A YouTube channel is live-testing the durability of two of the latest foldable phones, the Motorola Razr 40 Ultra and Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5.
YouTuber Mrkeybrd and a crowd of his friends are currently taking it in shifts to manually open and close the folding displays of these two phones.
It’s bad news for Motorola Razr 40 Ultra owners, as the display failed after 126,367 open-close operations. At the time of writing the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 5 is soldiering on, with more than 330,000 open-close movements recorded so far.
Upwards of 800 live viewers have watched the stream, which on the surface looks like one of the dullest things you could watch on YouTube. You see an incredibly bored-looking person opening and closing a foldable phone with a lo-fi counter up front. And, roughly every hour, the person changes.
How strong are foldable phones?
The channel has already posted a video on the subject of why the Motorola Razor 40 Ultra failed after a relatively low number of actuations, despite Motorola claims it should be able to handle 400,000 fold gestures.
“Humans break things faster,” is Mrkeybrd’s conclusion. In lab testing, phone-makers use machines to test the durability of their phones.
A foldable hinge test will be designed to exert even pressure, so that the test is reproducible and will allow engineers to test iterations of a design. It also avoids employees quitting on the spot when they are told to open and close a phone 400,000 times.
The YouTuber test is arguably more representative of real-world use, even if it would not be that useful for phone designers looking to improve their foldables amid the design process.
After the 126,267 foldings, the Motorola Razr 40 Ultra developed a white line across its display.
This is not the first time Mrkeybrd has conducted one of these tests. In 2022, he tested the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3, opening and closing the foldable for almost six days straight, with the help of more than 100 volunteers.
It lasted more than 418,502 open and close gestures. And even then, it was the hinge that failed rather than the display or the screen surface. At this point, the phone would not stay closed or fully open.
The test was the rough equivalent of opening and closing the phone 100 times a day for 11 years. That it lasted so long is a testament to the amount of work Samsung has put into the engineering of its screen structure and hinge design. But will the Galaxy Z Flip 5 do even better? That’s what we are waiting to see.
How old are foldable phones?
Samsung announced its first foldable, the Galaxy X, in 2018. The first you could actually buy was 2019’s Samsung Galaxy Fold.
The best-known YouTube phone torture tester, JerryRigEverything, recently found he was able to shatter the Motorola Razr 40 Ultra’s front screen just with his hands. Simliarly, he was also able to destroy the Google Pixel Fold and its display by attempting to force the hinge open further than its intended fully unfolded position.
