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Pixel 11 Pro Fold
- mark_l_watson 2mo agoI am only 75, but in a few years I have thought of downsizing to one device (and a VPS for a little coding). A future version of this phone that is triple fold would work for me.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- cobolcomesback 2mo agoI am so amused at the “HiLight” feature (lighting up colored LEDs for notifications so you can see them “at a glance” without looking at the screen). This is a feature that was on the Android phones of old (including the original G1) and I loved it, but it got phased out in favor of “always on displays”… which apparently now we want less of! It’s funny how trends like this are a circle sometimes.
- krackers 2mo agoThey had it as a hidden feature up till the nexus 5 or 6 I believe. Someone bothered to include hardware for an LED even if the stock software never supported it.
- ozyschmozy 2mo agoI remember my old nexus had it, and it was very customizable. I had it flash different colors for different chats. Definitely funny seeing this make its way back as if it's some new revolutionary feature
- eufouria 2mo agoThis is precisely why I left Android. 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).
- ValentineC 2mo ago> 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. I'm guessing cultures that reward shipping new products (e.g. 67 different messaging apps) don't turn out great for consumers.
- entropie 2mo ago> The RGB leds were one of my favorite features of early Android phones. I Right man. I had forgotten that my nexus 7 had this kind of LED and I really liked it and missed it later.
- jerlam 2mo agoConversely, I was surprised to learn that the temperature sensor introduced on the Pixel 8 Pro in 2023 was only removed this year. No one knew why it was there in the first place.
- avidiax 2mo agoI heard that it was a COVID feature. I guess people thought you would be scanning your friend's foreheads before socializing. 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.
- jerlam 2mo agoThat's the only plausible scenario, but it also came out in 2023 and people stopped caring at least a year before. And it persisted for a few years so either someone thought they could salvage something from it, or no one had a better idea what to put there.
- abeyer 2mo agoThat probably means the board was being designed a year or two before that... so quite possibly they had put it in the design when it still seemed relevant and the cost/hassle/delay of a new revision of the board design and manufacturing changes made it easier to just leave it there and ignore.
- jm4 2mo agoI remember having this on a Sidekick in like 2007.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- kevincox 2mo agoThis used to be a critical feature for me I used to customize the colour per-app so I could see what notifications I had at a glance. However always-on displays have supplanted this use case for me.
- simpaticoder 2mo agoJust wait until phones get headphone jacks!
- billfor 2mo agoMy Nexus 5 had that feature and it was really useful to see if the phone had a message pending. They also did the same thing for wireless charging, dropping it and then bringing it back. The PM probably gets paid good money to go in circles.
- accrual 2mo ago> lighting up colored LEDs for notifications so you can see them “at a glance” without looking at the screen 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.
- zimpenfish 2mo agoBlackberry got a whole bunch of things right but, alas, almost everything else was a bag of rusty spanners. I do still miss mine, though, slightly.
- zem 2mo agobeen waiting for this feature to come back forever. hope it's still around the next time I get a new phone.
- lurght 2mo agoOne day I hope for a future innovation that brings back 3.5MM jacks and I can have audio as convenient as it was in the 1950s, but until then my bluetooth can connect to my speakers while I'm not in the same building and switch device automatically with no setting to change it and with no warning deafen the people in my house, where the only way to switch back requires a mere 20 screen taps (which i can partly blame graphene os for, not their fault i can use a wire though) Maybe I take this a little too close to heart.
- sieabahlpark 2mo ago[dead]
- thegrim33 2mo agoJust vote with your wallet and don't buy phones without a headphone jack. That's what I do, and I've always had a phone with one.
- LoganDark 2mo agoThere is literally no way this can ever result in any impact on the market. Literally no one will ever be able to tell how many sales are made or lost because of whether or not there is a headphone jack. Therefore it is also impossible for it to influence anybody's future decision. 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.
- em3rgent0rdr 2mo ago
- saltcured 2mo agoI remember my little Motorola flip phones from 25+ years ago had an LED that would blink for things like voice mails or unread SMS. I can't remember if it also did missed calls, and maybe could do orange or green? I seem to recall it did a unary pattern to blink out the number of queued events. 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"...
- Tostino 2mo agoMy Nexus One had that colored trackball, and rooting / custom roms allowed you to set specific colors to whatever type of notification or alert you wanted. Good times.
- qingcharles 2mo agoOne day those autostereo displays and 3D cameras from the early Androids will return too.
