Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold review: finally, a more durable foldable

It’s one thing to know that the folding phone you’re using is fully dust resistant. It’s an entirely different thing to watch an $1,800 phone with delicate mechanical parts sink half an inch into the sand with the screen wide open.

There’s more to that story, but the short version is that the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold was fine. That’s probably thanks to its IP68 rating, marking full dust and water resistance, which is a first for a folding phone. Up to now, it’s been hard to recommend spending nearly $2,000 for a less durable phone when basically every non-folding flagship, from the $500 Pixel 9A on up, is rated IP68.

I took the 10 Pro Fold to Seattle’s premier man-made beach, intending to get some photos of the phone gently resting on the sand. I set it down, screen unfolded, thinking it would just rest on top of the sand without really putting the hinge in jeopardy. This is not how sand works, and it got everywhere immediately. I could see it in the hinge, around the borders of the screen — all the places it shouldn’t be.

Worse, the 10 Pro Fold got a baptism in saltwater a few moments later. I set it down for a photo at the water’s edge, thinking I could snatch it out of the way if a wave came up far enough. This is not how waves work, and the phone got half soaked before I was able to grab it. Reader: I thought this phone was cooked. I could hear a crackling sound when I opened and closed the phone from tiny particles in the hinge. And saltwater is bad for any phone — that IP rating only applies to fresh water.

Aside from the crunching sound and some visible grains of sand wedged into the hinge, the phone wasn’t acting up at all. I used some compressed air on the hinge when I got it back home, which took care of the unsettling sounds, at least. Five days later it’s still working fine; you’d never know it had a brush with death.

I do not recommend trying any of this with the 10 Pro Fold, and it’s hard to say for sure if the added water and dust resistance really saved the phone or not. It’s also possible that it might suffer problems later from this accidental torture test. But for now, the Fold fared better than I expected. This gives me a lot of hope for its long-term survival in less harsh conditions, even knowing it won’t be waterproof and dustproof forever as sealants wear away.

More good news: Battery life on the 10 Pro Fold is fine. But like with any other folding phone, it’s wildly dependent on how you use the thing. On a lighter day mostly on Wi-Fi with minimal time spent on the big inner screen, I was down to about 60 percent by bedtime. A heavier day out and about with lots of time using the inner screen pushed the battery down into the 30s by bedtime.

There’s an adaptive battery setting, enabled by default, to “continuously optimize how apps use battery,” which does seem to help — though it warns that some notifications may be delayed. I discovered this setting later in my testing period, and I have a vague memory of some Threads notifications coming in slowly over the past week, but couldn’t really say for sure if the adaptive battery was at fault. In any case, my more important notifications were all delivered on time and the battery consistently lasted all day, even on the days I was hard on it.

I like the shape of the 10 Pro Fold. The screen is slightly wider than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7’s; it feels right for running a couple of apps side by side and makes the outer screen feel normal. But there’s no denying that this is a heavy phone — especially having used the ridiculously slim and light Z Fold 7 earlier this year. (The Pixel 10 Pro weighs about 16 percent more than the Z Fold 7, and about 9 percent more than an iPhone 17 Pro Max.)

But the 10 Pro’s Qi2 support comes in handy here; in addition to tossing it on a Qi2 charging stand at the end of the day, I’ve been using the magnetic ring stand as a kind of PopSocket to help get a more comfortable grip when holding the phone for a long time. Using the ring’s stand function with the phone unfolded is really handy, too, making it easy to prop up the phone to watch a video or follow a recipe. Google is definitely not the first to make this kind of ring accessory, and previously you could use this kind of thing on a folding phone by adding a case with magnets. But having this kind of utility case-free is something I really appreciated while using the Fold.

Both the outer and inner screens get a little brighter than on the 9 Pro Fold, and the outer screen is a touch bigger thanks to a slimmer metal border on the hinge side. On a warm day using the phone in direct sunlight, I got a few minutes with the screen at its highest brightness setting before it got too hot and dimmed down. It was still usable, but I wouldn’t count on getting peak brightness for too long in a warm climate.

Outside of that, I don’t have any complaints about day-to-day performance. The 10 Pro Fold runs Diablo Immortal at the highest settings available on the phone (no ray tracing here) without getting uncomfortably warm or dropping frames. Most of the AI features available on the 10 Pro and 10 Pro XL are on the Fold, excluding the AI zoom mode, which is probably for the best. I continue to find Magic Cue helpful for turning plans in my texts into actual calendar events, and I spent a decent chunk of time brainstorming with Gemini reasons why my cake batter was coming out lumpy. Don’t expect anything life-changing from the AI on the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, or any phone really, but as far as intelligence goes it’s starting to show some promise.

It’s weird that the Fold is the most expensive phone in Google’s Pixel 10 series and yet has the worst camera specs, but that’s been the folding phone conundrum from day one. The 48-megapixel main and the 10.8-megapixel 5x telephoto are shared by the base model Pixel 10. While it’s nice to have an optical zoom at all, it’s a smaller sensor than the one on the other 10 Pro phones and details look muddy even in decent light. The main camera is fine, but quality diminishes faster in low light compared to the bigger sensor on the other Pro phones. If image quality is a top priority, a slab-style phone is still your best bet.

Looking at it one way, the 10 Pro Fold is a minor update at best. It gained some magnets, a new IP rating, and not much else. From another angle, those updates are huge. The lack of dust resistance has been the number one reason I don’t recommend foldables to more people. I don’t want to declare this a breakthrough based on one week of use and a single experience at the beach, but also, the hinge was crackling and the phone is fine. That’s one impressive data point, and I hope it spurs the rest of the industry to follow suit.

Mostly, I’m glad that something as basic as choice exists in this category, which is small to begin with, and even tinier if you live in the US. If you’re easy on your tech and a slimmer, lighter folding phone is more appealing, then the Galaxy Z Fold 7 exists for you.

If you want a little more insurance against dust damage and don’t mind a bigger device, the 10 Pro Fold is your winner. It’s still heavier and pricier than a regular phone, but that big inner screen is easier to celebrate when one of the device’s major drawbacks is removed. And if you end up bringing this phone to the beach, you probably shouldn’t set it down right on top of the sand — but it has a decent chance of surviving if you do.

Photography by Allison Johnson / The Verge