel, paired with an aluminium frame. It feels premium while being designed to withstand everyday knocks better than conventional glass. The camera module is smaller than before as well, which makes the rear look cleaner and reduces the amount of wobble when the phone is placed flat on a table.
The hinge has received an upgrade too. The new gearless mechanism allows the phone to close completely flat with a firm snap, while the wider bend radius helps reduce the visibility of the inner display crease. The crease is still there and becomes noticeable under direct light, but the overall hinge feels more refined than what we got on the previous generation.
Durability remains a strong point. The Pixel 11 Pro Fold gets ceramic cover glass on the outer display and retains an IP68 rating for dust and water resistance. That’s particularly reassuring on a foldable, where durability is arguably more important because of the moving hinge and flexible inner display.
There are also a couple of interesting additions, including built-in magnetic support for Qi2 accessories and Google’s new HiLight LEDs integrated into the rear camera module. The latter can glow to indicate certain notifications or Gemini activity. It is a neat touch, although I would not mind if it was not there.
Google has done a lot right with the Pixel 11 Pro Fold’s displays. You get an 8-inch LTPO OLED panel on the inside and a 6.5-inch OLED cover display, with both supporting a 120Hz refresh rate.
The outer display is one of the things I particularly like about the Pixel. Its 19.5:9 aspect ratio makes it feel much closer to using a regular smartphone rather than a cramped foldable cover screen. The 6.5-inch panel is large enough for everyday tasks, while unfolding the phone gives you a much larger 8-inch canvas that works well for watching videos, browsing the web, and multitasking.
Google claims up to 3,600 nits of peak brightness on both displays, and our testing with a lux meter recorded around 3,750 nits on the outer screen and 3,220 nits on the inner display. In practical terms, both screens are easy to see outdoors, even under fairly harsh sunlight. The inner display also supports up to 2,000 nits in high-brightness mode, which makes HDR content look punchy and vibrant.
The panels are sharp, colours are generally pleasing, and the 120Hz refresh rate makes animations and scrolling feel fluid. Our Calman testing also showed strong colour accuracy. The saturation sweep recorded an average Delta E 2000 of 1.56, while the ColorChecker averaged 1.64, which is a very good result. Grayscale accuracy was also respectable with an average Delta E 2000 of 2.3.
However, there is a caveat when you move beyond standard content. The display covered 97.74 per cent of the sRGB colour space, which is excellent for everyday content, but DCI-P3 coverage stood at 72.5 per cent. That’s considerably lower than what I would expect from a flagship foldable, particularly when you’re watching wider-gamut HDR content. The panel can still produce a vibrant image, but it is not reproducing the full range of colours available in such content.
The bigger issue for me, however, is the crease. Google has worked on the hinge and internal display structure to reduce its depth, but the crease is still very obvious. You can clearly see it while watching videos, playing games, or simply scrolling through social media, depending on how the light hits the screen. You can also feel the indentation when running your finger across it. Well, it is not a deal-breaker; after all, this is still a foldable. But if you are paying flagship money, I would recommend the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra.
Google has taken a rather unusual approach with the Pixel 11 Pro Fold’s performance. Instead of chasing the highest core count or benchmark scores, the company has equipped it with the seven-core Tensor G6, built on a 3nm process. The CPU features one ARM C1-Ultra core clocked at up to 4.1GHz, four C1-Pro cores at 3.4GHz, and two more C1-Pro cores at 2.65GHz. On a flagship phone, a seven-core CPU configuration certainly looks odd on paper, but it also tells you what Google is prioritising.
The Tensor G6 isn’t really designed to win the raw performance race. Like previous Tensor chips, it is built around Google’s focus on AI, machine learning and software optimisation. The new chip puts considerably more emphasis on its TPU, which is said to deliver a 50 per cent improvement over the previous generation. That extra processing power is intended to handle things such as on-device Gemini features, live translation, voice processing and AI-powered photo editing more efficiently.
In everyday use, the approach works well. The Pixel 11 Pro Fold feels fast and responsive while switching between apps, browsing, streaming content, and using the large inner display for multitasking. The 16GB of RAM also gives it plenty of breathing room, particularly when you’re juggling multiple apps or using split-screen and floating windows. I didn’t encounter the kind of frequent stutters or app reloads that have occasionally affected older Pixel devices.
But there is an important distinction between optimised performance and class-leading performance. The Pixel 11 Pro Fold falls into the former category. If you’re looking purely at CPU and GPU horsepower, the Tensor G6 doesn’t compete with the fastest Snapdragon-powered flagships. That difference becomes more obvious in demanding games and graphics-heavy workloads. Casual and moderately demanding games run smoothly, but push newer 3D titles to their highest settings and you can encounter occasional frame drops or thermal adjustments. It is certainly capable of gaming, but this isn’t a phone built primarily for people who want the highest possible frame rates.
The same applies to benchmarks. Google clearly isn’t trying to make the Pixel 11 Pro Fold a benchmark champion, and the seven-core architecture is further evidence of that strategy. Instead, the company has chosen to put more silicon towards workloads that directly feed into the Pixel experience.
