Galaxy Fold: Watch us test its folding stamina for 4 grueling hours on YouTube – CNET

Our livestreamed test is over and the results are in: The Galaxy Fold may not have made it all the way through our durability test, but it survived almost 120,000 automated folds. 

After a troublesome launched marred by complaints of screen issues on preproduction review units, Samsung’s foldable phone was relaunched on Sept. 27 with key design changes and a more durable construction. The phone still costs $1,980 and retains its one novel feature that first made headlines when Samsung teased the device way back in November of 2018 — a foldable screen that can bend, flex and open up into a tablet-sized screen.

Consumers have shown a lot of interest in the device, but there’s legitimate concern about how well its cutting edge foldable screen will hold up over time.

To test its durability, SquareTrade Inc., a San Francisco-based company that offers warranties for consumer electronics and appliances, developed a machine that can fold Galaxy Fold repeatedly, thousands of times over. CNET is using SquareTrade’s machine to test the durability of a Galaxy Fold that we purchased for testing. Our plan is to fold the phone 200,000 times consecutively to mimic the number times a user would open and close the Fold over five years’ usage. We livestreamed the event, which was expected to last until approximately 10 a.m. PT on Oct. 4, which is about how long we estimated it would take for our test phone to hit 200,000 folds. We ended the test at around 2 a.m. PT after 119,380 folds left the screen and hinge damaged. 

Note that this isn’t a scientific test. An everyday user obviously wouldn’t open and close their Fold for hours on end. But we do want to see how much the Galaxy Fold can endure before it runs into trouble, and at what point we can visibly observe cracks or broken pixels on its screen. Best of all, you can watch the whole thing go down online, so tune on Thursday to see just how many folds it takes before the Galaxy Fold runs into trouble.

Update, Oct. 4: Updated to confirm that the test ended at 120,000 folds.