Foldable Pixel Fold – Apple lags behind

TECH

First Samsung and Huawei – and now also Google. The new foldable phone Pixel Fold stole the show when the search giant showed off new consumer gadgets during the developer conference Google I/O.

On Wednesday evening Swedish time, Sundar Pichai, Google’s CEO, took the stage at the search giant’s annual developer conference.

On the agenda was ai, ai and again ai. Among other things in the form of Bard, a chatbot that will be deeply integrated into Google search – a direct response to Microsoft’s investment in building GPT technology into the Bing search engine.

Will crack Apple with foldable

Google also took the opportunity to show off a bunch of hardware news on the consumer side. The most eye-catching launch was undoubtedly the Google Pixel Fold, a challenger to Samsung’s foldable Fold mobiles.

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Pixel Fold is Google’s first gadget with a screen that can be folded out – and suddenly Apple is the only tech giant in the mobile world that does not have something foldable in its catalog.

On the front, the phone has a 5.8-inch OLED screen, but when unfolded, the Pixel Fold has a screen area of ​​7.6 inches – making it roughly the size of a smaller tablet. The larger screen is also an OLED panel with a resolution of 2208 x 1840 pixels and a refresh rate of 120 Hz.

Can be opened and closed at least 200,000 times

Inside the foldable Pixel Fold we find the same Tensor 2 system chip that is already used in the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro. The memory is 12 GB, and the storage is either 256 or 512 GB.

A challenge called fit when it comes to the foldable phone is the hinges that are used right where the screen folds out and vice versa. Samsung, which has released foldable phones for several years, has invested heavily in the technology development of a mechanism in the form of a gear system that is said to be increasingly robust with each new model.

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Google has developed a hinge in stainless steel that should be able to open and close at least 200,000 times, which is in line with Samsung’s mobiles.

The mechanism must also be able to hold the position at any angle – which, at least on paper, opens the way for the Pixel Fold to be able to extra crack as a kind of mini-laptop if you place it on the table.

Still outrageously expensive with foldable mobiles

So it was with the price. Foldable phones are still significantly more expensive than other mobile phones. Pixel Fold has a starting price of 1,800 dollars – corresponding to roughly 18,570 kroner.

The rollout of the Pixel Fold is sparse at first. The new phone is currently only available in four countries – and Sweden is not one of them. Instead, the USA, Great Britain, Germany and Japan are first on the list.

Two new Google gadgets that will actually reach the Swedish market today are the Google Pixel Tablet and the Google Pixel 7 A.

This is the Pixel Tablet

The former is an 11-inch tablet with an LCD screen that has a resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels and an aspect ratio of 16:10. It is also the search giant’s first tablet with the Tensor G2 chip, a system processor that can now be found in the Pixel Fold, Pixel 7, Pixel 7 Pro – and the fresh Pixel 7 A, which we will return to shortly.

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The Pixel Tablet will be released on June 20, and has a starting price of SEK 7,799, including a docking station.

Launches budget challenger for iPhone

Pixel 7 A is an Android 13 mobile that is intended as a cheaper challenger to iPhone and Samsung’s mobiles, but will also compete with Chinese Xiaomi and Motorola. The phone costs SEK 5,690 – which is almost half of what Apple’s cheapest iPhone 14 costs.

Google’s new phone has a 6.1-inch screen with an oled panel and 90 Hz refresh, 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage. The camera system consists of two lenses: A main camera of 64 megapixels, combined with a 13 megapixel for wide-angle photos. The main number, however, is Google’s software and hardware (image processor) which is used to improve the images mechanically using, among other things, AI technology.

Google has previously been able to show how powerful the technology is in the Pixel 7 and Pixel 7 Pro, but it remains to be seen what the significantly cheaper 7 A model can perform in practice.

Pixel 7 A was released on the Swedish market on May 10.

Correction: In an earlier version, an incorrect direct conversion of dollars to Swedish kronor was stated.