Google Pixel

Coming from the z fold to this one, I definitely use the inner screen less, and that's Google's fault. The z folds outer screen is nice for just quick stuff but that's about it, forcing you to open it up. Once you do, the experience completely changes and it's magical. Samsung forces apps to full screen and with the phones default orientation being portrait, I basically have never had an app not look decent. Poorly optimized with a bit of white space? Sure. But all in all everything worked great on the phone and I loved every second of it.

Now Google's approach is quite a bit different. With its default orientation being landscape, that puts the onus completely on developers to create brand new interfaces for their apps with a focus on the horizontal. That is SUCH a harder task to deal with than Samsung's approach of just forcing things to fill. I'd say maybe 50% of the apps I use just don't support landscape at all and have massive black bars. Another 30% "support" landscape by just filling things out with white space. The last 20% are optimized for foldables and they are a joy to use.

Ultimately, I'm not sure who has the right set up, or if there even is one. Samsung's version is definitely a lot easier to work with, since most apps "just work." But that comes at the cost of having the ridiculous cover screen and never really taking advantage of the landscape side of things. Google has the sexy passport thing going on but only has its own apps and like three others that actually use it right. Maybe one day google can take its role as developer of an ecosystem seriously and actually push itself and other developers commit to supporting foldables (LOL yeah right).

I'm enjoying it so far but I won't lie; I did get cold feet for a while and almost returned it and kept my z fold 4. The battery was pretty rough for the first few days and the phone was getting HOT just like browsing lemmy and watching YouTube. But I upgraded to android 14 beta and now I'm getting shit like this, which is incredible considering I'd MAYBE get 5 hours of screen on time with my z fold 4. The heating problems went away too so I basically don't have any complaints now.

When next year's phones come out I'll probably swap back to the z fold unless google does something incredible with gen 2. I just don't see them being capable of supporting an ecosystem like this in the long term and would rather bet on Samsung. And if Samsung can finally jam that s-pen inside of the z fold 6 it's pretty much gg.

I semi agree. I wouldn't say it's 90/10, but close... Maybe 80/20?

I ran a Fold for a while, and I was probably 80% inside screen and 20% outside. The Samsung cover screen sucks. It's basically useless. The Pixel Fold outside screen is more useful to me than a regular phone - it's not as tall so tapping stuff at the top isn't as much of a pain.

But the Pixel inside screen experience is just worse. Samsung allowing forcing apps to use the full screen works way better than dealing with snap/Instagram/etc that just don't support it so you get a stupid letterboxed experience. And it's centered so you get the seam taking up like 30% of the used screen space. Its multiwindowing is just plain worse than Samsungs too.

But the inside screen opens the natural way you'd want to use it.

Foldables are still a little clunky just because the software isn't there and apps don't support it. It's something I would recommend to geeky/techy people, but not to people who aren't into that sort of thing but it's still not QUITE there yet.

My main complaint is the cover is a touch too wide... Trying to reach the bottom left back button is a little too much of a stretch. And the fingerprint reader could be a bit better - the folds works better, but the Pixels still is better than most in screen fingerprint readers.

Not a pixel fold user, but I do have a zfold 4 and just wanted to say I personally love the outer display and use it about 85% of the time. I'd really love to hear from others that said it was unusable, why they think that? I have huge hands and previously owned many big phones but I absolutely love the candy bar form factor of the outer display. For me the inner display is useful for content but not nearly as useful for a text, a scroll fest, or most of my usual smartphone tasks. It'll take a lot to get me to go back to a non folding device....maybe a good Linux phone would.

So far I love it. I'm maybe 60/40 or 50/50 external to internal. I don't use a lot of apps though, I mostly stick with doing things through the browser which doesn't have a lot of issues using up the screen. When I do use the internal screen, it tends to be two apps at once, like podcast player and workout tracker, etc, so again no wasted space. My biggest gripe is the home screens and the taskbar. I had to switch to the Android 14 beta to fix the task bar with third party launchers. The pixel launcher forces too much google down your throat and you can't have distinct layouts for the external home and internal. I've settled on total launcher for now but it has its own minor set of issues. 14 seems to have fixed lot but odd stuff, like the pixel launcher, seem to be missing options foldable wise.