The Machine's Downfall: A Phone's Descent into Brokenness

We started this test with high hopes and anticipation, eager to see how our latest device would hold up to the rigors of torture testing. But as we began, it became clear that something was off. The screen had a big line across it, which seemed like a minor issue at first, but ultimately proved to be a harbinger of worse things to come.

As we continued with the test, it became apparent that the hinge on the phone was not functioning properly. It was stiff and creaky, and even though we were able to fold it down all the way, it didn't have that satisfying click that we've come to expect from a well-designed device. We tried to power it on again, but that just made things worse. The screen was broken, with a big white line across it, and the touch part of the screen still reacted to input, but only in a limited way.

We decided to try and figure out what was going on, and so we turned the phone off and on again. But this time, something unexpected happened. The entire left side of the screen was gone, and that big white line across the right-hand side became even more pronounced. It was clear that the screen was beyond repair, but we couldn't help feeling a sense of disappointment at how quickly it had deteriorated.

We decided to take a closer look at what was going on with the touch part of the screen. We swiped over to one side, and saw that it still reacted to input, even though we couldn't see what it was doing. This was a strange phenomenon, and we weren't sure what to make of it.

We decided to turn the phone off again, put it back on the machine, and let it sit for a while to see if anything would change. But unfortunately, nothing did. The screen itself was unequivocally broken, and the hinge had given up the ghost altogether. We were done with this test, and there was no going back.

As we looked at the phone's demise, we couldn't help but feel a sense of sadness. This device had started out so full of promise, and yet it had fallen so far so quickly. But as we reflect on our testing process, we realize that this is what happens when devices are pushed to their limits. They break down, and sometimes they fail in ways that we can't even imagine.

The Morning After

We stopped the test just shy of 120,000, which was a remarkable achievement for a device that had started out with so many flaws. But as we looked at the phone's broken screen, we knew that it wasn't going to make it much further than that. The hinge had given up the ghost, and the touch part of the screen still reacted to input in strange ways.

We decided not to put the phone back into the machine, because there didn't seem to be much point. We'd already seen what happened when we tried to turn it on again, and it wasn't pretty. Instead, we just left it lying there, a testament to the power of torture testing.

As we looked at the phone's broken state, we couldn't help but feel a sense of disappointment. This device had started out so full of promise, and yet it had failed us in such spectacular fashion. But as we reflect on our testing process, we realize that this is what happens when devices are pushed to their limits.

The Hinge: A Cautionary Tale

We've seen some tough stuff in our time at Scene, but the hinge on this phone takes the cake. It's stiff and creaky, and even though it folds down all the way, it doesn't have that satisfying click that we've come to expect from a well-designed device.

But as we continued with the test, it became clear that the hinge was just one part of a much bigger problem. The screen had a big line across it, which seemed like a minor issue at first, but ultimately proved to be a harbinger of worse things to come.

We tried to power it on again, but that just made things worse. The screen was broken, with a big white line across it, and the touch part of the screen still reacted to input, but only in a limited way. We decided to try and figure out what was going on, and so we turned the phone off and on again.

But this time, something unexpected happened. The entire left side of the screen was gone, and that big white line across the right-hand side became even more pronounced. It was clear that the screen was beyond repair, but we couldn't help feeling a sense of disappointment at how quickly it had deteriorated.

The Screen: A Fragile Thing

We decided to take a closer look at what was going on with the touch part of the screen. We swiped over to one side, and saw that it still reacted to input, even though we couldn't see what it was doing. This was a strange phenomenon, and we weren't sure what to make of it.

We decided to turn the phone off again, put it back on the machine, and let it sit for a while to see if anything would change. But unfortunately, nothing did. The screen itself was unequivocally broken, and the hinge had given up the ghost altogether.

Powering On: A Desperate Attempt

We tried to power the phone on again, but that just made things worse. The screen was still broken, with a big white line across it, and the touch part of the screen still reacted to input in strange ways. We were desperate for a solution, but nothing seemed to work.

The Machine's Legacy

As we reflect on our testing process, we realize that this is what happens when devices are pushed to their limits. They break down, and sometimes they fail in ways that we can't even imagine. But despite the phone's many flaws, we're proud of what we've achieved.

We've seen some tough stuff in our time at Scene, but this device takes the cake. It's a testament to the power of torture testing, and a reminder that no device is immune to failure. We'll always be pushing devices to their limits, seeking out new ways to test their strength and resilience. And we'll never stop until we've found the perfect device.

