Google has had a mixed track record with Pixel hardware, but it’d be hard to fault the remarkable reinvention of its latest foldable. The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold is so different from the first Fold that it’s nearly unrecognizable as a successor. My initial hands-on experience was positive, and I’m fairly confident it’ll sit at or near the top of the best foldable phone list.
The device might even have beaten out my other favorite foldable, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6, but for one major missing feature: stylus support.
You may not care. Most of the best smartphones don’t have a stylus or don’t support digital stylus input. You can use a soft-tipped analog stylus on almost any touchscreen smartphone, but it doesn’t recognize pressure or tilt, and you can’t rest your hand on the screen while you write or sketch. These capabilities are especially important if you plan on drawing on the screen.
Samsung Galaxy S 24 Ultra (and previous Samsung Galaxy Notes) owners have long enjoyed an integrated stylus that slides out of the body and is ready for use on the big-screen device at a moment’s notice. Samsung’s Galaxy Fold series has had similar stylus support for a couple of generations now. Samsung isn’t giving you an S Pen for Fold for free with the purchase of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6; it will charge you $99 for the privilege. Still, it’s a worthy investment.
Stylus support is important on foldable phones because of their secretive displays. The Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold isn’t just a 6.3-inch, slightly thick handset. It’s a capable Android and Gemini AI-infused smartphone with a hidden 8-inch tablet display. That’s the only reason to spend $1,799 / £1,749 on such a device – for access to a big screen in a form factor that’s not much bigger than a standard phone. And when you have a touchscreen that size, you’ll want to use it for all the things you could do on a similarly sized tablet screen.
When I first tried out the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold, there wasn’t time to delve into secondary features like stylus support. I thought it might support one, but I wasn’t sure.
When I asked a Google executive about it, he told me there was no stylus support (and Google doesn’t sell a stylus for it) and seemed rather bewildered that I would want such a thing at all. Don’t most digital artists, he asked, use larger Wacom tablets?
Wacom tablets were part of my early digital drawing experience, but when the iPad arrived I switched to those and, at first, dumb styluses. The arrival of the Apple Pencil (and apps like Procreate) was a revelation.
I explained that as an amateur artist and lifelong doodler, I’ll draw on a screen (or piece of paper) of any size, and that as part of my ongoing Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 tests, I’d been doodling on the 7.6-inch flexible display. Of course, it’s not exactly the same as drawing on an iPad. The stylus is relatively small, but not too small. The tip is a little soft to protect the flexible OLED, but I actually quite like the feel of it. Then there’s the crease in the screen, but I’ve found that I don’t notice it when I’m deep into doodling.
What to do with a folding screen
My point to this exec was that, yeah, if I’m going to have a hidden 8-inch display in my pocket, I expect to be able to whip it out, unfold it, and start doodling. Unfortunately, the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold apparently lacks the necessary screen digitizer layer that would enable stylus support. I could grab a soft analog stylus and try that, but since stylus input isn’t explicitly supported, I’m concerned about the risk of damaging the flexible display.
Granted, adding a digitizing layer to a foldable phone’s display isn’t easy. When Samsung decided to add the capability to the Z Fold 5 in 2022, executives told me they had to figure out how to get a rigid copper layer underneath the bendable OLED. They ended up breaking the panel in half, placing one half on each side of the 7.6-inch screen.
While you could argue that Google made similar, innovative leaps with the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, giving the device a larger footprint (a wider cover screen and a larger foldable display), the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 6 already wins in the creativity department.
Maybe Google will include digitizing stylus support in the next foldable Pixel. I’ve already put in my request.