Sometimes paradigm shifts can sneak up on you. Lewis Hamilton might have ruled supreme at Silverstone since 2008 – when he took his first of a record eight wins – but that dominance is a distant memory come lap seven of this year’s British Grand Prix. If Hamilton was hoping for some kind of karmic retribution to help ease his chase of Max Verstappen, the rain-swept climes of yesterday’s qualifying session are nowhere to be seen and any divine safety car-related intervention is firmly off the table – things have irrevocably changed since that wild 2021 season finale in Abu Dhabi.
In an act of partial solidarity with the majority of those who’ve trekked down to Towcester’s world-famous dustbowl on a Sunday afternoon, GQ has not come to Silverstone to watch Red Bull speed on its merry way to Formula 1 history. Rather than draping ourselves from head-to-toe in LH44 merch and cursing the sight of a team that will soon clock a record 12th consecutive win in Hungary, we’re here to get to grips with Google’s first foldable smartphone: the Pixel Fold.
Much like that epochal face-off two years ago at the Yas Marina Circuit, everything seems to have changed for folding phones in 2023. According to Google’s own Trends data, searches for these devices have grown 910 per cent in the past five years and there’s a fair scattering across them across the trackside populace, along with the usual parade of gold Rolexes, luminous baseball caps and (for some gloriously incongruent reason) the distant strains of Damien Lewis belting out “God Save The King” with only a saxophonist for accompaniment.
When the Pixel Fold was first conceived five years ago, a foldable’s launch would broadly be considered a success if it didn’t break within its first week of ownership and spur a global PR disaster. Now Samsung has enough confidence in its latest efforts that Sydney Sweeney is fronting the Galaxy Z Flip 5’s ad campaign and one of the hottest phones of the summer is a Motorola Razr of all things. Given Apple’s own foldable isn’t expected for until 2025 at the earliest, the timing feels opportune for Google’s Pixel Fold to arrive.
At just 12.1mm tall when clasped together, it’s the thinnest such device available and comes saddled with far fewer compromises than any would-be rival that we’ve used before, including the quick-sharp Tensor G2 chip and some of its maker's most-advanced camera tech. When a Red Arrows flyby scythes through the grey skies above us at 645 mph, we’re able to zoom in and capture its dizzying pursuits without the photo resembling one of Vincent van Gough’s lesser oil-splattered canvases.
As “lights out” moments go, this is one of Google’s most significant in the past decade. Perhaps not as all-consuming as the company’s rush to fend off ChatGPT’s advances, but no Pixel has been this important since the original launched in 2016. Helming this half-decade race to market has been Google’s director of design, Claude Zellweger. Now in the second stint of his career designing smartphones, having spent a few years working in virtual reality, the Fold is his most luxurious creation yet. Inspired by jewellery and made using some of the most cutting-edge and sustainable materials available, its £1,749 price tag is a symbol of intent as much as anything else. To find out the story behind the Fold, its scrapped prototypes, decadent use of materials and what’s next for the series, we spoke to the man himself…
Smartphones have a fairly staid design language nowadays, how difficult is it to make a folding phone?
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July 28, 2023 at 10:08PM
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How Google made the Pixel Fold – its most revolutionary smartphone yet - British GQ
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