But for now, this phone is just a relic of the past. It's a reminder of what can go wrong when devices are pushed too hard, too fast. But it's also a testament to our commitment to testing, and to finding out what makes devices tick.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's up everybody how's it going my name is Chris Parker I'm the managing producer here at C net and with me is Steven Beecham how do y'all how's it going usually when we're in this room we're either covering a big product launch or streaming a podcast but today we're doing something a little bit different very different what I have here is the Galaxy fold from Samsung you've been hearing a lot about it lately it's had some issues but this thing is made to fold and unfold and fold back again from phone to tablet now this thing over here you might be wondering this is called the full fold bot it is made to fold and unfold the galaxy fold very rapidly so what we're going to do is use the fold bot to test Samsung's claims to see how durable this folding mechanism really is and what are their claims Chris thank you for asking Steve um samsung says they've tested the fold up to 200 thousand times now they're estimating a user might open and close the phone around 110 times a day or up to 40 thousand times a year 40 thousand times a year two hundred thousand so loads five years so we don't have five years to wait around to see if it'll live up that long so that's where our friends from SquareTrade come in they've designed the fold bot specifically to test the Galaxy fold they ran their own test over the weekend and then we're kind enough to let us borrow it to run our test which we're going to get to in just a minute but first a few more numbers the other day I was testing this out and we found that the fold bot can fold the phone 150 times per minute 150 times a minute or two and half volts per second excuse me that means 9000 folds an hour that was right and like I said samsung says about 40,000 times a year they think the user might do so we figured that's a pretty decent time to check in on the phone once it gets working that 40,000 bolt is going to take about four and a half hours so every four and a half hours is we are creating one year folding basically for this phone exactly okay we're gonna get to that in just a minute but first a couple of disclaimers that I have to get out of the way now this is not a scientific test obviously no one's gonna be opening and folding their phone for hours on end until it breaks but we do want to make sure that we can test what galaxy says it can do so we're gonna put it in the machine we want to see how long it can endure the folding until it runs into trouble when you can visibly observe cracks or broken pixels on the screen we are defining a break as damage that is significant enough to make the phone unusable that could include significant screen damage too many broken pixels damage to the case or the hinge basically anything that makes it so you can't use the phone as is intended or or you wouldn't want to use it exactly if the screen looks like garbage and you and you can't make out what you're reading then why bother having a point you probably gonna wanna get a new phone and it's but yeah and also five years you're probably gonna want a new phone before then anyway true and also just to make sure that everyone is we're being safe as we can we do have a fire extinguisher standing by and we don't anticipate needing to use that and Chris will be here for probably twenty four hours Manning this whole thing so that is a plan yes we're going to start this here real soon and then I will be here through the night Steve we'll be in and out with me I'm not gonna sit here and try and talk to you for the entire time we'll get it up and going then we'll walk away and let you guys enjoy the beauty that is the smashing machine but why don't we get started okay let me put the counter app on them on the screen so we do have the counter so you guys can see how many folds we're going to do so first up I'm gonna turn it on all right I see that we are starting zero-zero I'm not gonna turn this machine off again we if we lose power the number of resets so we'll be turning on and off a different way it's gonna be turned on for 24 hours here is the phone a basically brand new Galaxy fold batteries all charged up it's in perfect condition and now I'm going to put it in the machine and real quick while Chris is putting in the machine make sure you check out the C net review on the samsung galaxy fold at cnet.com there it is watch the video check out all the specs and then we're gonna put the camera on him while he's putting it in the machine here so yeah we sit secure you can get it in here we got to squeeze this portion right here and tighten this nut on the bottom to make sure that it's got a good grip on the phone now like I said this thing will get speeded up to almost two and a half times per second I'm gonna start it off slow here just so you can sort of see the motion so here's a couple of quick or a couple of slow ones if we go for alright here we go and as you can see at this speed the screen does light up in between when it gets going faster it actually is going too fast for the screen to turn on but the battery is still trying to turn on so in order to make sure we have battery life when we do our checks I'm actually gonna turn the power off before we really crank it all the way up so let me stop it for one second oh that's a lot of swipes and preciousness little bones to turn it on geez okay there we go all right so now we're already 15 in we've only got a little over 39,000 more to go before our first check-in but here we go hey what's up everybody we've got about we're just about to hit 10,000 we're gonna do a quick little early check-in here to just see how things are holding up so there we go I'm gonna turn it down here and watch your hand watch your head yeah all right so 10005 let's turn it on and