A group of enthusiastic streamers had a great idea, that being to livestream themselves putting a Galaxy Z TriFold through a 200,000 fold test, the same durability test that Samsung puts the device through when building the device. Almost an hour into the eighth day of streaming, the device’s hinge system met catastrophic failure.
While appearing to not be under too strict of testing conditions (these are just some dudes sitting in a room), the device’s hinge system met failure at fold number 144,984. As the streamers describe, there was total “hinge elasticity disappearance.” Even before failure, at fold number 61,212 there was a creaking sound coming from the left hinge. At fold 120,157 there was a similar creaking that came from the right hinge.
Even after what everyone would deem failure, the streamers kept on folding. The device became noticeably harder to fold, but it still folded, so the test could continue. The stream wrapped up day 8 at 150,001 folds.
Samsung tests each device for 200,000 folds, but even if it was only 150,000, that’s a lot of opening and closing of the device. I’m not sure how many opens and closes a foldable user does per day on average, but I have to assume it would take a while to get to 150,000. Point being, these mechanical breakdowns can happen, which is why Samsung has a warranty system. It’s a complex hinge system, so we can’t expect perfection. I think it’s impressive that it had no notable issues until over 61K folds.
And props to these streamers for sitting there and doing this test. It’s boring, yet very important work.