A YouTube live-stream approaching a week in length is showing Samsung’s latest Galaxy Z Flip5 device enduring more than 300 000 openings and closings in a test of its endurance.
The video, which began ob 2 August and has had hundreds of mesmerised viewers at any one time, pit the Samsung Electronics handset against Motorola’s Razr 40 Ultra to see how well the two foldable phones stack up against each other and their manufacturers’ claims.
To make foldable smartphones, companies have had to invent entirely new hinges, which fold the device flat without ruining the screen inside and are sturdy enough to withstand daily use.
Read: Samsung doubles down on folding phones
A rotating team of testers has been repeatedly flipping open and shut the two rival gadgets until they fail. For 24 hours a day, the only sounds have been the click of the phone closing, the occasional squeak of hinges and the odd sigh from the designated flipper.
On a web page outlining the thinking behind what’s been dubbed The Great Folding Test Vol. II, organisers wrote: “If a machine folds a smartphone hundreds of thousands of times in a lab, does anybody care? What about if people fold it by hand?”
Last year, in the original test, the Galaxy Z Flip3 broke down at about 418 500 folds. This year, the Razr tapped out at flip number 126 367 while the Galaxy Z Flip5 still endures well past 315 000 folds.
An issue with the hinge was recorded at 223 000 flips, and the phone no longer stays perfectly flat when open, but that’s still well above Samsung’s advertised testing metric of 200 000 cycles of opening and closing. — Alex Willson, (c) 2023 Bloomberg LP