Google’s Pixel 11 series went on-sale in Australia last month, and after checking out the Pixel 11 and Pixel 11 Pro XL, it’s time to hit the folding phone with the Pixel 11 Pro XL now on the review bench.
Priced from $2,799, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold is $100 more expensive this year. Price hikes in the industry, as well as improvements to the phone account for the increase, but it’s a sign of the times.
The phone is slightly smaller, and weighs less, all while retaining that big 8” inner display. It also has improvements to the hinge, and improvements to the cover display, with better battery life, faster charging and more.
There’s a new camera system with new features including 30x Super Zoom and Magic Capture, with a new sensor that has improved low-light capabilities.
The Pixel 11 Pro Fold also comes with Google’s latest silicon, the Tensor G6, with the new Titan M3 security chip to help secure your Pixel.
Running Android 17, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold also comes with seven years of updates, and features Google’s Gemini intelligence including Proactive Assistance including proactive cards in chats, searching and more.
I’ve been using the Pixel 11 Pro Fold as my daily driver for two weeks now and here’s how it went.
The Pixel 11 Pro Fold is an evolution of, now four generations of foldables. The phone has the same book-style layout as previous Pixel Fold phones with Google simply refining their already great design this year.
Google has introduced ‘Olive’ as their go-to colour this year. Used across the Pixel 11 series, the Olive colour was also carried to the Pixel Buds Pro 2 if you want to colour match your new phone with a pair of great earbuds.
I’m a big fan of the Olive, it’s fairly sedate yet adds some colour to the phone, but it also comes in the usual ‘Obsidian’ (Black) for a more classic look.
The olive rear is made of an ultra-durable composite, in theory it has a ‘matte’ finish but can be quite slippery. The satin finish on the spacecraft-grade aluminum frame on the sides is also similarly slippery – but the cases available will solve that. The two-part case appears to be identical to last years, with a section to go around the cover display, while a second protects the rear of the phone, sides and hinge.
The olive colour is nice and you can also get the black (Obsidian) case, but there’s a distinct lack of wild colour choices which is disappointing.
The phone is now 10% lighter, weighing in at just 239 grams, as well as being slightly shorter and thinner, but Google has also managed to include a slightly larger 6.5” cover display – up from 6.4” last year, with the inner display remaining the same.
The phone also retains the industry-leading IP68 dust and water resistance rating the Pixel 10 Pro Fold launched with last year. The improvements include the new hinge, built with Aerospace-Grade Ultra-High-Strength Steel which has been engineered for ‘extreme structural performance’.
It certainly opens and closes well, with a brief trip to the sandy shores of the river posing no issues.
Google’s usual button layout remains the same with the fingerprint sensor enabled power button is still on the right, with the volume rocker underneath.
On the base, you get the SIM tray under the cover display, while the USB-C ports and a speaker are on the base of the other panel. The other speaker is on the top of the cover panel, giving the phone stereo sound no matter which display you have open, or which orientation you have it in – clever.
It’s not fantastic sound, but it does the job if you need it – but otherwise the on-board Bluetooth 6.0 will connect your wireless earbuds easily.
The biggest change to the Pixel 11 Pro Foid in terms of design is the change to a full-glass visor on the camera bar, and the replacement of the temperature sensor with HiLight.
Replacing the temperature sensor, the HiLight notification light glows when you receive a call from a favourite contact (after you assign a colour to them) or will glow blue when you have Gemini running.
It works – but it feels so underutilized in comparison to the old days of Android and the much beloved notification LED. There’s moves from third-parties to create some more utility for this light, so I look forward to seeing what they can come up with – before Google adds more official features.
An 8” inner, and 6.5” cover display are included on the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, with stereo audio included.
The Inner and outer displays both now support up to 3600 Nits brightness, up from 3000 Nits last year, making them even brighter and easier to see during bright daylight.
