Joe Maring / Android Authority
2025 was a wildly successful year for Google’s Pixel hardware. The Pixel 9a marked another strong entry in the company’s budget portfolio, while the Pixel 10 and Pixel 10 Pro were solid upgrades in their own right. The Pixel Watch 4 also catapulted Google’s smartwatch hardware, and the Pixel Buds 2a set a new standard for affordable earbuds.
And the Pixel 10 Pro Fold … well, it was just sort of there.
This year’s Pixel foldable was easily the weakest link in Google’s 2025 lineup, not because it’s an outright failure, but because it could have been so much more. There’s enormous potential in the Pixel Fold, but Google is running out of time to fully tap into it. And whether we see Google do that — or let the Pixel Fold fall too far behind the competition — will ultimately come down to what happens in 2026.
What do you want to see from Pixel foldables in 2026? 18 votes A massively-upgraded Pixel 11 Pro Fold. 61 % I liked the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, so another small update is fine. 22 % Forget Pixel Folds — I want a Pixel Flip! 6 % I don't care. Google is already too far behind. 11 %
Why the Pixel 10 Pro Fold wasn’t a success
Joe Maring / Android Authority
Leading up to the announcement of the Pixel 10 Pro Fold earlier this year, there was a lot of excitement around Google’s third attempt at a foldable phone. The original Pixel Fold was a highly flawed first-gen product, and the year-over-year improvements we saw between it and the Pixel 9 Pro Fold were almost unbelievable. The hardware advancements Google made were outstanding, and it quickly proved just how serious the company was about its foldable ambitions.
It was naive to expect Google to deliver such a major upgrade back-to-back, but there were issues with the Pixel 9 Pro Fold that needed fixing — things like camera quality, performance, and further refinement of its design. In other words, all reasonable improvements for its successor.
However, even with realistic expectations about what the Pixel 10 Pro Fold would be, the final product we got was still a letdown. Where the Pixel 9 Pro Fold was clearly created with fire and passion to push foldables to the next level, the Pixel 10 Pro Fold felt like it came from a team that just had a deadline to meet.
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