I used to manage the mobile phone department at Best Buy where it was my professional obligation to replace my phone with the latest and greatest one each year, so the fact that I’ve been rocking a Pixel 4XL since before the pandemic has been painful for me, to😼 say the least.
I’ve been eyeing the Pixel Fold since it was first rumored in 2021, I planned to buy it when it was expected in 2022, 👍and I pulled the trigger immediately when it was finally revealed at Google I/O last month. The Pixel Fold - Google’s flagship foldable that opens up into a glorious 7.6 inch display - is exactly the kind of goofy nouveau-tech I’m extremely into. It’s cutting-edge, extremely niche, and unlike any other mobile device you can get today. It also totally sucks for video games, which is kind of a problem.
There’s a lot that I like about the Pixel Fold. As a productivity tool, it’s second to none. I can open two apps side by side and work on both of them, which is really useful when you want to compose emails or send slack messages while researching something on Chrome, or scroll Twitter while you watch YouTube. All of the Google apps like Gmail, Calendar, and Weather have been redesigned to take advantage of the bigger screen, and I love the way novels and comic books look on it, especially if I fold the screen just a little to make it feel like I’m holding a book. I didn&rsquo♊;t buy it for games, but I’m big into mobile games - or, more speci💧fically, criticizing mobile games - and that just got a whole lot harder.
The probl🅷em is that the open screen has the most bizarre resolution. Instead of copying Samsung’s candy bar design for foldables that opens up into a typical rectangular tablet, the Pixel Fold is short and wider so that the inside screen is more square. The resolution of the unfolded screen is 2,208 by 1,840, which comes out to be an absurd 1.2:1 aspect ratio. This is even more square than the old 4:3 format CRT televisions used. Obviously, this is not a very workable resolution for modern games.
At best, things get severely cropped. I tried playing a bunch of stuff on Game Pass and Steam Link, and the whole thing gets crowded into the middle of the screen. The Pixel Fold already has a pretty thick bezel, so when you lose 40 percent of your screen real estate it's really hard to ignore all the empty space. It gets even worse when you’re using touch controls, since your thumbs cover up half of the visible space. It’s uncomfortable to hold such a big device and only be able to see a small portion of the screen.
But filling the screen would be worse. A lot of mobile games are built to automatically adjust their aspect ratio to match the near-infinite variety of phone sizes out there, but this causes some significant problems on the Pixel Fold. In Pokemon Un⭕ite, about a quarter-inch gets cut off on every side of the screen. Not only are you seeing less of the field, but it’s harder to press some of the on-screen buttons because they’re half-off the screen, and the top of the map is completely cut off. If you can’t see your opponents grou🉐ping up on the top objective, you’re at a severe disadvantage.
What’s more, mobile controllers are useless on the Pixel Fold. The Razer Kishi 2 fits on it, but the position of the charging port means you have to turn the phone sideways, which makes the screen real estate problems even worse. You’d think playing with the phone closed would solve the problem, but it doesn’t. Not only is the single screen smaller than most phones, it has an awkward 2,092 by 1,080 resolution, which is way too short for mobile games, which are designed to 🐟target 20:9, to comfortably fit.
The one thing the Pixel Fold excels at is emulating DS games. The form factor is perfect for replicating the look and feel of playing on DS, and it's powerful enough to run even the most demanding 3DS games like Monster Hunter and Resident Evil: Revelations. I got really into emulating games on my 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Surface Duo earlier this year, and the Pixel Fold has a lot of the same charm - just for eight ti💎mes the price.
I’m still getting used to the Pixel Fold and thinking about ways to make gaming feel better on it, bꦑut I had to put out a word of caution to those that might be tempted by the shiny new gadget. If you’re big on gaming, the Pixel Fold might be the worst phone you can buy. Which kind of sucks for me, but at least I’m suffering so you don’t have to.