Samsung Galaxy Z Flip Durability Test – Fake Folding Glass?!

Samsung has just launched a new foldable phone with the bold claim of having revolutionary flexible

glass

. Just as it says on its website. We will try it today. This is Samsung's Z Flip or Flipz, depending on how you open the box. It comes with a case, one for each half of the phone. Pretty nice. Samsung says this is a smartphone for people who want to attract attention. A phone that attracts attention. And I have to agree. The ability to fold the phone in half is truly crazy, and by crazy I mean crazy. Now we can have a large phone with a compact design that takes up half the space.

The future is amazing. It's time for a

test

of endurance. Come on. I mean, let's get started. To start, pay close attention to this first warning and remember it. He says to avoid pressing hard on the screen or front camera. Touch the screen lightly to protect it. Samsung stated in its presentation that they have done the impossible and created an ultra-thin

glass

that bends. This crystal can be bent more than 200,000 times. Samsung said that when you bend it, you're not just bending the glass, you're bending the laws of physics. But that warning on the phone isn't as compelling as Samsung's presentation tried to make it seem.

Still, it feels good. This type of lapel is definitely my favorite so far. I like having a foldable phone, not a foldable tablet. There are two things I noticed right away about the Z Flip. The first is that this fold here still goes halfway. It is not a big thing. There is also a small hole in the screen above the front camera. You can see the curve of my light on the curved surface of the screen. The Samsung logo on the flap is completely covered when the phone is open. This new docking design is said to have fine brushes inside to protect against dust.

We'll try it later. It's also not possible to lift the screen off the frame as we've seen with the Motorola Razor, which probably makes this design much more secure and durable. There is a small gap between the two halves of the phone when closed. It's right. And that makes sense because if the screen is really made of glass, we can't allow glass to hit glass every time we close it. That just wouldn't end well. Speaking of things not ending well, it's time to see if this is real glass or not. I've been doing this same stress

test

on every major smartphone since the Galaxy S6 came out 5 years ago.

It's an expensive hobby, yes, but I find it quite useful for finding out what your phone is made of and how well it will handle day-to-day life. Plastic, as we know, scratches at level 2 or 3. Actual glass would scratch at level 5 or 6. And sapphire would scratch at level 8 or 9, just below diamonds, which are level 10 As my first Mohs tool touches the screen of the Galaxy Z Flip, we can notice that marks are beginning to appear. That's pretty annoying. Moving on, we notice that the deepest grooves occur at level 3. This is exactly how the plastic screen would react.

Just as we've seen with the Galaxy Fold, the Motorola Razr, and virtually every plastic-screen smartphone ever made. For fun, we can zoom in on level 4 and I could physically feel the tip of the tool starting to cut into the surface of the screen. So why would Samsung talk so much about flexible glass on its website and at the launch event? They may use a hybrid plastic polymer with small glass particles inside and then just call it glass. But it really doesn't seem like a very correct procedure. If a company says "glass," its customers will think of a hard, transparent material that has excellent scratch resistance.

In terms of

durability

, this scratch resistance is the main reason why glass is used in almost all smartphone screens. Samsung calls this "glass," but this screen clearly doesn't have the scratch resistance or structural benefits that customers expect from glass. If glass is not glass, then the truth does not matter. And the truth should matter. This is not American policy. Samsung is the biggest smartphone maker in the world right now and we shouldn't call this screen glass when it's obvious my fingernail is leaving marks on the surface. I'm not sure what Samsung is thinking there, but apparently we have scratches on the levels. 2, 3, 4 and a nail.

I don't know what this material is, but Samsung definitely shouldn't call it glass and I'm disappointed. Even if I switch to a 10-megapixel front selfie camera, the surface is covered with the same supposed glass material and I can still scratch it with my fingernail. I'll come back to this in a moment. The raised edge around the screen is made of plastic. It's the same thing we saw in the Galaxy Fold. That lip actually holds the screen in place and prevents people from removing the top layer. The volume button is made of metal. The recessed power button can be scratched.

I'll upload my fingerprint and see if it still works. By the way, don't worry about my thumb, I broke it on the TV a few weeks ago. Now, the phone can still be unlocked even if the fingerprint scanner is damaged. But to test it a little more, I added a few more scratches. But after a few additional scratches, the fingerprint stops working. Interesting. The frame of the Galaxy Z Flip is made of metal. And here you have more metal on the bottom along with a single speaker, a USB-C port and, you know, no headphone jack. The entire frame of the phone appears to be made of metal, which is good and I hope this will hold the phone during the bending test later.

There are several plastic antennas and a removable SIM card tray. But there is no expandable memory. The center docking mechanism is made of metal with the Samsung logo stamped on it. Each of the lowercase letters is made from a shiny foil glued inside the cavity. They'll probably never come out on their own, but it's interesting to see what the Z Flip is made of. The rear panels are glass. Both the top and the bottom. I like this purple mirror more and more. It gradually changes between purple and blue depending on how the light hits it. There are two cameras on the back. 12 megapixel ultra wide angle camera and 12 megapixel normal camera.

