A YouTuber set out to find out if Samsung’s folding smartphone resistance promises were justified and took the liberty of broadcasting his experience live on YouTube for all to see. And the fact is that the result is quite surprising.
If you were wondering what kind of torture a smartphone that has a hinge can endure, the following is for you. Samsung claims that its folding smartphones can be opened and closed around 200,000 times without the smartphone sustaining any severe damage. Which at the rate of 100 unfoldings per day gives about 5 and a half years of use. A YouTuber therefore decided to take them at their word and set out to test a Galaxy Z Flip 3 until death ensues.
A Polish MrBeast tech version
A Polish YouTuber by the name of Mrkeybrd therefore took pleasure in coming to torture the smartphone live on YouTube for almost 1 whole week. This torture test, called « The Great Folding Test », began on Tuesday June 7 and lasted until Monday June 13. This endurance test, which was the result of a collective effort of volunteers who took turns folding the smartphone at hourly intervals, was able to demonstrate the extreme (and perhaps even a little unexpected) resistance Samsung’s smartphone, although there may have been some issues along the way as we’ll see.
There wasn’t much action in this stream, just a table and a counter that monitored the number of tricks made by each participant. This type of test is generally carried out by machines used by manufacturers to measure the resistance of their products to certain types of wear. Here, real people took care of folding and unfolding the phone, which in itself brings it even closer to real-life conditions than if it had been folded with the precision of a machine, while still adding additional difficulties as you go by putting dust in the hinge for example.
But we couldn’t help but feel at the sight of this stream a little feeling of slightly unhealthy pleasure at the idea that each fold could well be the last. In any case, this is what must have entertained the spectators of this stream which managed to attract almost 1000 people simultaneously to watch a poor little Z Flip undergo this accelerated aging.
What do we learn from this test?
This experiment ended with a total of 418,506 folds, which is equivalent to almost 11 and a half years of use at the rate of 100 openings per day. And what we can say is that this smartphone, although functional at the end of the test, did not come out completely unscathed. We can indeed see that around the 330,000th fold (which is still well beyond what Samsung promises) the resistance of the hinge of the smartphone seems to decrease to such an extent that it ends up opening from itself once closed and can no longer maintain its folded position. The unfolded format also suffers the blow since we notice quite easily at the end of this test that the smartphone no longer unfolds completely at 180° and that it remains “curved” to a certain degree whereas it should normally be able to fully open until it is flat.
However, despite the abused hinge, everything else continued to work perfectly (screen, sound, camera, etc.), even forcing the videographer to finish on drop tests simulating accidental falls to see if they could overcome them. of the smartphone. The Galaxy Z Flip 3 should therefore hold up for a while, especially if you keep it away from micro-debris likely to enter its hinge. According to this test, you shouldn’t have to worry too much about its longevity, unless of course you’re not one to part with your old smartphone easily.
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