- sawjet 2mo agoYou know, maybe cameras are good enough, and I don't want a tumor at the top edge of my phone that gets tiresome to hold after 5 minutes.
- rcpt 2mo agoMeet the Vivo X300 https://www.vivo.com/en/products/x300-ultra https://www.vivo.com/en/products/x300-ultra
- npodbielski 2mo agoWhat a terrible website to open on your phone. Text and image is clipped, it jumps up and down, loads for several seconds, refreshes entire page several times... I opened it and have no idea what this hardware supposed tonbe.
- lwowowx 2mo agoNew phones are so boring now, bring back Nokia
- Johnbot 2mo agoI was looking forward to this one because of the IP68 dust and water protection rating, but the fact that it has the same cameras as the base Pixel 11 instead of the Pro is very sad. I also wish the HiLight feature was more used at launch - for example, having it glow red while recording.
- budsniffer952 2mo agoHow many people actually care about phone tech anymore? 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.
- SirMaster 2mo agoIf that were true, then so many people wouldn't keep buying new high end phones. Yet they continue to do so.
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- boelboel 2mo agoI'd imagine a great portion of the people buying these high end phones are just duped into paying for an overpriced subscription model. They're not really buying phones at store prices.
- SirMaster 2mo agoWell I buy the latest pro phone, and you are right I don't pay store price. AT&T gave me the 17 Pro for free when I traded in my 3 year old 14 Pro. 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".
- trollbridge 2mo agoThe Fold still has 16GB of RAM. The 11 Pro and 11 Pro XL both got nerfed to 12GB. 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.
- jpalawaga 2mo ago12gb is a huge downgrade. 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.
- abraham 2mo agoJust a note that the 12GB nerf only applies to the base storage version of the pros.
- maccard 2mo agoI can’t say I’ve ever found myself thinking “I wish I had more RAM” on my phone. On laptop, I’d take it in a heartbeat but on my phone (which has 6GB) I’m perfectly happy.
- ImaCake 2mo agoI had issues on my iphone 13 pro where switching between two apps would lead to one app "forgetting" what screen it was on. Particularly painful on Safari! Hard to know how much of that is memory pressure but its not a problem I have encountered on recent flagship android phones.
- zmmmmm 2mo agoSome of the coming AI features are likely to be gated on how much RAM you have. So it may matter more in the future.
- silisili 2mo agoWhy is Google averse to larger batteries? The Chinese makers have been stuffing 8000ish mah batteries in rather diminutive phones for two or three years now, and Google is releasing one in 2026 with about half that.
- plantain 2mo agoShipping regulations. >20Wh can't go by airpost in the west.
- atraac 2mo agoOppo doesn't have that issue in EU and ships 7500mah just fine though. Some also split batteries into two just to accommodate this.
- 725686 2mo agoIs this enforced?
- dietr1ch 2mo agoA better phone sent by horse would get to my hands sooner than a phone I don't give a shit about that can be shipped by airpost. 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.
- onli 2mo agoMight be longevity concerns. Those new batteries are impressive, but the concern is that they will degrade a lot. Also, remember the exploding Samsung phone. Experiments with batteries are risky for those companies.
- cautiouscat 2mo agoI used to be a "cutting edge phone guy" where I'd get the latest iPhone ever year and the thought of having the older phone just didn't sit well with me. These days though the upgrades are so marginal I don't even care. I'm looking forward to upgrading my three year old phone this year, but not because I expect it to be more than "better camera, faster and thinner" but just because its time. These updates are so boring now!
- Someone1234 2mo agoI agree; but I'm not sure it is fixable. Without some technological advancement to actually move the needle, most manufacturers are just stuck with marginal hardware changes and then some cheesy software-locked exclusive to the latest models.
- testing22321 2mo ago> but just because its time If you already know the new phone isn’t going to do anything better for you, why is it time?
- NDlurker 2mo agoMight be cheaper than replacing the battery. Might want more storage. 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.
- craftkiller 2mo agoAn official OEM battery for the Pixel 7 along with all the tools you need is $50. It is not expensive. The process to replace it is easy. Certainly nerve racking the first time but I've opened up my pixel phones at least 6 times now and it is pretty trivial (on the non-folding pixel phones). https://www.ifixit.com/products/google-pixel-7-battery-genuine https://www.ifixit.com/products/google-pixel-7-battery-genui...
- brink 2mo agoWhat would it take for them to add a spring to the hinge? I would love a foldable that opens with a flick of the wrist without the need to pry it open.
