Patent drawings and a mysterious camera icon prove that Google will bring a foldable smartphone onto the market. The premiere of the "Pixel Notepad" could be next spring.
After Samsung has already released the fourth generation of the Galaxy Z Fold and other manufacturers such as Oppo are also bringing devices with flexible displays onto the market, Google will apparently soon be launching a folding smartphone as well. According to rumors, it could be called "Pixel Notepad" and will be presented next spring.
The latest references to the Google butterfly are patent drawings published by "91mobiles". They were submitted back in June 2021 and presumably bear little resemblance to the actual device. But they reveal some details that confirm previous rumors and clues.
Among other things, you can see on the drawings that the "Pixel Notepad" has no hole in the inner display for a front camera. Instead, it is housed in a relatively wide frame. That matches an enigmatic icon that "9to5Google" spotted in Google's camera app. It obviously shows a folding smartphone without a display hole that is supposed to be folded.
According to "GoogleWatchBlog", this could mean that the device does not have a camera on the inside. However, it could also be an indication that the camera in the frame is still good enough for video chats, but it is better to use the outside camera for selfies.
Basically, according to the drawings, the "Pixel Notepad" is very similar to the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold, which is also suggested by pictures of a prototype published on Weibo. However, it could be much handier. According to "91mobiles", it is rumored that the external display of the Google folder is not as elongated as that of Samsung's device.
Instead, similar to the Oppo Find N available in China, it could have a 5.8-inch screen in a wider and shorter aspect ratio. This in turn would have the disadvantage that the approximately 7-inch internal display would be quite square, which would waste a lot of space with black bars in videos.
It is considered certain that the "Pixel Notepad" will be equipped with a Google Tensor chip. According to "91mobiles", the camera equipment could consist of a wide-angle and a super wide-angle camera, each with 12 megapixels (MP). As with the current Pixel smartphones, they are probably in a wide black bar. There are also two selfie and video chat cameras with 8 MP resolution inside and outside.
Rumor has it that Google has postponed the release of its moth several times, with the first presentation supposedly taking place in autumn 2021. "Android Central" is now speculating that the device will be presented at the upcoming Google I/O developer conference in spring and could be available from summer. There may also be a first glimpse of it this fall when the Pixel 7 smartphone duo is unveiled. Google has done a similar thing with the Pixel Watch, which is about to be launched.
