Ask Paul: February 6 ⭐️
Happy Friday! Let's kick off the weekend with some great reader questions. After all, I have a new game to play.
📱 The hybrid dream remains elusive
dremy1011 asks:
Is your wife still using the Pixel 10 Pro Fold? If so, what are her thoughts on it? You also mentioned that you prefer the iPhone (at least for now), I thought for sure the two in one nature might have been enough to replace your iPhone and iPad!
There's a lot that goes into this and I do have reviews of both phones coming, hopefully soon. But the short version is that (mostly) eliminating camera quality from the iPhone/Pixel comparison made me realize that I do prefer iOS, overall, to Pixel Android. (To be fair, a big part of this is hardware as well.) And that I would very much prefer a folding iPhone, which does not exist, to a folding Android phone of any kind.
That said, the Pixel Fold is successful as a folding smartphone in that it works as expected. And I think many can and will replace two devices, meaning a traditional smartphone and a mini-tablet, with this or a similar folding phone.
I can't. I used an iPad mini for several months last year and it's a fine device, but I need a bigger screen. I've been using an 11-inch iPad Air since, and that works well. But now that iPadOS 26 is out, I kind of wish it were bigger for the laptop-like use cases. Regardless, I find myself back in that familiar "right tool for the job" place. I personally prefer a standalone phone and a standalone tablet.
My wife could switch to the Fold and probably will once I review it. But she's now using my former iPad mini to read in the mornings, having previously used her phone (Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra, I think). All things being equal, I don't think she cares about the iPad per se, and she still reads on a Kindle Colorsoft at night before bed. But the reason I had her try the iPad in the first place was because we're paying for whatever Apple One subscription, which the kids both use as well, and I thought she would really like Apple News. Which she does. And you need an Apple device to read Apple News.
That won't prevent her from switching the Fold for a phone, and she'll like using the bigger screen when it makes sense to do so. But I don't see her dropping the iPad mini or Kindle. So in a way, a primary selling point of the Fold, its ability to replace two devices, won't be a factor.
I think that's OK. The one thing I really paid attention to with the Fold was whether the ability to open it up and have that larger display would matter in a day-to-day sense. And it does. I'll go into more detail in my review, but in part because we're getting older and our eyesight isn't great, having that bigger display really does make a difference.
So maybe I will use some future folding phone whether it's an iPhone or something else. But I suspect I will also keep using an iPad. And a laptop. And that's just me being stuck in my way of doing things to some degree. But that's ...
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