- lofaszvanitt 2mo agoUgly as ever. Bleh. Hire a proper industrial designer.
- is_true 2mo agoDoes anyone had a good experience with foldable phones? The only people I know that bought one had them broken near the 2 year mark. My phone from 2018 it's still working perfectly.
- guyzero 2mo agoThe Pixel 9 Pro Fold had a lot of warranty replacements due to a failing internal cable. The 10 seems to have resolved the issue, but time will tell. Other than that, the Pixel Fold has been a great phone. It's like having a tiny tablet with me everywhere I go.
- polotics 2mo agoI am very happy with my Pixel 9 Pro Fold, the replacement because of early models losing 5G on unfolding was swift and it's been one of my least annoying phones so far, and I used many models, OSes
- anabab 2mo agoMy pixel fold 9 got 3 hardware failures (battery, speaker and folding sensor) and was warranty replaced for a fold 10. While it was being replaced I was using a non foldable phone and was totally missing the folding experience (large screen and multitasking for some personal use cases), so I am team foldables for now. otoh I do not get the idea behind the flip phones
- saidinesh5 2mo agoI tested out last year's foldable phone for a couple of months.. borrowed it from a friend. 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.
- Alive-in-2025 2mo ago
- fitblipper 2mo agoWith fewer and fewer interesting things getting added from one generation to the next, freedom, security, and privacy have become my main selling point when deciding on a phone. 7 years of updates, strong hardware enforced security and the ability to run graphene is have been the deciding factors in the last 3 phones I've bought for myself and my family.
- summm 2mo agoWith direction Google has chosen to go with the Pixel 10, it might as well be that GrapheneOS will never be available on the Pixel 11. They started by not publishing device trees anymore, squashing commits in AOSP, publishing open source drivers as a tar ball dump only after the requester has entered personal data in a web form, instead of having them public in an version control system. I wonder what dumb ideas they come up with next in order to make the GrapheneOS people suffer even more.
- Gander5739 2mo agoLineageOS has been managing with the same problem (no device trees) for years.
- summm 2mo agoWhich was not the point. Each one of these changes made it harder, not yet impossible to make a custom Android or Linux variant. The harder it is the more likely people will continue. At some point it might be too hard. Or, one of these changes will finally make all of that impossible.
- Gander5739 2mo agoI agree with your conclusion, but I think it's likely that GrapheneOS will support the Pixel 11.
- rvshchwl 2mo agoThese phones are getting larger each release, and it's the opposite of the trend I prefer now. I really am starting to miss the SE phone sizes and not feeling like I'm carrying a literal brick in my pocket wherever I go now. I don't think Apple is cutting back on the phone size either when their Fold comes out, and we're slowly just moving towards the point where a phone is just a mini tablet.
- the__alchemist 2mo agoWe don't even need to reverse the trend! Android is flexible, so it wouldn't be a big ask for one of the many models to be smaller! Each pixel is larger than the last. I was a Pixel 4 holdout until a few months ago when they stopped supporting tap-to-pay. The 10 is a monster, and the trend is as you say.
- layer8 2mo agoThere are small Android phones, they just aren’t very premium: https://www.techeblog.com/bluefox-nx1-mini-iphone-hands-on-review-specs-price/ https://www.techeblog.com/bluefox-nx1-mini-iphone-hands-on-r...
- rtkwe 2mo agoAre they? The Pixel 11 Pro and regular screens are only a tenth of an inch larger than the 3 year old Pixel 8s. The screen sizes have largely stabilized IMO with people who want any larger screens being pushed into the folding phone category. I get it's larger than the mid 2010s normal but they're not really getting much larger in the last couple years.
- dzonga 2mo agoseems the big phone makers are going with the phone-2-tablet fold. very few have gone with the ultra portable and pragmatic fold like razr-ultra. hopefully apple comes out with a razr-ultra like fold.
- wffurr 2mo agoI've been pleasantly surprised at how robust my 2024 Razr (regular edition) has been. I think if the outside screen was a hair bigger (like on the Plus and Ultra), it would be significantly more useful. 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.
- alberth 2mo agoIt’ll probably be 2 iPhone Airs attached with a hinge, no?
- bhelkey 2mo agoPhone manufactures have settled on the term "flip" for phones that start as a long rectangle and fold in half vertically to roughly a square. 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.
- Cider9986 2mo agoHere's to fast GrapheneOS support for all the get the 11 line.