see what happens so far so good and by the way everyone a lot of people are saying turn it up to full speed but that is at its full speed that is how fast the SquareTrade robot opens and closes that is correct also a lot of people are asking why we don't leave it turned on while it's running and that's for a couple different reasons one it's moving too fast to be able to turn the screen on and off in between folds so they wouldn't see it anyway exactly yeah even if it was on you wouldn't know it would just be black the entire time while it was folding yeah and so the other reason then is this way the battery will still be there whenever we do come and stop it and turn the screen on if we left the battery if we left it turned on the battery just run out before we run out so yeah but as we can see the phone is alive screen turns on it still looks beautiful still looks just firing to the i-ight from this angle I'm not seeing any dead pixels or anything I think this is just a reflection of so yeah that's like the wires above exactly those are the wires from our camera hanging overhead don't don't interpret that as anything and this this angle looks it looks really smooth and yeah it looks nice and clear and sufficeth so so far so good yeah let's fire it back up and keep going we'll our big benchmarks are at the 40,000 marks excuse me here at the beginning we'll probably do it a little more frequently just to make sure there's nothing happening right away but so I'm gonna come back at about 20,000 and we'll do the same thing we just did at 40,000 we'll take it out of the machine check the hinge and all that and make sure that it's not damaged functionally at that level so let's turn this back off now which as we learned before is a multi-step process especially this isn't mr. button that process 1 2 3 4 there we go and we're back like I said we'll be back in about 10,000 more the right will over an hour or so will talk to you them hey what's up everybody we're coming up on 20,000 thank you what is it you made it on this journey with us this far getting tons of comments tons questions tons of the same questions over and over which hopefully I can answer a couple of them here again those are the new viewers just ting and they have lots of questions but here we go we've got about 460 more to go oh we're at 2025 we're going to slow the Machine down and stop it for a second turn the screen on again and see what we can see oh sorry I was looking at the wrong clock oh yeah look at the live stream yeah the past all right there we go 20,000 50 so this this 20,000 stimulates six months of use basically right about half a year coming up on half a year yes that's correct cool or about 10% of our total test time that we're planning to do here we go and how we doing it's still looking pretty good to me yeah we'll let it get to the home screen again those little white lines at the bottom those are just a reflection of part of our equipment here that's not part of the thing at all it's the cables on the cameras above someone up here but there it is there's the lock screen it's still beautiful in action yeah we'll unlock it here that all looks good bring up the apps pull down the settings that's all looking pretty solid to me now a lot of people been asking about temperature I'm not gonna take it out right now but if I reach under here or reach on top none of it feels warm in any way when we get it out of the machine at 40,000 we can see how we're doing at that point but what about the machine is the machine warm it may be ever so slightly i mean not hot to the touch at all like i mean like you did not as hot as your phone might be in your pocket at this point all the activities happening back here this is just a big sturdy base for it but yeah it's nothing to be worried about at this point so so far so yeah it's looking good man let's let's get this turned back off again and start it up and then whoops that's the big speed button not the power look big speed turn it off so we don't have to push five buttons to turn it off there you go regard and here we go bring it back up we're at 20 49 or 220-thousand 49 here we go we will be back at 40,000 for another chicken put it a little lower we'll pop our head in there every once in a while just to make sure it's not falling off the table but come back later well of course come back later but please stick with us then if you like some people been saying this sound is kind of comforting and soothing in a way good rhythm sounds like it's kind of loud in here it's not super loud I wouldn't wanna sit next to us all day and night but at the same time it's it does kind of get in your head I have a feeling I'll be hearing this for a long time hello hello hello it's Chris Parker again here we're about a hundred away from 40k we're gonna stop this thing and this would be the first time that we actually take it off the machine and check the hinge and see how it's surviving just 100 left so far to have a noticed anything sometimes people have said that sounds like the sound of the machine changes like maybe something's going on there's been some damage or something I guess we'll find out pretty soon if we can find anything like that or not I think it's gonna be just fine but thinks that she'll find out for sure see 30 left and let's turn that down Oh snuck in an extra one who No - that's a good stop man all right let's see first I'm gonna loosen up this wing nut down here and first let's just take a look at let's see where do you want yeah and let me go to this camera that's a pretty okay yeah I should go to the overhead view okay all right so can't see anything on the front surface here took my fingerprints on the back yeah it still looks in good shape and looks out of whack that's folded so 40,000 folds is supposed to simulate one year of folding yes just for everyone's rap songs number they say 40,000 a year they've tested it up to two hundred thousand or five years worth and so just as far as I