The stress test of the Galaxy Z Fold 2 shows that the smartphone is much stronger than the previous generation. Yet Samsung still has a lot to improve because the device remains very fragile.
Credits: Jerry Rig Everything via Youtube
The Galaxy Z Fold 2 has passed into the destructive hands of Zack from the JerryRigEverything YouTube channel. The opportunity to see how the improvements made oar Samsung on this generation translate well into better durability. Samsung's first foldable smartphones have in common that they are much more fragile than conventional smartphones.
The fault of a foldable screen that can very easily be damaged,whether it's because of your nails that can leave a mark on it, the dust that can grip the hinge or damage the electronics, or what looked like a protection stuck on the screen – which was actually an integral part of it – that some have tried to remove anyway. The bottom line: 24 hours after the very first units arrived in the hands of journalists, there were already units whose screens had broken.
Read also: Galaxy Z Fold 2 – this iFixit dismantling shows how much Samsung has improved the smartphone
The Galaxy Z Fold 2 is a little more solid, but there's still work to be done
With the Galaxy Z Fold 2 Samsung synthesizes its experience on the segment, reinforced by the release of an improved Galaxy Fold 1 and a Galaxy Z Flip in a different form factor. The new Galaxy Z Fold 2 features a larger external screen,covers the internal screen with UTG (Ultra Thin Glass) glass protection,and adopts a new, more robust and dust-fighting hinge.
Verdict? In the scratch test the external screen showed permanent scratches from level 6 with deeper stripes at level 7 – like virtually every smartphone on the market. The internal screen marks the scratches from level 2: the fault of a plastic protection that covers the UTG glass. This is likely to make the screen more solid, on the whole. But it is this top layer that marks the scratches. And don't remove it or risk breaking your screen.
To give you an order of magnitude, level 2 represents a hardness equivalent to that of your nails. We were really hoping for improvements on this, but it seems that we will have to wait for the next generation, or the next generation, to see real changes. The next test was to put some sand with pebbles on the phone, to test its hinge.
In this teat the smartphone behaves much better than the previous generation. There was no loss of functionality at any time, except for the fingerprint reader, which looks surprisingly sensitive on the Z Fold 2. We'll let you see what's changing and what Samsung can still improve in the video below: