Samsung’s brand new tri-foldable smartphone, the Galaxy Z TriFold, is at the center of a new debate about the durability of foldable devices. A South Korean YouTube channel recently livestreamed a brutal “stress test” that pushed the device far beyond its limits. Since its launch last month, people have been skeptical about the complex dual-hinge design, and while Samsung claims it’s built to last, this independent test gives us a much more realistic – and slightly more worrying – look at its long-term health.
Stress test shows early warning signs
The YouTube channel OMG_electronics ran an automated eight-day marathon of folding and unfolding the TriFold non-stop. According to a summary from Droid-Life, things started getting weird pretty early on. The first hinge began to creak audibly after just 61,000 folds. The second hinge followed with 121,000 folds. By the time the machine reached the 144,000 mark, the hinges had visibly lost their “locking mechanism” and felt loose.
At this point, testers discovered that the phone wouldn’t even stay fully open on its own – it had to be pressed a little to keep it flat. The silver lining? The actual screen held up perfectly. Despite the mechanical fatigue of the hinges, the display itself showed no dead pixels or cracks throughout the entire test.
This test is a big deal because it’s our first real look at how a triple hinge system handles extreme pressure. These mechanisms are significantly more complicated than a standard foldable device, and this complexity usually introduces more points of failure.
For anyone thinking about purchasing, this offers some perspective.
Samsung officially rates the TriFold at 200,000 folds, which equates to about 100 folds per day over five years. While the YouTube test doesn’t technically disprove this – especially since the automatic folding was much more aggressive than that of a human hand – it does suggest that you may be hearing and feeling the phone’s “age” long before it hits the five-year mark.
Looking forward, these results will likely put some pressure on Samsung to rethink its hinge technology. Your own Galaxy Z Fold 7 is already designed for a whopping 500,000 folds, so the TriFold clearly has some catching up to do. As these devices, divided into three segments, evolve from “cool concepts” to everyday gadgets, the durability of that hinge will be the most important factor in winning or losing user trust.
