I shouldn't like the Pixel Fold, but I do. Here are three things I love and hate about it.

The Google Pixel Fold is easily the most important phone to release this year so far because it represents Google — the maker of Android — embracing the foldable form factor. The Pixel Fold also finally ends Samsung's monopoly on its largest market: North America.

But it's lacking in a few key areas. I've been using the Pixel Fold for the past three weeks, and I like the phone, but it's hard to explain why. I have multiple foldables in my possession right now that are lighter, thinner, and with better screens and processors, and new versions of many are on the way. If somebody asked me for a foldable recommendation, I wouldn't pick the Pixel Fold. Yet, I'm still using it as my phone of choice.

So what is going on? It's the little things, I suppose. None of them are major, but they all add up to make for a fun and enjoyable user experience. At the end of the day, a phone is our most used daily item, so how it makes us feel matters more than numbers on a spec sheet. To better summarize my points, I should break down why I shouldn't like the Pixel Fold and then why I still do.

The folding display panel is objectively inferior

The Google Pixel Fold's main screen is good in a vacuum. If you're jumping over from a normal phone and you're experiencing the joy of getting a larger screen from a pocket device for the first time, you'll be impressed. But the display panel is not great if you have other foldable screens to compare it to. Its maximum brightness is lower than the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4's and every recent Chinese foldable from Vivo, Xiaomi, Oppo, and Honor. It's also harder to see in direct sunlight than any recent flagship phone. Plus, its crease, while less visible than Samsung's gutter, is still far more prominent than the crease in, say, the Xiaomi Mix Fold 2 or Oppo Find N2.

But more damningly, Google is using fewer layers for coating the Pixel Fold's bendy screen compared to other brands, so the screen is more reflective and feels less like glass than any foldable display from the last couple of years. It's softer to the touch and just feels flimsier.

Tensor G2 runs hot all the time

The Tensor G2 is not the most energy-efficient chip, and it runs warmer than others from Qualcomm, MediaTek, or Apple. We have known this since we reviewed the Pixel 7 series last fall, but the problem is much worse on the Pixel Fold, likely because the device has a thinner chassis, so there's less room for heat dissipation.

The biggest problem is that once the chip warmed up (and it doesn't take a lot to get there), it simply doesn't cool down quickly. I can certainly push the chip enough on other phones where they'll get warm, but if I put it back in my pocket and not touch it for 10 minutes, the phone cool down. Not with the Pixel Fold.

Whether I was in Los Angeles or Paris, once it heated up, it would stay warm for the next hour, even when not in use. In places with extremely hot weather, like Las Vegas, the phone basically stayed warm the entire day. It was actually comical; every single time I pulled the phone from my pocket, it'd still be warm, even if I hadn't used it in 20-30 minutes, And it wasn't like I was standing in Las Vegas hea. I was indoors most of the time.

The silver lining is that the phone still behaved mostly fine, even when warm. I did notice it became very hard for me to put together an Instagram Reel (I'd place the clips in the timeline, but it wouldn't play), and the display refresh rate clearly dipped to 60Hz, but it wasn't so bad that the phone was unusable.

Still, this level of performance shouldn't be acceptable for an $1,800 phone. I had other phones on me during the same trip, and they ran perfectly fine in the same Las Vegas heat.

The Pixel Fold is heavy, especially compared to ultra-light Chinese foldables

Tipping the scales at 283g, the Pixel Fold is a heavy phone, and its smaller-than-usual dimensions when folded make it feel even denser. When I have the Fold in the pocket of one of my gym shorts, it actively weighs down one side, which is especially notable when I'm running.

The Pixel's heftiness is noticeable even when compared to the Galaxy Z Fold 4 (which is 20g lighter). After testing the super light Huawei Mate X3 (239g) and Honor Magic V2 (231g) over the past few weeks, it's very hard to go back to the Pixel Fold. The Magic V2, in particular, makes the Pixel Fold feel like a brick.

Objectively speaking, these are very damning flaws. The Pixel Fold is a foldable phone that has a worse screen, larger build, and inferior brain than everything else on the market. But what it does well are more than the sum of its parts, and those are what's keeping my SIM in the Pixel Fold (for now, anyway).

The Pixel Fold's cameras are (almost) the best in any foldable right now

Google's Pixel phones have always been known for their photography prowess, and the Pixel Fold continues that tradition with what is, in my opinion, the second-best foldable camera right now. I've tested them all, and once again, Google's uncanny software image processing makes all the difference, especially since the Pixel Fold's camera hardware actually isn't that impressive. The 48MP main camera has a tiny 1/2-inch sensor, smaller than what's seen in Samsung or Oppo's foldables. There's a periscope zoom lens, but it's also a very tiny sensor, so images are quite soft if you pixel peep. Honestly, the camera hardware here probably belongs in a $500 slab phone.

But Google's software helps this otherwise mid-range optical hardware achieve greatness. Dynamic range is always on point because the combination of pixel binning and night mode helps produce well-lit photos even in dark scenes. I'm also a fan of Google's color science. It's not actually accurate since Google likes to cool photos, but that gives city shots at night a cyberpunk vibe that I adore. Just look at the photos below. I think the Pixel Fold's cameras are just more pleasing than what other foldables can muster.

As I mentioned earlier, the periscope zoom lens produces soft-looking photos if you zoom in, but Google's software sharpening does a good enough job of masking it. If I'm just uploading them to social media, they make for quite good 5x zoom shots.

But as I said, it's not the best foldable camera. The Huawei Mate X3 has a better camera, with much larger image sensors and robust software image processing to call its own. But because the Mate X3 cannot run Google Mobile Services, I can't use this phone as my full-time daily driver, so the Pixel Fold wins it as a result.

Tensor G2 may not be powerful or fast, but it's smart

Sure, the Tensor G2 runs hotter and slower than other SoC. Fortunately, what the Tensor G2 lacks in raw power, it makes up for with smarts.

Tensor was designed to handle Google's machine learning algorithm, which is particularly smart at processing images and understanding human voices. The Pixel Fold, for example, has the same jaw-droppingly accurate voice dictation that's been a strength of the Pixel 6 and 7 series. This voice dictation can be used to great effect with voice recording, which can transcribe words being spoken in real-time. There's also Pixel's voice typing, which automatically adds punctuation and even gives me the option to send and enter text via voice commands without needing me to touch the phone at all. I mentioned this in my reviews for the last couple of Pixel phones, but the voice typing is so good on that it makes me touch my phone less in the long run.

I love its small notebook form factor

This last bit is subjective, but I much prefer the Pixel Fold's folded shape than the elongated Galaxy Z Fold series. Lots of people have said the Pixel Fold's closed form resembles a thick passport, but I think a more apt comparison is a small black Moleskin notebook. In fact, I like the Pixel's folded form even more than the Huawei Mate X3 or Honor Magic V2, which feel like normal slab smartphones when folded.

The Pixel Fold's slightly stumpier, wider folded form allows for a landscape screen when opened, which I prefer over Huawei and Honor's square-shaped main screens. It actually feels like a book, which allows me to hold the device like one as I read e-books or comics on the Amazon Kindle app.

Your mileage may vary, but isn't that what this is all about ultimately? The Pixel Fold is a phone that I really like holding and using, even if the screen is dimmer and feels more like plastic than others, and even if the chip runs hot and bogs down with just marginal use in the summer. There's just something about this phone that I like. That's bound to change in the coming weeks and months, especially with Samsung's Z Fold 5 on the horizon, but for now, the Pixel Fold is my daily driver, despite all its flaws.