can tell this doesn't feel any different than when we started I still got a nice so gonna nice click to it mm-hm when you open it up and of course everyone wants to know how the screens doing so let's fire that up okay I guess I can also show you guys over here - yep looks good so far there's a little bit of dust in there but nothing dramatic turned on just fine swipe up here home screen comes out okay let's see yeah it is not all the pixels look okay to me and yeah like I say well alright yeah well hold it up here close it again oh oh hey what's amber there yeah interesting cool cameras working I guess that's the front camera yep close that lookin all right the outside screen is still okay I mean there you go there's the outside screen looks great that hasn't been affected at all the back is in good shape open it up yeah as far as I can tell this thing has not been affected whatsoever by what we've been doing I'm gonna set it back in the machine yeah take a couple more photos first before we turn it back on and we're gonna get it on its path towards 80,000 our next milestone we are ready to go again so here's to our next 40,000 Oh stamp I forgot one little thing this could have been a disaster it's a lot of moving parts in this fold experiment we're doing there there's actually a little bit of play in this part of it so that it's not squeezing it like a vise like there's actually a little bit of flexibility so it's not as it's not slamming exactly okay is that I know people were concerned that that the sound that they were hearing was the phone smacking but it's actually the Machine mostly the machine yeah it's a combination of the Machine and but I mean some of that is the case all right 60,000 and five and just from this angle doesn't look like anything's happening to me let me reach over and hit the button it's turning on just fine again for those tuning in I'm here by myself at this point so it's tough to really switch between the cameras and do all this as well so this is the shot we've got for the moment all right looking to my eye it looks pretty darn good let's wake it up again here there we go just look in the bright screen maybe a little speck of dust here and there but nothing's broken so let's keep the home we are coming up on two years of a few school based on Samsung's estimation hundred times 110 times a day this 40 comes up to 40,000 a year it's pretty impressive this is what the upgrade point probably that right people do you think it wouldn't even keep it full in this long array think about getting rid of it anyway so we'll see if that's all right in value here we go Oh eighty thousand and two all right so let's see here first of all we're gonna loosen this wing nut again is it hot there's I can feel no temperature issue it it's cool to the touch it's probably warmer now that my hands a bit on then when I picked it up the machine itself no noticeable difference get to now there we go all right and as you can see when I just put my fingerprints all over it but just from the outside the screen itself is looking fine the back is still totally intact thanks it bends it's a hinge it loose in any way what do you think it doesn't feel any different to me I mean it's hard to say definitively but I mean it still has a nice crisp yeah sort of settling you know actually here this is this has been through 80,000 and right here I have the review unit which has not been through nearly as many and I have to say they feel about the same to me so let's go ahead and turn the light on and it turns on obviously I was the back I haven't seen the back when it turns out it's coming up all right let's see here you can see I don't see any obvious blobs of pixels oh wow look at that it's still shining brightly let's unlock it and give it a look here yeah there's nothing on here that would make me believe that had been folded 80,000 times or one time little white dot is part of the navigation can you open something up like like a full screen yeah see that well here's a big white screen Wow I don't see it that pixel in there exactly it is looking nice and that's pretty impressive yeah we're at 80,000 exactly we're a little less halfway there but should you want to be here all night to be watching sure and you know I mentioned this before and now I'm starting to see it a little more I am seeing a little bit of I guess it's not really chipping but just wear around this edge and I'll hold it up here and see if you can see it is that because of the machine maybe like the weight grips it or you think it's like the where no it's actually the surface it's the little bezel the bevel on the edge of the phone it's raised just ever so slightly from the screen itself and so when it closes that's what's actually hitting so I think it's just the repeated closing of that and people were asking earlier to like if it's closing although it so now we see that yeah it is it's for sure closing all the way like it's this edge yeah that's the surface that's hitting it's not visual screen itself it's this raised edge and on these top two corners in particular I'm seeing just a tiny bit of scraping but even that like you really gotta look to see it certainly not anything that's going to detract from using the phone itself alright so we're back in the machine we're ready to start year three there we go hey guys as you may have noticed this thing is freaking out so let's see what's going on there it looks like it just came loose in the apparatus this side is lifted up but we were close enough to on 20,000 as well take peek all right it doesn't appear that who actually you know it this is getting this is getting pretty rickety definitely starting to feel some oddness in this hinge you hear that kind of machinist if I show you the other one it's got that nice firm click where this one is definitely feeling grindy interesting all right well let's turn it on and check that out at least oh look at that that is not good that big white line should not be