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While Google has yet to announce its long-awaited foldable phone, we may have finally gotten our first idea of just how powerful this new handset will be.
The Google Pixel Fold isn’t expected to launch until May 2023 (according to the latest rumours), but that hasn’t prevented an apparent performance leak from the phone this side of the new year.
According to a Geekbench post (opens in new tab) – a site where users can submit performance scores for various gadgets such as smartphones and PCs – someone has submitted a score for a device called the Google Felix, which runs on Android 13. While Google is not making a device known as the Felix yet, it is the name believed to be attached to the foldable smartphone, suggesting that this is our first look at what the phone is capable of.
In the post, we see that the Google Felix uses the same 8-core processor (Google’s Tensor G2) found in the Google Pixel 7 and Google Pixel 7 Pro, and that it comes with the same amount of RAM as the Pro. So, as we would expect, the Felix achieves a benchmark score that falls within the range we’ve seen the Pixel 7 Pro return (opens in new tab).
Assuming the Google Felix is indeed the Google Pixel Fold, this score suggests users are in for a treat when it launches in 2023.
That said, we should still take all this information with a grain of salt. For starters, we can’t yet be sure that this is indeed the Pixel Fold – it could be any Google smartphone being developed under the codename Google Felix. For another, while benchmarks can be useful, they’re not the only thing comparisons are about.
By that we mean that while the Pixel 7 Pro and Felix score similarly in the benchmark, they could perform very differently in real-world conditions. Given the rumored 7.6-inch primary OLED screen, the Google Felix/Pixel Fold could be less power efficient than the 7 Pro, degrading its performance in normal use.
Moreover, these specifications are not the only ones that matter. The Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 and Galaxy Z Fold 3 offer similar performance to the Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra and Galaxy S21 Ultra, respectively (the company’s flagships when the folding phones launched). However, the camera and battery capacity of the foldable phones were both inferior to the Ultra phones, despite the handsets costing more. As such, we wouldn’t be surprised if the Google Pixel Fold had to make similar sacrifices in terms of its other specs to accommodate its design.
We’ll have to wait and see what Google announces in 2023 – if it unveils a Pixel Fold at all – but this leak certainly has us excited. If the Pixel Fold can match the performance of the Pixel 7 Pro without making too many sacrifices, then Google is about to treat us to one of the best foldable phones released to date.