It might really feel like Twitter is slowly imploding, however the platform continues to be place to go for breaking information. Living proof: On Thursday, Google teased its newest {hardware} machine in a tweet. It is a folding Pixel cellphone.
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The cellphone is known as the Pixel Fold, and that is just about all we find out about it for positive. The corporate says it would reveal extra particulars on the machine throughout the keynote handle of Google IO, its annual developer convention, which takes place in Mountain View, California, on Wednesday, Could 10.
There are some things we are able to discern concerning the Pixel Fold simply from the photograph and brief video that Google launched. The identical photographs seem on the Google Retailer on a page that presumably will change into the product web page the place the cellphone will be bought when it goes on sale.
It folds book-style, just like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold, not clamshell-style just like the Z Flip or Motorola’s Razr redux. Additionally, strikingly, the Pixel Fold seems to have a full-size display screen on the entrance. Many folding telephones that collapse like a guide use a smaller display screen on the entrance, however the Pixel Fold goes large, with an edge-to-edge display screen like those discovered on common, nonfolding smartphones.
Video: Google
The Pixel Fold’s inside display screen would not seem to go edge-to-edge, however as a substitute is nestled inside a slim black bezel. On that folding display screen, we are able to see some Android widgets and consumer interface parts that look as if they have been optimized for the bigger folding display screen. Little doubt, when the Pixel Fold is revealed, the adaptive Android parts will likely be an enormous a part of the demonstration.
There are some chrome accents on the perimeters which might be paying homage to the Professional-level Pixel fashions and a few current flagship-level Samsung Galaxy gadgets. There’s additionally a chrome end utilized to the digital camera bump on the again of the cellphone. (Chrome accents on a cellphone at all times remind me of the Ford Crown Victoria, and I want corporations would cease doing this, as a result of who needs to be reminded of a Crown Vic eight dozen occasions a day? However I digress.) These accents sign that the Pixel Fold will likely be a premium machine.
Additionally they sign a really excessive value. Google has mentioned nothing concerning the value—or the rest actually, apart from displaying the pictures and re-upping the date of the IO keynote—however we are able to assume this foldy will include a price ticket significantly larger than the non-folding Pixels.
Google’s information a few premium, folding smartphone comes at a time when smartphone gross sales are in a deep slump. Additionally, shoppers haven’t responded to folding gadgets as enthusiastically because the smartphone makers experimenting with the shape issue have hoped they would. Possibly the arrival of a folding cellphone made by the identical firm that makes the software program operating on it—the “complete stack” method—would be the nudge that will get this nonetheless awkward {hardware} design out of its area of interest and into the mainstream.
