The Pixel 10 Pro Fold is great, but I am sticking to this instead

Slim might be the flavor of the season, but there’s no denying that the best foldable phones are the pinnacle of modern smartphone engineering prowess and design. These smartphones push the very idea of form factors and what a phone can do, with a focus on portable productivity, and give us an obvious glimpse at where the future of computing might lead. Simply put, foldables are basically every smartphone company’s opportunity to innovate and flex. In fact, it’s the one smartphone category that still feels fresh to me despite the first foldable phone releasing almost six years ago.

It’s also why the Pixel 10 Pro Fold matters so much, despite being relatively late to the game, Apple notwithstanding. Google controls Android, so its approach to foldables sets expectations for how the platform should evolve. While the phone is yet to be released, we’ve had an opportunity to spend some time with the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, and its clear that Google has corrected some obvious mistakes from its first attempt. Compared to the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, the cover display is finally wide enough to use without tiptoeing around the keyboard, the hinge is smoother, and the new IP68 rating is a genuinely useful feature to have in a daily driver. Add brighter screens and the new Tensor G5 chip, and on the surface, the Pixel 10 Pro Fold looks like the most complete Pixel foldable yet.

But here’s the problem. Even with all these improvements, the Pixel 10 Pro Fold still feels like a device riddled with tradeoffs. At a time when Google’s foldables should be setting benchmarks, Google’s entire hardware approach lags behind the competition. Some of it can be attributed to Google’s software trumps hardware mindset, but there’s more. The battery capacity falls short of expectations, the design remains bulky, and the cameras lean heavily on computational tricks rather than hardware capabilities. And for a phone that costs $1,800, I’m not sure I want to deal with the compromises. So, I’ve been using the next best, actually, scratch that, arguably the better product — the vivo X Fold 5.

To give credit where it’s due, the Pixel 10 Pro Fold is a huge step up from the first-gen Pixel Fold. The narrower outer display was the single biggest pain point in the original for me, and that’s been fixed. The new 6.4-inch cover screen actually works like a normal phone. You can type comfortably, browse long web pages without frustration, and rely on it without flipping the device open every time. The screen is plenty bright too, with peak brightness around 3,000 nits, which makes it far more usable outdoors.

The inner display has seen upgrades as well. Slimmer bezels and higher brightness help it feel more modern. The crease hasn’t disappeared, but it’s less distracting than before. Combined with Android’s maturing large-screen software tweaks, the Pixel 10 Pro Fold finally feels closer to delivering on the dual promise of phone and tablet, though there’s still a way to go before it’s perfect.

The hinge is another meaningful improvement. Google’s shift to a gearless mechanism gives it a smoother, quieter action. It isn’t Samsung-level engineering, but if my hands-on time with it suggests anything, it’s good enough that you probably won’t think about it every time you open or close the device. That’s solid progress.

And then there’s durability. An IP68 rating is a genuine achievement in a foldable. The dust resistance in particular is reassuring, because grit between the hinges is my biggest worry living in a dusty country like India. It makes the 10 Pro Fold feel more like a phone you can live with every day instead of something you have to baby when out and about.

Finally, performance also looks better on paper. The Tensor G5 chip, built on a 3nm process, and faster UFS 4.0 storage should deliver smoother multitasking and stronger AI performance. We already have an idea of the performance from the Pixel 10 Pro, and while it won’t win on paper, the performance is perfectly fine. For a company that leans heavily on AI as a differentiator, that matters. Taken together, this is by far the best foldable Google has made. So, what’s the problem?

Even at its best, the Pixel 10 Pro Fold still lags in the places that count most.

There’s a good reason why vivo feels ahead. In fact, there are a few. The vivo X Fold 5, like most Chinese foldables, takes a slightly different approach to hardware. It isn’t a foldable that asks you to accept less because the form factor is new. It’s a foldable that insists on being a flagship, not just a flagship foldable. When I’m paying top dollar for my phone, I want a top-of-the-line phone, not a set of compromises to fit a form factor choice, and I get that here.

Battery is the obvious place to start. A 6,000 mAh cell in the vivo X Fold 5 makes a world of difference. It means I can use the phone the way it’s meant to be used. If productivity is the goal, that larger battery lets me bounce between split-screen multitasking, media, and camera without being worried about the battery dying before the day ends. Add 80W wired charging and wireless support, and topping up is never a hassle, even if I somehow manage to put a dent in the long-lasting battery.