there let me take a peek oh yeah if I turn the screen off it goes away but when I turn it back on there's that heavy white line across the bottom we try to make sure to turn that let me unlock it there you can see that the big white line across there and that little thin line up through the middle at the crease and if I turn on we've been looking at the Google Play screen since it's pretty bright and that's definitely very visible still we are definitely getting into some damage here very very interesting now I wonder I think anyone that was watching recently I was sitting right here when it started flopping around in this so it's hard to say when this damage occurred if it was just in the last couple minutes when it came loose or if it was some other time in between as we talked about before the machine is moving too fast to keep the screen on if we kept the screen on we wouldn't see a light up every time it folds every two-and-a-half seconds so I've been turning it off in between now this time when I turned it on we definitely have some damage I'm going to flip this over to the overhead camera real quick just we can maybe take a better look at the screen hang on so yeah here it is again I'll turn that on and there you can see it very very clearly and again we have no real precise way to tell exactly when this happened but it was sometime here between 100,000 when we last checked in and as we were approaching 120,000 or 3 years worth of use according to Samsung so I guess we have a question to answer as to whether or not we would call this broken or if we should keep going now ideally you wouldn't want a screen that had a big line across it but at the same time you wouldn't you could certainly could still use it I've seen screens with a lot more damage that people use on a daily basis but it is definitely not in as new condition like it was for a long time and again this hinge also it's definitely got a lot more machinist and play in it than it did when we started it still folds down all the way but yeah it doesn't even open with that satisfying click like oh oh look at that oh my now if there's something going on look at that we are in trouble now and I was not expecting this at this point hang on a second let me switch that camera again so yeah this is pretty much broken at this point what I'm gonna do is if I can here figure out how to turn the power off one more time yeah you can see that I turn it off and then give it a second and let's turn it on again and see what happens here and that does not look very promising does it so yeah as you can see this entire left side of the screen is gone and that big white line across the right-hand side it still reacts to input you can still do things but this is definitely not usable anymore so what does that mean for us let me take a look here at the chat room what do you guys think should we I mean obviously the screen is beyond usable now the hinge definitely got some problems let's see if I if I swipe over here oh yeah well look at that it does look like the touch part of the screen is still working you can tell that even though I'm only touching over here it still is reacting to my finger but we just can't see what it's doing so that's interesting as well I'll tell you what I'm gonna do I'm going to go ahead and turn this off again I'm gonna put it back on the machine and we'll run out for at least a little bit longer and see what happens to it over that the screen itself is unequivocally broken I may be replaceable but for all intensive purposes this phone is broken did you think it would make it this far or just shy of the 120,000 mark that's three years and Samsung's estimation did you guys think we're going to make it tell the morning do you guys think the hinge will still make a double mourning for those of you who were checking in at the hundred twenty thousand mark I can let you know that we stopped it just before we hit there because the machine the phone is coming out of the machine and when we opened it up and turned it on that screamed out all right came out again all right I am going to say that we are done at this point this thing is toast it won't even open up anymore alright ready for this that is all she wrote for the hinge now it closes but it won't open up anymore I'm not gonna force it force it and just for giggles Oh Oh interesting no no that's a reflection I thought every both sides are turning on but still just the one side the outside screen still works I guess you could argue that maybe you could still use the phone at this point if you'd never open it up again but yeah that that is locked up can you open it I can the screen still this side still working so technically you still could have a phone oh there it goes now kind of something came loose and let it open up again yep and again the screen is still split in half broken so I'm not gonna put this back in the machine anymore there doesn't seem to be much point oh yeah look at that now it's kind of interesting to see what happens with every permutation this thing is done I'm gonna call time of death 2:15 a.m. on Friday there you have it we were gonna try it till 200,000 we made it just shy of 120,000 before the screen gave out and then just a couple minutes later the hinge was acting up in the machine and it was time to pull the plug all right that's gonna do it for me I'm Chris Parker managing producer here at scene that I appreciate everyone sticking around for as long as you have dipping in and out if you did I look forward to bringing you more tests like this and others be sure and go check out Jessica's full review of the phone don't let this one test make up your mind one way or the other about whether or not it's a phone worth getting go check out some of our other torture tests we've got water tests of the iPhone 11 coming up soon we did drop tests of the new iPhone 11s a couple weeks ago that was really fun so keep going back to seeing that for more and we'll see you next time\n"