After a few days of use, here are our first impressions on the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold with its stunning hardware and great battery life.
The new aspect ratio is worse at triggering tablet app layouts in my use so far, something that the original Fold was the best in the industry with. Now, behavior is similar to the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and OnePlus Open, where you’ll often get stuck with a stretched-out phone version of an app.
Saved you a click
This. They fucked up the one thing that made the original the best Foldable ever made IMO. Hopefully they get it right next year.
Is the downside the modem?
“The new aspect ratio is worse at triggering tablet app layouts in my use so far, something that the original Fold was the best in the industry with. Now, behavior is similar to the Galaxy Z Fold 6 and OnePlus Open, where you’ll often get stuck with a stretched-out phone version of an app.”
Sounds like a clear failure to have a reasonable API. I’d think apps shouldn’t have to guess based on aspect ratio, they should be told in some way which layout to use.
Hi! Professional android dev here who has done some work on migrating an app to foldable:
Apps don’t guess. If they’re using XML they make specific layouts for a given width of screen.
If they’re using compose it’s even easier: the entire UI library is built for adaptive layouts. The main issue is a lot of apps are not in compose UI (or not entirely) - and material 3 has excellent components but it’s even less widely used.
Tldr: tech debt
A potential cause of the wonkiness is explicitly setting
resizeableActivity="false"in the app manifest.Hold on now, let us not start using logic when referring to computer programming here. It’s all magic and bumbling around on a keyboard.
Really curious to see how the modem stacks up, but I also guess reviewers given demo devices were told to not talk about or play down the modem performance, rather than fix the problem.
Downside - Google
