The hinge is an important component in any foldable smartphone, but Google is particularly excited about the “gearless” hinge on the Pixel 10 Fold.
In a blog post, Google explained how the redesigned hinge helped the Fold to keep the IP68 water resistance available within its standard Pixel 10 Pro handset. A traditional hinge with gears had small spaces had previously prevented the foldable securing a waterproof rating. That’s a big deal when you’re asking users to pay more for a phone while making sacrifices. “You shouldn’t have to give up the normal ways you use a phone to use a foldable,” Google says. Well, quite.
Furthermore, the new hinge enabled the company to create a phone with slimmer bezels, a larger battery (larger than on any other foldable) and a more capacious 6.4-inch cover display on the Pixel 10 Pro Fold. Google also believes the hinge, which users CAMs instead of traditional gears which will enable the hinge to remain durable as time goes on.
“The biggest change is that this is what we call a gearless hinge — which literally means it doesn’t have any gears,” says Pixel phone industrial designer Sangsoo Park. “The team was interested in this new design because gears can cause issues over time for a hinge: They can be damaged and dust can get stuck between them over time, degrading the basic opening and closing experience that is critical on a foldable. A gearless hinge is more reliable — it will continue to work flawlessly over time.”
Overall this seems like a massive upgrade in design for the Pixel Fold series and Google is rightly delighted with its efforts. “We wanted to make a phone that fits into people’s lives today,” says Claude Zellweger, the head of the Pixel industrial design, “and then give them more on top of that.”
Our reviewer gave the Pixel 10 Pro Fold a four-star review from a possible five. He concluded: “The Pixel is still an excellent all-rounder, though, with a very capable set of cameras, decent battery life, and some features you won’t find anywhere else like Qi2 charging and IP68 protection.”
