Google Was Working on a Second Foldable Alongside Pixel Fold, But it Wasn’t “Good Enough”: Report

Google only announced one foldable phone with a horizontal folding design at its recent Google I/O 2023 developer event. At the event, Google also announced two other hardware products called the Pixel Tablet and the affordable Pixel 7a smartphone. Its foldable offering called the Pixel Fold, is currently available on pre-order in the US, but will be available in select markets globally at a later date. Unlike most smartphone brands, Google only announced one foldable at launch. However, a recent podcast revealed that there was a second foldable in development as well.

The confirmation of the existence of this second foldable came from Google’s head of design for hardware products, Ivy Ross. According to Android Authority the Google executive mentioned the existence of this second foldable in the official Made By Google podcast.

Ross gave out an explanation about how there was another foldable model that Google had created without revealing any further details about its form factor. He added that the team made the decision to hold back on its launch as it was not “good enough yet”. He also mentioned that the team at Google felt that they should hold on to launching this second foldable until it was capable of doing things better than similar models that are already available in the market.

Simply put, Google could launch this second foldable at a later date, as it did not have enough features to outdo existing models in the market. Since Google already launched a horizontally folding phone, our best guess would be a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip-like form factor with a clamshell flippable design for the second foldable.

Google’s Pixel Fold, although quite late to the foldable game, will mainly end up giving Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Z Fold 5 some competition. The Pixel Fold’s form factor appears similar to Oppo’s recently launched Find N2 model, with a wider display compared to the outgoing Galaxy Z Fold 4‘s taller form factor. The foldable has a 5.8-inch full-HD+ outer display and a 7.6-inch 6:5 aspect ratio, inner foldable display with a resolution of 1,840 x 2,208 pixels. Both displays have a 120Hz maximum refresh rate. The Pixel Fold also has an IPX8 rating for water resistance.

Its rear camera setup consists of a 49-megapixel primary camera, a 10.8-megapixel ultrawide, and a10.8-megapixel telephoto camera. There are two selfie cameras, one embedded in its outer display and a second one that sits above the inner folding display in its bezel. It is powered by the Google Tensor G2 processor, which is also available in its Pixel 7a, Pixel 7, and Pixel 7 Pro smartphones. Google Pixel Fold will only be available in Germany, Japan, the UK, and the US.