A while back we caught our first glimpse of the upcoming Google Pixel Fold 2 and it looked rather weird. On the back there was no camera 'visor' anymore, which was instead replaced by a rounded rectangle island with two oval-shaped areas inside of it, stacked on top of each other, carrying the cameras themselves. It just looked unfinished, as a prototype. But it actually seems like Google is going with this design, as today CAD-based renders of the Pixel Fold 2 have been leaked, and the phone looks identical to the one in that hands-on shot from earlier this month.
The visor is indeed gone, replaced by - in
this writer's humble opinion - the ugliest camera island/protrusion in mobile
world history. Nothing is nice about it - not its shape, not its proportions,
not its placement. Anyway, moving on from that, let's note that what we're
seeing here is the Charcoal color version of the upcoming foldable smartphone.
The inner screen has an under-display selfie camera in the top right, which
enables far smaller bezels than in the original Pixel Fold. The outer screen is
6.4" in size (or 6.6" if the corners are factored in), much larger
than its predecessor's, and has a centered hole-punch for a selfie camera.
The inner screen measures 7.9" diagonally
without the corners taken into account - with them it's 8.1". When
unfolded, the phone measures 155.2 x 150.2 x 5.27 mm, which means it's much
squarer than its predecessor, just as has been rumored already. It's also
marginally thinner, which can't hurt. In its folded state, the dimensions
become 155.2 x 77.1 x 10.54 mm, so it's even thinner than what's rumored for
the Galaxy Z Fold6.
The USB-C port, speaker grille, and SIM
tray all live on the lower frame, while the power and volume buttons are on the
right. A secondary speaker grille is up top, along with an antenna line cut
into the metal frame.
According to past rumors, the Pixel Fold 2
might employ the Tensor G4 chipset, which would possibly push its launch to
October alongside the Pixel 9 and Pixel 9 Pro. It's expected to come with 16GB
of RAM, a record for Google so far, and UFS 4.0 storage.