The cover display, now 6.5” in size, is also now an LTPO display, making it able to support refresh rates down to just 1Hz – excellent for power saving.
The larger inner display works really well. It seems this year the crease is almost gone for foldables, and the Pixel Fold is no different. It’s there, but almost unnoticeable.
The larger display is excellent for side-by-side apps. The wider book-style inner display is wide enough to use apps without finding them too cramped.
The speaker setup is the same as last years, with a staggered setup – one at the top of the phone and one at the base. This setup allows you to get full stereo sound
The Tensor G6 is powering the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, with the new Titan M3 security chip alongside. The phone comes with 16GB RAM across the series, and 512GB or 1TB of zoned UFS storage.
The latest evolution of Google’s Tensor design, the G6 offers 25% faster web browsing, 15% faster app loading and up to 20% better power efficiency. The Tensor G6 also has improved Image Signal Processing, powering the up to 30x Super Zoom, as well as offering ‘50%’ more TPU compute and double the memory bandwidth to help with on-device AI.
The new Tensor G6 also powers the Proactive Assistance feature, as well as the Media Translation experience, letting you get dubbed video & audio in real-time! This is neat if you watch a lot of foreign language movies.
The Titan M3 is the first update to the security chip in five years. The chip helps keep your data safe with boot protection, data isolation for passwords, fingerprints and more. The chip can also protect your most sensitive personal data using post-quantum cryptography to proactively secure your phone.
The triple rear camera, and dual front-facing camera setup on the Pixel 11 Pro Fold isn’t quite at the same point as the other Pro-series cameras.
The phone gets a triple rear camera system with a 48MP main sensor, 10.5MP Ultra-Wide sensor with 127° field of view and 10.8MP telephoto sensor with 5x optical zoom.
The main sensor takes excellent shots. The upgraded sensor uses slightly less power, at the same MegaPixel count, while also improving those low-light shots – though at this level you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between a low-light shot from the Pixel 10 Pro Fold and the Pixel 11 Pro Fold.
There’s also dual 10MP front-facing cameras embedded in the cover and inner displays – both of which take decent shots.
The ultra-wide, through to zoom offers a wide field of view with some impressive zoom options.
The default 5x optical zoom works wonderfully, though Google has introduced 30x super zoom on the Pixel 11 Pro Fold this year – a step-up from the 20x ‘Super Zoom’ on the Pixel 10 Pro Fold last year. It works, and works pretty well, without going to the extremes of the Pixel 11 Pro series this year.
A headline camera feature announced for the Pixel 11 series is Magic Capture.
In Google’s words, Magic Capture ‘is a new feature on Pixel 11 phones that records a video and uses Gemini AI to automatically save the best still moments as high-quality 12-megapixel HDR photos’.
The Pixel 11 Pro Fold is uniquely suited to doing this. The hinge allows you to sit the phone up to take photos with the large display offering a split-screen interface that’s easy to make sure you have everything in view.
The battery in the Pixel 11 Pro Fold is slightly smaller than last year’s model, though Google claims it lasts longer. The 4,806 mAh battery lasts up to 30 hours according to Google’s stats, a step up from the 24+ hours on the 5,015 mAh battery on the 10 Pro Fold.
In terms of battery life – it’s definitely longer. I was often tapping out on the Pixel 10 Pro Fold by 9pm, the 11 Pro Fold gets through the day without needing a recharge. Obviously your mileage and use may vary, but it has improved for me.
There is the Extreme Battery Saver which puts Android into a ‘Dumb Phone’ mode that can extend the life to more extreme time-frames (Great for camping etc.) but you lose the usability of a ‘Smart’phone.
If you do need a top up, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold supports fast charging using Google’s 45W USB-C powered charger, which can recharge up to 50% in about 30 minutes – though the charger isn’t included in the box, only sold separately for .99 AUD.
