- A South Korean YouTuber is folding and unfolding the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 200,000 times in an extreme durability test
- The test is, at the time of writing, still being livestreamed on YouTube
- The phone has survived more than 130,000 near-consecutive folds
A South Korean tech YouTuber has taken on 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, at the time of writing, still streaming the experimental test, marking interesting developments as they go.
At 6,000 fold-unfold cycles, the phone suffered a reboot error, possibly overwhelmed by the constant switching between its folded and unfolded states.
At 46,000 cycles, the hinge began to creak – not encouraging at such a low number of folds, but keep in mind that this test is the furthest possible thing from everyday use.
At 75,000 cycles, text overlaid on the screen says an “unidentified liquid” began to leak from the hinge. Again, this is intriguing, but shouldn’t be cause for alarm unless you also plan to put your Galaxy Z Fold 7 through several thousand folds consecutively.
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At the time of writing, the livestream has been running for nine hours, with just over 137,000 fold-unfold cycles registered. That suggests an average pace of around 4 cycles per second, though the current pace seems to have slowed to around 2.5 cycles per second.
At their current pace, and at the time of publishing, Tech It will complete their mission in around seven hours.
Should you pay attention to durability tests?
As we previously reported, Samsung claims the Galaxy Z Fold 7 can withstand 500,000 folds – assuming you unfold your phone 50 times a day, that’s around 27 years of daily usage.
However, there’s no truly useful way to put this claim to the test – it’s not practical, or sensible, for the everyday user to count and log each time they unfold their phone.
Here at TechRadar, we don’t test for durability – though phone makers are always improving the resilience and longevity of their devices, there’s simply no objective way to test most durability claims.
Even quantifiable limits, like the 500,000 fold promise made by Samsung, can rely on a number of factors like temperature, frequency of use, or manufacturing inconsistencies.
Still, there is some value in tests like this – in the latest infamous bend test from YouTuber Jerry Rig Everything, the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 7 refused to break in half – that’s about as blunt a measurement as you could possibly take, but still noteworthy for a hinged device.
So while these tests are fun and eye-catching, be sure to check out our guides to the best folding phones and the best Samsung phones to find out how these handsets perform in real-world usage.