The fragility question over folding phones has always been about two things - the weaker inner displays and the long-term durability of the hinge after many actions. GSMArena don’t actually address either of these potential issues - the closest they get is “scratching” the plastic screen protector on the inner display with their fingernail. The hinge is “tested” by hanging a weight on the inner display and by being used as a hammer to hit a peg into the ground. After this complete waste of time, their conclusion is “kudos to Honor for making such a durable device”. If you’re going to bait views with titles like “fragile foldables” or “unbreakable?” at least actually make a genuine effort to test the durability issues that are unique to folding phones. No one gives a fuck about waterproofing or the fragility of the frame, these are not common issues on any high end smartphone these days.
Yeah that article seems it’s written to convince new buyers how the phone can’t break, but anyone who owned phones knows that they don’t break by putting heavy things on the display. :)
I think their point was to show that the hinge is “durable” because it can sustain 5 kg of weight, but when have you ever heard of a folding phone breaking because someone applied extreme force to the hinge in the wrong direction? The reasons these phones fail are consistently either the hinge failing, dust getting behind the display (through the hinge) causing the display to fail, or the display randomly cracking while being opened normally. None of these are predictable or preventable issues so a durability “test” where they take the phone and do very deliberate and stupid things with it is useless.
I feel like so much of the durability marketing from manufacturers is around things that are not actually relevant to the genuine concerns about this technology. For example, Motorola’s new razr phones have lost their dust proofing rating, yet the manufacturer tried to spin this as an improvement because they simultaneously bumped up the water resistance rating. All the tech journalists who covered the device gobbled up this marketing spin and told their readers and viewers that the new razr was way more durable than the 2023 version based on this one line. But as I’ve said, water resistance was never the key concern about these devices. Maybe the durability of this technology really is improving but we have no way of knowing this as consumers when journalists refuse to ask those hard questions or conduct proper testing.
They could have hooked the phone up to a windscreen wiper motor (a high torque motor with a crank arm) and left it to run for a few hours, that would have given them about 10,000 open/close cycles. But no, it’s “let’s hang a 5kg weight off it and use the phone as a bit of a hammer”.
Someone did a fully manual (literally had people sit there opening and closing the phones for ages) comparison of the Z Flip5 and the razr 40 last year. It was still kinda flawed in the sense that no one actually sits there doing that so quickly in real life, but at least the stress on the hinge and screen was more appropriate. They came up with a total count for each device before malfunction and the Z Flip won by a fair margin while the Motorola performed well under its advertised minimum fold number.
So here’s what went down. We tested the water resistance, first in terms of immersion and then its ability to withstand water pressure. Then, we put it in a washing machine to verify a claim by Honor that it can survive something like this with no issue. Turns out, it was true. Sadly we didn’t have a hydraulic press handy to verify the other in-house test by the marker.
We then froze the Magic V3 inside a block of ice, to test its ability to withstand temperature extremes. The phone passed all of these tests with flying colors. We tried to scratch the folding screen’s applied plastic protector, and, well it did scratch, very easily, with fingernails only. It was just the replaceable protector, though, so not as bad as it sounds.
The Magic V3’s hinge probably got the worst treatment. We made it carry a 5kg weight, and it didn’t budge. We then used the phone as a hammer, denting it a little bit - but not impacting the normal operation. And finally we did some drop tests and we’re not going to spoil these for you - make sure you watch the video until the end to see the results.
