is a senior reviewer with over a decade of experience writing about consumer tech. She has a special interest in mobile photography and telecom. Previously, she worked at DPReview.
It’s one thing to know that the folding phone you’re using is fully dust resistant. It’s an entirely different thing to watch an $1,800 phone with delicate mechanical parts sink half an inch into the sand with the screen wide open.
There’s more to that story, but the short version is that the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold was fine. That’s probably thanks to its IP68 rating, marking full dust and water resistance, which is a first for a folding phone. Up to now, it’s been hard to recommend spending nearly $2,000 for a less durable phone when basically every non-folding flagship, from the $500 Pixel 9A on up, is rated IP68.
I took the 10 Pro Fold to Seattle’s premier man-made beach, intending to get some photos of the phone gently resting on the sand. I set it down, screen unfolded, thinking it would just rest on top of the sand without really putting the hinge in jeopardy. This is not how sand works, and it got everywhere immediately. I could see it in the hinge, around the borders of the screen — all the places it shouldn’t be.
Worse, the 10 Pro Fold got a baptism in saltwater a few moments later. I set it down for a photo at the water’s edge, thinking I could snatch it out of the way if a wave came up far enough. This is not how waves work, and the phone got half soaked before I was able to grab it. Reader: I thought this phone was cooked. I could hear a crackling sound when I opened and closed the phone from tiny particles in the hinge. And saltwater is bad for any phone — that IP rating only applies to fresh water.
Don’t do this. Don’t do this either.
Aside from the crunching sound and some visible grains of sand wedged into the hinge, the phone wasn’t acting up at all. I used some compressed air on the hinge when I got it back home, which took care of the unsettling sounds, at least. Five days later it’s still working fine; you’d never know it had a brush with death.
I do not recommend trying any of this with the 10 Pro Fold, and it’s hard to say for sure if the added water and dust resistance really saved the phone or not. It’s also possible that it might suffer problems later from this accidental torture test. But for now, the Fold fared better than I expected. This gives me a lot of hope for its long-term survival in less harsh conditions, even knowing it won’t be waterproof and dustproof forever as sealants wear away.
I thought this phone was cooked
More good news: Battery life on the 10 Pro Fold is fine. But like with any other folding phone, it’s wildly dependent on how you use the thing. On a lighter day mostly on Wi-Fi with minimal time spent on the big inner screen, I was down to about 60 percent by bedtime. A heavier day out and about with lots of time using the inner screen pushed the battery down into the 30s by bedtime.
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