Both are covered with real scratch-resistant glass. I think the fingerprints got a little out of hand. Thanks to our channel sponsor "dbrand" who equipped me with the limited edition "Robot Camo". Each of these anti-fingerprint masks is completely unique. No two phones will be the same, and the individual drawings are extremely detailed and currently available for all phones covered by dbrand, not just the Galaxy Z Flip. I added one to the back of my Note 10 Plus' "grip" case. Because the "grip" case has a hole for masks and can be changed whenever you want. Very funny. I'll leave a link below in the description if you want to get a "Robot Camo" or a skin for your own phone.

The good thing about this phone is that it has a miniature screen for selfies. I can press the power button twice and it allows me to see myself and take a nice photo. Thumbs up for that! We will perform the smallest scratch test in the world. And moving up the Mohs hardness scale, we can see that tools from 1 to 5 do not leave marks as we would expect. We only see scratches starting at level 6, with deeper grooves at level 7. Which is the scratch resistance we expect from anything with the word "glass" in it. Anything scratched before should not be called "glass." Even if the Z Flip's screen hypothetically contains glass ingredients, we shouldn't call it "glass" if it doesn't have the properties of glass.

I can't make a bunch of mud, sprinkle some chocolate chips on it, and then call my mud "cookie" just because it contains some cake ingredients. This should not be allowed. The thin screen lasted about 15 seconds under the heat of my lighter. When I moved the flame away, there were still marks on the screen and it didn't recover. One thing that's really interesting, if you look again, is that you can see the screen changing shape as the heat from my lighter warms it up. The plastic of course reacts to the temperature of my lighter. Glass, however, would not be affected in the same way.

As the surface cools, the shape of the screen returns to normal. Let's start with the closure test. You know, if you get a little aggressive when you end a call and slam the phone shut. We have to see if the phone survives. It has physically raised bumpers along the entire outer edge of the screen. These bumpers absorb most of the force of the impact. And the screen is still in one piece. Of course, the phone is designed to fold inwards. Samsung claims that it will survive 200,000 times, which is equivalent to 182 times a day if you plan to keep your phone for 3 years.

However, leaning in the opposite direction is a different story. With the first turn, we got a small frame separation near the antenna line and the upper bumper started to separate. But the Z Flip's screen is still completely intact and in one piece. It still closes and opens without clutch squeaking. We will try again. You can see that the back panels meet in the middle, providing more support to prevent the phone from bending backwards. And the phone holder does a very good job of maintaining the shape of the phone for the most part. It wasn't until our third turn that we finally heard a creak in the frame near the power button.

And even then, the Z Flip's so-called glass screen is still intact. Folding screens are quite durable. While the phone no longer closes very well, physically it takes a lot more abuse than I initially thought. Only now, after all the previous bending and cracking, did the back panel crack. It's just cosmetic damage because the screen still works, which is good to know. All essential elements still work. You might be wondering, "Hey Jerry, maybe there's a super thin layer of glass on top of the screen?" If that were true, we would start to see fractures and cracks in that layer.

But instead, we just see the tip of my Mohs tools cutting through the plastic, as we would with any cut piece of plastic. This screen is not scratch resistant at all. And if you push it hard enough, the pixels will still be damaged. However, it survives my bending test. Everything still works. This is definitely the most durable foldable phone we've seen so far. Samsung said they designed this new connector with small fibers inside, or small brushes, to keep out dust and dirt. It will be great to see what it looks like inside during disassembly. So make sure you are subscribed.

Then I poured rocks on the screen and made sure they covered the entire phone, like when you drop it when you accidentally step out. At first I could hear some small complaints of dust inside the coupler, but after removing all the dust, those complaints mostly disappeared. This new docking design could be the start of something really good. But the real danger of calling something glass is that people think it has the protection of glass, which is clearly not the case. The glass distributes pressure throughout the phone, while this plastic allows pressure to enter and damage the pixels.

You can see that each pressure point of my tool kills the row of pixels directly above it. This would not happen if the screen were glass. And it's dangerous to let people get around with a false sense of security, like Samsung gives them when it calls it glass. And that's not all. Each of these punctures allows air to enter the closed OLED layers, killing even more pixels. A puncture or cut in a plastic screen is a cancer that will eventually spread throughout the screen. Yes, I sound a bit apocalyptic, but it's important to know what your phone can handle and what can damage it.

So remember. The Samsung Z Flip does not have a real glass screen and is still very fragile. That said, it's still pretty impressive. Samsung simply needs to correct its vocabulary. Let me know what you think of Samsung's presentation in the comments. If you enjoyed this endurance test, check out my latest video. We adapted a normal wheelchair to go on safari in Africa. It turned out very good. Come hang out with me on Instagram and Twitter. And thank you very much for watching. See you.