What you need to know
- Zack Nelson of JerryRigEverything put the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold through his famous durability test on YouTube.
- While the Pixel 9 Pro Fold hinge survived the test, one side of the phone snapped, tearing the phone in half.
- The original Pixel Fold wasn't known for its durability, so this result brings the Pixel 9 Pro Fold's overall longevity and durability into question.
I wouldn't want to be the Google Pixel 9 Pro Fold that showed up at the door of Zack Nelson, host of the JerryRigEverything channel on YouTube. Nelson put the newest folding phone through his famous durability test, and if you recall, the original Pixel Fold didn't fare too well. It snapped in half, and despite Google redesigning the Pixel 9 Pro Fold this year, the result wasn't any different.
The tests started off relatively fine, where the Pixel 9 Pro Fold's cover screen with Gorilla Glass Victus 2 scratched at a level six on the Mohs Hardness Scale. Deeper grooves came at a level seven, and the inner screen was much more feeble. It can be scratched with something as simple as a fingernail, with enough pressure, but that won't be surprising to people who have used foldable phones in the past. The inner screens are quite delicate, but the good news is they're protected when the phones are closed.
Next up was the dust-resistance test, which is quite important for foldables. The Pixel 9 Pro Fold has a few moving parts and an IPX8 rating that doesn't guarantee any dust resistance. After throwing some sand and dust on the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, we hear the phone make a few crunches while opening and closing the hinge. If Nelson's tests are any indication, you want to keep sand, dirt, and dust far away from your Pixel 9 Pro Fold whenever possible.
There were a few more scratch tests and even a burn test — I wouldn't worry too much about that one — which you should watch in the video below. But the following test was the one to watch out for: the bend test.
As you can see from the video's thumbnail, the Pixel 9 Pro Fold didn't fare any better than last year's Pixel Fold. Surprisingly, the hinge mechanism actually survived. Even though the phone snapped in half under the pressure, if you look closely, it didn't break along the hinge. It broke along the antenna lines on the left side of the phone, which is notoriously a weak point for mobile devices.
Flagship phones, including the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, are mostly made of metal and glass. They're pretty strong materials, although as Nelson says, glass breaks. However, mobile devices do have some plastic in their chassis for things like antennas, millimeter-wave windows, or wireless charging pads (like the Apple Pencil charger on an iPad Pro, for example). These are always the weakest parts of a smartphone, so it's not entirely surprising that the Pixel 9 Pro Fold faltered at this point.
However, as Nelson notes, Google may have been able to avoid this failure by placing the Pixel 9 Pro Fold antennas in a different location. There's no way to know for sure, but this year's result is clear. Although other foldables have survived the JRE durability test in the past, Google's foldables have snapped in half for two years in a row.
Should we be worried about the Pixel 9 Pro Fold's durability?
Every time a durability test from JerryRigEverything is released, there's an online discourse about how much stock we should really put into the results. It's true that these durability tests are not always reflective of real-world use, and represent some of the extremes. However, there are certainly important takeaways here. The scratch tests, which use the Mohs Hardness Scale, are fairly empirical in nature. The dust tests are particularly relevant for foldables without IP ratings that cover dust resistance.
Unless you plan on trying to forcibly bend your Pixel 9 Pro Fold in half, I don't think you need to worry about Nelson's infamous snap. With that being said, as someone who has used the Pixel Fold for a year and the Pixel 9 Pro Fold for two weeks, I do think durability concerns are warranted. My Pixel 9 Pro Fold review unit came out of the box with a strange squishing sound that occurs when the hinge is folded or unfolded.
I've spoken to a few industry colleagues with Pixel 9 Pro Fold units, and not everyone seems to be affected by this noise. However, it's pretty well-documented on Reddit, with a handful of buyers noticing the same thing on their Pixel 9 Pro Fold. Unlike some people have suggested, this is definitely not normal for a folding phone. I've tested the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Galaxy Z Fold 6 recently, and neither of those phones had hinge noises like the Pixel 9 Pro Fold.
Weird hinge sounds? from r/PixelFold
On the original Pixel Fold, there was the issue of the hinge not opening completely flat, which we chronicled in our review. My unit opened near-flat initially, but got much worse over time. Now, it seems enough dust and debris has made its way into the Pixel Fold hinge that it's impossible to open it completely.
There are some durability concerns regarding the Pixel 9 Pro Fold, and that's not surprising, because this is only Google's second foldable. I doubt the Pixel 9 Pro Fold snapping in JRE's durability test is one of them, though.