The weight is equally important. At 217 grams, the Fold 5 is lighter than the Pixel and most of its competitors. That doesn’t just make it nicer to hold, it makes it practical for all-day use. Whether you’re reading on the inner display or snapping a photo with one hand, you don’t feel like you’re wrestling with it. More so when combined with the svelte 9.2mm thickness. It isn’t the thinnest foldable on the market, but I don’t need it to be. If being barely thicker than a regular phone allows it to have all the specs I want, that’s all I want. The Pixel 10 Pro Fold, while thicker than the vivo, still doesn’t come close to matching the battery specs.

There are other factors, too, like the hinge and display. While I can’t really test long-term durability over the Pixel, it’s safe to say that vivo’s hinge feels as smooth as you’d want it to be. But it is the crease that impresses. It’s there, but it’s extremely subtle to the point of being a non-issue in most everyday use cases. I really can’t say that about the Pixel 10 Pro Fold. Elsewhere, the 8.03-inch AMOLED panel pumps out higher brightness levels, is vibrant, and large enough to actually replace a tablet in many use cases. The outer display is just as usable, with a proper 120 Hz refresh, a very familiar 21:9 aspect ratio, and a comfortable 6.53-inch size that’s a step above in all regards over the Pixel 10 Pro. Combined with 5,500 nits of peak brightness, vivo’s execution makes the outer display a first-class citizen instead of a compromised panel for secondary use. The fact of the matter is that it is the outer display that gets used more often, even in foldables, and ensuring that the size is large and comfortable should be a key design decision.

The real clincher, however, is the camera system. This is where, perhaps not so surprisingly, if you’ve been keeping up with the camera chops of Chinese smartphone brands, the vivo X Fold 5 leaps ahead of the Pixel. I don’t have the Pixel 10 Pro Fold on hand, but I do have the Pixel 10 and 10 Pro duo. This allows me to get a reasonable idea of what the Pixel 10 Pro Fold will be able to pull off, and I’m willing to bet it won’t be able to keep up with the vivo.

The vivo X Fold 5, with its three 50-megapixel sensors covering wide, ultrawide, and telephoto, delivers results that keep up with the best camera flagships on the market. The main sensor produces detailed, high-dynamic-range shots. The ultrawide maintains sharpness and colour consistency. The 3x telephoto delivers proper reach without falling back on digital crops. Yes, the sensors aren’t as large as those on vivo’s mainline flagships, but the solution isn’t a generation behind or just “good enough.” It’s genuinely good, bordering on great.

This is also where the gap with the Pixel 10 Pro Fold becomes obvious. Google’s foldable leans heavily on its software pipeline to do the heavy lifting. Night Sight and HDR+ remain excellent, but the sensors behind them are less convincing. The main camera is solid, but in 2025, a 10MP ultrawide and telephoto sensor just doesn’t cut it no matter how you try to justify it. As good as Google’s Super Res Zoom is, there’s a limit to how much detail it can extract from a 10MP sensor. And even AI zoom’s dreamed-up results won’t cut it.

The vivo X Fold 5, by contrast, doesn’t need software magic to hide hardware compromises. If I want a crisp telephoto shot, I get it. If I switch to ultrawide, colours and detail still match the main lens. That’s a level of consistency that the Pixel 10 Pro simply won’t be able to deliver due to the hardware compromises. I won’t even get into video because the situation is relatively dire on the Pixel side of things. Let’s just say that the 4K video on the X Fold 5 blows away what I can achieve from the Pixel 10 Pro without resorting to cloud-based upscaling. I don’t expect the Pixel 10 Pro Fold to match that, or even come close. Certainly not on all its lenses.

The Pixel 10 Pro Fold shows that Google is serious about foldables. It fixes real flaws and moves the category forward. For many users, it will be the foldable that finally feels usable as a daily driver. But foldables are supposed to lead, not catch up. And that’s where the Pixel falls short. Yes, I know that many of these Chinese smartphones aren’t even available in the US. But building a product just for the US artificially builds complacency. There’s a much bigger world out there, which is just as big a market for the right product, and the Pixel 10 Pro Fold is bound to fumble when the competition already does it better.

The vivo X Fold 5 doesn’t just look like a flagship, it is one. But its just one example of how far the foldable category has come. So while the Pixel 10 Pro Fold might be Google’s best effort yet, I’m not convinced I should live with compromises in a category that’s supposed to define the future. Perhaps it is time for Google to look at the broader competition instead of just trying to one-up itself.