- aliljet 2mo agoWhat genuinely disappointing result. Long time pixel user here and I've been routinely buying these phones with the argument that you're getting the most value of any modern smart phone. Now? I'm just waiting for the pixel 10 family to drop in price. Happy to just wait.
- summm 2mo agoHere, the Pixel 10, especially in more niche variants like Pro and with larger flash has almost disappeared from the market, or is as expensive as the equivalent Pixel 11 offers.
- onion2k 2mo agoMaybe I'm being too cynical, but all the benefits in the video intro are either things that aren't benefits of the hardware (screen calls without looking, Gemini, tap less do more) or they're compensations for the foldable screen (30% more durable, 20% brighter ... than the last Fold, but likely still worse than non-folding phones.) 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?
- delecti 2mo agoI'm looking forward to when "fold" is not so equivalent to "premium". I'm interested in a folding phone, but I don't think I've spent a cumulative $2000 on my last 4 phones. I'd have a hard time justifying spending even $1000. 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).
- gumby271 2mo agoI have a feeling that making durable fold in half cell phones is just not something we can do cheaply, so they have to be billed as premium to justify it. 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.
- delecti 2mo agoI'm sure that's why there aren't cheap ones yet, but technology marches forward, and I'm sure we'll get there eventually. 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".
- Fergusonb 2mo agoAre they durable? If I can ruin the screen with my fingernail, I'm completely uninterested.
- ThrowawayTestr 2mo agoMy dad is in construction and has gone through at least 4 flips that I know of in the time that I've had my S25, probably more.
- gumby271 2mo agoBy durable I guess I mean they don't destroy themselves just by existing.
- AquinasCoder 2mo agoI have been using the iPhone for something like 10 years now. I am getting the urge to de-apple since I fell down the slippery slope and now have an iPad, watch, apple TV, MBP, etc. 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?
- jerlam 2mo agoI assume all the companies have zero respect for any of their users now. At least Apple can maintain a tablet and laptop line for more than a few years without the urge to restart it with "brand new ideas".
- pllbnk 2mo agoI am surprised foldable phones have survived. I thought it was a terrible idea how they worked and still think it is. A flimsy screen with a crease looks and feels opposite of what a phone should be.
- kacesensitive 2mo agosomebody pitch me on upgrading my note 10 plus i'm still rocking
- antirez 2mo agoWe need companies able to reimagine the devices we use every day in a more sharp way.
- reindeer2 2mo ago[flagged]
- karim79 2mo agoI have the pixel 10 fold (got it on offer) and honestly it already feels excessive. I welcome these incremental upgrades but the number dropping in the marketing material and the "moar AI" stuff doesn't appeal to me at all.
- FiddlerClamp 2mo agoI still think stylus support (both hardware but especially software) is going to be a killer app for these things. They've gone in the wrong direction for now, but some of the Asian phone companies (Huawei?) still have stylus support.
- vivzkestrel 2mo ago- wake me up when you can make a fully transparent phone
- mkayokay 2mo agoI always ask myself why Google's Gemini integration still feels that bad despite the company having full control over Android, the Play Store, and the Pixel hardware stack. If one could fully operate any feature on the phone with Gemini (and combine actions into workflows and tasks), that would at least for me be the next evolutionary step in "smart" phones.
- dgellow 2mo agoWhat would you use that for? That feels very gimmicky to me
- mkayokay 2mo agoMostly when driving or not being able to hold the phone. E.g. things that don't work: open my garage door using an action in an app; yesterday I wanted to send an address stored in Gmaps to a contact via messaging app; using controls currently displayed by Android Auto without having to touch the screen.
- frankacter 2mo agoBecause Android does not just run on Pixel devices, and the level of control you suggest isn't something that can be bolted on at the manufacturer level. 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-other-apps-3637733/ https://www.androidauthority.com/gemini-automation-control-o... https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/products/gemini-app/android-multi-step-tasks/ https://blog.google/innovation-and-ai/products/gemini-app/an...
- elil17 2mo ago>The dual screens on Pixel 11 Pro Fold are ideal for real-time translation, especially with our new sign-to-text feature. Developed in partnership with the Deaf community, it lets signers express themselves in Live Transcribe and Gboard in their native language. 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.
- basedrum 2mo agoI've got a pixel 9, I don't see any meaningful changes here worth upgrading. The hardware looks essentially the same, except for a better camera and a ruby but if more battery. What am I missing?
- joshstrange 2mo agoThat texting UI is rough, text is way too big and the long input box and split keyboard really feel like the laziest UI.