Samsung's Galaxy S6 Edge isn't even on sale yet but that's not stopping people from putting the company's latest flagship to the test.
While we've seen some impressive drop tests, the first bend tests (remember Bendgate?) have more mixed results.
SquareTrade, a company that offers insurance plans for smartphones, put the iPhone 6 Plus, HTC's One M9 and Samsung's Galaxy S6 Edge to the test with their BendBots, specialized robots that tested how much pressure each smartphone could take before it bent and eventually broke.
The BendBot "simulates the forces produced in the average person’s back pocket and shows exactly what happens when up to 350 pounds of force is placed on a phone," according to the company. First, it applies pressure in 10-pound increments until it detects the phone bending and then tests how much force each phone can take before breaking completely.
First up is the iPhone 6 Plus, the phone that famously started "bendgate." Apple's smartphone bent with 110 pounds of pressure, but the iPhone still functioned normally, according to the video. It wasn't until 179 pounds of force was applied that the phone was pushed to "catastrophic failure."
The HTC One M9, on the other hand, made it to 120 pounds before it bent, but HTC's flagship also broke completely at this point as the power switch popped off, rendering the phone unusable.
Of all the devices, Samsung's Galaxy S6 Edge fared the worst. Like the iPhone 6 Plus, it also bent with 110 pounds of pressure, but the display cracked on the phone's curved edge,. The phone still worked despite the crack, however, and the phone held up to 149 pounds — when it shattered completely.——
UPDATE, Monday, April 6, 5:30 p.m. PT: In a statement, Samsung criticized SquareTrade's testing process and released video of its own bend test. The company maintained SquareTrade's tests were done under unrealistic conditions and urged them to redo the tests.
"First, the video assumes a very specific condition – 110lbf (50kgf), which rarely occurs under normal circumstances," the company wrote in a lengthy statement. "Secondly, even though both front and back sides are exposed under the same level of pressure in normal circumstances, this test does not show the strength of the back side."
You can read the full text of Samsung's statement here.
In a statement given to Mashable SquareTrade's vice president of global communications, Jessica Hoffman, defended the company's testing.
As an independent third party, we endeavor to perform our SquareTrade Lab tests in an unbiased manner as our goal is to provide consumers with a common comparison across manufacturers. As the video we released on Thursday shows, we performed the exact same test on all phones using our BendBot. These tests showed that the iPhone 6 Plus and the Galaxy S6 edge bent under similar loading conditions, and that the Galaxy S6 edge cracked at that same load. We would agree that in our independent tests – neither the Samsung S6 edge, the Apple iPhone 6 Plus, nor the HTC One M9 bent at less than 110 pounds of force. We believe that the more information consumers have, the better – so we are happy that Samsung has released its own tests and disclosed the benchmarks for its internal stress test (78 lbf of force). We welcome Samsung’s invitation to test its devices again with our BendBot and release the results publicly.
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