SquareTrade built a folding robot, solely to test the Galaxy Fold’s folding mechanism. The robot, dubbed “FoldBot”, is designed to fold the phone over and over again at 150 folds per minutes.
— CNET (@CNET) October 3, 2019 Samsung claims that the Galaxy Fold can withstand 200000 folds or up to five years of usage. However, the tests by SquareTrade start to see minor damage on the display at 18000 folds. At 40000 folds, the touchscreen starts to fail but recovered after charging overnight. At 120000 folds, SquareTrade reported that the hinge deteriorated.
CNET did another test of its own using the same FoldBot. The test was live-streamed on its YouTube channel where each fold was tallied by a digital counter. CNET also checked-in at certain milestones (20,000, 40,000 and so on) to see the progress of the test. The device eventually failed when it came close to the 120,000 milestone, after 14 hours of testing. one of the inner display turned off completely, and the hinge lost its snappiness as well. This test does not necessarily prove that the Galaxy Fold will fail after a certain 120,000 folds. With the robot testing the device using inhuman speeds, the process likely strained the device more than normal usage, accelerating its failure.
That being said, it’s really up to a person’s usage to determine how long a device can last. In case you missed it, the Galaxy Fold is arriving at our shores priced at RM8,388, with pre-orders available starting of 9 October. (Source: CNET via 9to5Google)
