The Pixel 10 Pro Fold was a flop, and 2026 is Google’s last chance to fix it

Affiliate links on Android Authority may earn us a commission. Learn more. The Pixel 10 Pro Fold was a flop, and 2026 is Google's last chance to fix it 56 minutes ago 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? Why the Pixel 10 Pro Fold wasn’t a success 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. Foldable hardware had a breakout year in 2025, with Samsung, HONOR, OPPO, and vivo all making significant headways in creating foldables that are thinner and lighter than ever. Google needed to follow suit here, but instead, it stayed completely still. The Pixel 10 Pro Fold isn’t any thinner or lighter than its predecessor, and while the Pixel 9 Pro Fold’s design may have been impressive a year ago, it looks and feels antiquated by 2025 foldable standards. Cameras were another item due for an upgrade, but that didn’t happen either. The Pixel 10 Pro Fold reused the exact same sensors as the previous model, and for a flagship Pixel phone, they aren’t good enough. When...

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