This makes the Pixel 11 Pro Fold’s performance story quite straightforward: it is fast, but not the fastest. For everyday use, multitasking, and Google’s increasingly AI-heavy software experience, the Tensor G6 has more than enough power. But if you’re buying a flagship foldable specifically for raw CPU/GPU performance or serious gaming, there are competing devices that offer considerably more headroom.
And honestly, that isn’t necessarily a problem. The Pixel 11 Pro Fold rarely feels underpowered during normal use. It simply doesn’t have the same obsession with brute-force performance as some of its rivals. Google’s bet here is that a smoother, AI-focused experience matters more than winning the benchmark charts—and for a Pixel, that makes perfect sense.
The Pixel 11 Pro Fold packs a 4,806mAh dual-cell battery, which is by the way, smaller than the Pixel 10 Pro Fold. However, Google has managed to keep the battery life pretty impressive, and the 3nm Tensor G6 also helps keep power consumption in check.
In our PCMark Battery test, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold lasted 16 hours and 21 minutes, which is a solid result for a foldable. In real-world use, moderate usage involving browsing, social media, calls, messaging, and some streaming should comfortably get you through a full day. Heavy use of the large inner display will naturally bring that number down.
Charging is where I expected a little more. The phone supports 30W, and in our testing, it took around 101 minutes to get fully charged. That’s not particularly fast by today’s flagship standards, especially when the competitors are offering better packages.
The Pixel 11 Pro Fold also supports 25W magnetic wireless charging with Qi2.2, giving it faster and more convenient wireless charging than previous Pixel foldables. The magnetic alignment is particularly useful if you regularly charge your phone on a desk or bedside stand.
The Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold gets a 48MP primary camera with OIS, a 10.8MP periscope telephoto with 5x optical zoom and OIS, and a 10.5MP ultrawide camera with a 127-degree field of view and Macro Focus. There are also 10MP cameras on both the outer and inner displays. The main sensor is also claimed to have improved low-light sensitivity over the previous generation.
In daylight, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold produces the kind of images I have come to expect from Google’s camera processing: natural colours, controlled highlights and plenty of contrast without making everything look artificially vivid. If you ask for some examples, I took a shot of a curved building against an overcast sky, and the camera retained detail in the pale sky while keeping the white arches and red elements properly exposed.
This is the same for close-up shots as well. A shot of a Maybach’s bonnet retains the smooth metallic finish without making the highlights look harsh, while the chrome grille remains well defined. A close-up of a BMW logo also captures fine surface details such as tiny scratches and dust without any excessive sharpness. Even the brushed metal on a Ducati emblem looks natural, with the background falling away into a pleasing blur.
Even though it looks natural, the colours are another strength. Red flowers are notoriously difficult for smartphone cameras because aggressive processing can easily clip the colour, but the Pixel manages to retain individual petal details and subtle variations in the red. Similarly, bright yellow paint on an Audi remains controlled rather than turning unnaturally neon, while darker areas around the wheel and tyre still retain usable detail.
In terms of portraits, you get decent results. Google’s processing does a good job separating people from busy backgrounds, even around tricky areas such as hair, glasses and ears. Skin tones remain natural, and I didn’t notice the obvious artificial outlines that some phones can produce when trying to separate the subject from the background.
The low-light photography is where the Pixel’s computational photography becomes specifically useful. While driving on a random road, I took a shot of an ice cream cart with bright overhead lights and neon signage. Surprisingly, the camera kept all the highlights under control without completely crushing the darker areas of the frame. A flower stall under warm lighting also retains the individual colours of the flowers but loses detail in the process.
One interesting advantage over Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is that Pixel has a native 5x optical telephoto, while Samsung uses a 3x telephoto. That makes the Pixel more useful when shooting distant subjects without immediately relying on digital zoom. Samsung, however, has considerably more aggressive camera hardware, including a 200MP main sensor and a 50MP ultrawide, so it has an advantage when it comes to raw resolution and the amount of detail available for heavy crops.
After using the Google Pixel 11 Pro Fold for a few weeks, I think Google has finally reached a point where its foldable feels less experimental and more like a phone you can comfortably use every day. The fourth-generation model is lighter and slimmer than its predecessor, the wider outer display feels much closer to a regular smartphone, and the improved hinge, IP68 rating, and built-in magnetic support add to the overall practicality.
The display is one of the stronger parts of the phone. Both panels are bright, smooth and responsive, and our testing showed good colour accuracy for everyday content. The 8-inch inner screen is particularly useful for watching videos, browsing and multitasking. However, the crease remains a noticeable weakness. You can clearly see it while watching content or playing games, and Samsung has done a better job of making the crease less distracting on the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra.
Performance follows Google’s familiar Pixel philosophy. The Tensor G6 makes the phone feel fast and responsive during everyday use, multitasking, and AI-powered features, but it isn’t chasing the same level of raw CPU and GPU performance as the latest Snapdragon-powered flagships. That isn’t necessarily a problem unless gaming or benchmark numbers are high on your priority list.
The camera system is another area where Google’s software does much of the heavy lifting. The Pixel 11 Pro Fold produces natural colours, controlled highlights, good portraits and capable low-light images. The 5x optical telephoto is also useful for distant subjects. Battery life is good enough to get through a day of moderate use, although 30W wired charging feels slow for a phone in this segment and takes away some of the convenience of an otherwise practical foldable smartphone.