While Google has yet to announce its long-awaited folding phone, we might have finally gotten our first clue as to quite how powerful this new handset will be.
The Google Pixel Fold isn’t expected to launch until May 2023 (according to the latest rumors), but that hasn’t stopped an apparent leak of the phone’s performance from springing this side of the new year.
According to a Geekbench post – a site where users can submit performance scores for various gadgets like smartphones and PCs – someone submitted a score for a device called the Google Felix, which runs on Android 13. While Google doesn’t yet make a device known as the Felix, it’s the name that is believed to be attached to its folding 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. As we'd expect, then, the Felix achieves a benchmark score that falls within the range we've seen the Pixel 7 Pro returning.
Assuming that the Google Felix is indeed the Google Pixel Fold, then this score suggests users will be in for a treat when it launches in 2023.
That said, we still have to take all of this information with a pinch of salt. For one thing, we can’t yet know for sure 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 helpful, they aren’t the be-all and end-all of comparisons.
By that, we mean that even though the Pixel 7 Pro and Felix score similarly in the benchmark, they could perform very differently under real-world conditions. Given its rumored 7.6-inch OLED primary display, the Google Felix / Pixel Fold could be less power-efficient than the 7 Pro, causing it to perform less well under normal use.
Additionally, these specs aren’t 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 were launched). However, the folding phones’ camera and battery capacity 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 even 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, Google might be about to treat us to one of the best foldable phones yet released.
