- A South Korean YouTuber Folds and Fends Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 200,000 times in an extreme durability test
- The test is still at the time of writing still live streamed on YouTube
- The phone has survived more than 130,000 almost coherent folds
A South Korean Tech YouTuber has taken the challenge of unfolding and folding the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 200,000 times, putting Samsung’s latest flagship foldable through an extreme durability test.
YouTube Channel Tech It is still at the time of writing still streaming the experimental test that marks interesting developments as they go.
At 6,000 folded bikes, the phone suffered a restart failure, possibly overwhelmed by the constant shift between its folded and unfolded conditions.
At 46,000 cycles, the hinge began to crack – not encouraging to be such a low number of folds, but remember that this test is the longest possible thing from everyday use.
At 75,000 cycles, text that was posted on screen says an “unidentified fluid” began to leak from the hinge. Again, this is exciting, but should not be the cause of alarm unless you also plan to put your Galaxy Z Fold 7 through thousands of folds continuous.
Look at
At the time of writing, livestream has been running for nine hours, with just over 137,000 folded bikes registered. It suggests an average pace of about 4 cycles per second, although the current pace seems to have subsided to about 2.5 cycles per second.
At their current pace, and at the time of release, it will end their mission in about seven hours.
Should you be aware of durability tests?
As we have reported before, Samsung claims that Galaxy Z Fold 7 can withstand 500,000 Fold – Provided you unfold your phone 50 times a day, it’s about 27 year of daily use.
However, there is no really useful way to put this claim to the test – it is not practical or sensible for the daily user to count and log every time they unfold their phone.
Here at Techradar we do not test for durability – although telephone manufacturers always improve their devices and longevity on their devices, there is simply no objective way to test the most durability requirements.
Even quantifiable boundaries, such as 500,000 fold promises from Samsung, can rely on a number of factors such as temperature, frequency of use or the manufacture of discrepancies.
There is still some value in tests like this one – in the latest infamous bending test from YouTuber Jerry Rig Everlything, Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 refused to break in half – it’s about as stump a measurement you might take, but still remarkable for a hinged device.
So while these tests are fun and eye-catching, be sure to check out our guides for the best folding phones and the best Samsung phones to find out how these handsets work in the real world.
