Google’s Pixel Fold was launched during Google I/O in May. Although it is not yet clear whether the smartphone will be able to establish itself in a market now full of alternatives such as that of leaflets, some Big G engineers have confirmed that Google has been working on a second foldable smartphoneonly to delete it some time ago.
The news comes from a statement by Ivy Ross, director of design for hardware products at Google, released during an episode of the Made by Google podcast. Ross, in particular, explained that “I’m really proud of the team, because there was another foldable smartphone that we had created, but decided not to release. We said to each other “no, it’s still not good enough“, and we waited until we realized we could make something that was of good quality or better than commercial alternatives”.
Behind this mysterious device, therefore, there seems to be the reason for much of the troubled development of Google Pixel Fold. It is indeed no mystery that the production of Pixel Fold has restarted from scratch between late 2021 and early 2022, leading to a delay of more than a year from what Big G originally expected. This could mean that the company’s ever-released device had the same form factor “wallet” of the smartphone then put on the market, and maybe it was that Pixel Fold at a budget price rumbled at the beginning of 2022.
The other possibility, by far the more intriguing one, is that Google was working on a clamshell smartphone similar to Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 and OPPO Find N2 Flip, which he would then have decided to put aside due to hardware or software problems. If we consider that Ross has not categorically ruled out the release of this smartphone that Big G has decided not to publish, it is possible that it really was a clamshell. And, on the other hand, the rumors about a possible Google Pixel Flip have multiplied in recent weeks, after the I / O in May.