Google announced its much-anticipated foray into the foldable smartphone market overnight, but the Pixel Fold won’t be coming to Australia.
The Fold was announced at the Google I/O conference, alongside the company’s first Pixel-branded tablet, and the entry level Pixel 7a smartphone.
The latter two products will be available in Australia, but the Pixel Fold will only launch in the US, UK, Germany, and Japan.
It would appear that Google is using the four aforementioned countries as test markets in order to initially keep production levels down. Given the slowing smartphone market and the reduction in semiconductor production, the last thing Google will want is a glut of unsold stock.
Still, to bypass Australia seems like a silly move, given the country has one of the highest penetration rates for premium smartphones in the world.
At US$1,799 [A$2,650] it has the same price point as the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4.
Surely China, South Korea, and India are also markets that Google will want to compete with Samsung in on the premium foldables front.
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Specs-wise, the Pixel Fold is an impressive phone; powered by a Google Tensor G2 chip, with a 7.6-inch screen, and what Google claims is a thinner profile than any other foldable phone in the market.
It sports a 48MP main camera, and 10-bit HDR video, along with the software tools seen in the Pixel 7, such as Magic Eraser, Photo Unblur, Super Res Zoom with 5x optical zoom, Real Tone, Night Sight, and Portrait photography.
It also promises 24 hours of battery life.
When opened, the Pixel Fold sports many applications seen in tablets.
“Use the Taskbar to easily switch between your apps or drag a compatible app into split screen mode to multitask with two apps side-by-side,” Google explains.
“When in split screen, you can easily drag and drop files across different apps, like Google Photos to Messages and Slides. Since the Taskbar is dynamic, it will disappear when you’re done using it so it doesn’t take up screen space.”
Hopefully this phone will see a local release before too long, although we can’t imagine that Samsung Australia is upset that Google are choosing to bypass this market.