Google also now supports Qi 2.2 on the Pixel 11 Pro Fold, charging the phone at 25W wirelessly using their Pixel Snap charger. Again, there’s no PixelSnap charger included in the box, it’s sold separately for , or 9 with a stand.
The Pixel 11 Pro Fold runs Android 17 out of the box with the August Security update. There’s Over-The-Air (OTA) updates available when you first turn the phone on to bring the phone up to date.
The phone, along with the rest of the Pixel 11 series is set to receive seven years of OS, security and Pixel Drop updates from launch – of which we have received the first update to September 5th.
There’s no ‘bloatware’ on a Pixel. It’s all Google software, with no third-party apps installed. Instead you DO get all the Pixel exclusive apps including PThere’s no ‘bloatware’ on a Pixel. It’s all Google software, with no third-party apps installed. Instead you DO get all the Pixel exclusive apps including Pixel Screenshots, Circle to Search (which you can also now find in the Camera app too), Live Translate and much more.
Google’s Pixel software is heavily geared towards Gemini, and to help get the most out of Gemini, you get 6-months of Google AI Pro.
I don’t like to look a gift horse in the mouth, but 6-months is a step down on the 12-months offered with last year’s Pixel 10 Pro Fold, and seems designed to net at least one accidental charge when you forget the free sub is up for renewal.
Included as part of Android 17 is Gemini Intelligence. An extension, well, a rebranding of last year’s ‘Magic Cue’, Gemini Intelligence offers ‘Proactive Suggestions or Proactive Assistance’ and is able to ‘automate complex tasks, summarize web content, and simplify form filling’.
Some of the proactive assistance offered includes popping up details of upcoming flights when you call the airline, automatic prompts when you mention a place, or a calendar event creation notification if you are trying to organise an event to search while in chats and more.
You need to opt-in to Proactive Assistance, connecting your Gmail, Messages and other Workspace apps to Gemini – but once enabled, it works really well, and gives you a real-world use case for AI that actually helps without requiring any effort.
We use our phones a lot now, sometimes when you’re not even holding them. Voice typing has become good, but Google has introduced ‘Rambler’, their voice to text model built-in to GBoard. This model simply lets you talk – ignoring all your “umms” and “ahhs” and interpreting what you said into a cohesive statement.
My only feedback is that it doesn’t show you what’s being taken down before you hit the ‘tick’. Once you hit that tick, Rambler must parse what you said and deliver a final version.
You can also edit the final result by tapping the mic button, and you can also get Gemini to ‘AI’ the response to choose less or more formal tones and more – however this seems to need an online connection.
It may sound fairly mundane, however Rambler is one of my favourite new features of Android 17, and the Pixel 11 series.
Google’s Pixel Fold has had a relatively short life-span, with incremental changes each year improving the design and specs, with the Pixel 11 Pro Fold continuing the trend.
The newly updated main camera sensor takes better low-light photos, and the slimmer design is a little lighter to hold. It also has the faster Qi 2.2 wireless charging now.
The new features, powered by the Tensor G6 work well, with the 30x Super Zoom working really well, while the ProActive notifications in chats also add to your experience.
Where there’s room for improvement is the HiLight notification feature really doesn’t do much, and who wouldn’t want the same camera features as the other Pixel 11 Pro models (120x Pro Res Zoom to start)?
There’s also the competition to consider. The general feel of the Pixel 11 Pro Fold is about on-par with Motorola’s Razr Fold, while the likes of the Honor Magic V6 and Samsung’s Galaxy Fold8 offer a much slimmer design.
When it comes down to it though, the Pixel 11 Pro Fold is a solid foldable offering great hardware and the best of Google’s AI and mobile features, with 7 years of updates to back it up.
You can check out the Pixel 11 Pro Fold on the Google Store – or through your favourite retailer or telco now.
Daniel has been talking about, learning about and using tech since he was able to toggle switches and push buttons. If it flashes, turns on or off or connects he wants to use it, talk about it and learn more about it. Like this article? Buy me a coffee!
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