Samsung’s hot new Galaxy Z Flip costs almost $1400, comes with an amazing glass folding
screen and… brushes??
That’s right, brushes—little fibers lining the hinge that Samsung says help prevent dust
particles from getting inside and damaging the display.
Here’s the thing though—if you actually buy a Z Flip and turn it on, Samsung warns
you that the phone is NOT DUST-RESISTANT and that you should keep it away from small particles,
which seems problematic if you live on planet Earth.
We’re getting some mixed signals here, but it kinda seems like dust could be this phone’s
Kryptonite.
So we got ourselves some Kryptonite—that is, purple powder.
This powder will allow us to see exactly how not-dust-proof the z flip is, and hopefully
give us some insight on how the debris-clearing fibers work.
And, if any of this stuff gets past those brushes we should be able to spot it easily
during our Teardown.
After the dust bath, our phone is a bit reluctant to open and close—if you listen closely,
you can hear it scream in protest:
[insert horrible hinge creak]
That... could be a problem.
Let’s get started and find out what happened.
-- An iOpener heats up the glass panels on the
back of the phone, and after some careful prying we wiggle them free.
And right off the bat we’re finding flecks of purple dust dotting the interior.
Phillips screws hold a few brackets in place, the wireless charging coil lifts out, and
we’re starting to see how this device is laid out.
If you saw our Teardown last week of the new Moto Razr, you’ll note that the Z Flip is
thankfully a little simpler to tease apart.
Next, we finagle a few cables and remove a single screw in order to extract the motherboard.
. All the dust we’re finding confirms this phone is in no way sealed up—but Samsung
has done something nice here.
This rainbow sheen you see on the motherboard is a hydrophobic nano coating—that’s right,
it’s been liquid-proofed.
This won’t save your phone should it take a swim, but it does add a bit of water resistance
to that expensive board which contains all your data.
With the motherboard out of the way, we can fish out the first battery, rated at a mere
3.59 watt hours, but like the Motorola Razr this foldable phone has two batteries.
SO, this little guy is only a portion of the Z Flip’s full capacity.
Before we get to the other battery, we remove the speaker and a smaller board that’s home
to the USB C port.
Down here we also find the biggest pile of dust we’ve seen so far—unsurprisingly,
the unsealed speaker grille is a big weak point for unwanted material ingress.
After fighting through the larger battery’s adhesive with some isopropyl alcohol, we pull
out the 9.15 wh power pack.
The two batteries together total 12.74 wh: that’s a nice bump up from the Razr, but
significantly less powerful than the two cells in the Fold.
Just like the Galaxy Fold, the z flip has a bezel that needs to be removed before the
display comes off, and then a little heat helps us get an opening pick under that flexible
display.
The ultra-thin glass display is backed by a metal plate, and covered with a plastic
layer that scratches extremely easily.
Samsung does say you can use a screen protector but they insist that you have it professionally
applied.
We’ve come to the last steps of our z flip disassembly and also found our biggest collection
of dust: the hinge.
This hinge is almost completely coated in our purple dust.
This certainly would explain the terrible sounds the hinge was making earlier, but it
also makes us wonder just how durable and prone to collecting dust this hinge actually
is.
On the underside of the case we find the debris clearing fibers, which allegedly help prevent
particles from entering the phone around the hinge.
Interestingly some of them look pretty clean! quite a surprise given the amount of dust
we saw on our way here.
Obviously our test went above and beyond normal use conditions (assuming you're not carrying
sand in your pocket on the way home from the beach), but it looks like these fibers may
not work as well as Samsung hopes they do.
We’re still hard at work finishing up our analysis on the Galaxy Z Flip, and we’ll
put a link to the full Teardown with the repairability score in the description below.
This Teardown was considerably less complex than the Razr, but basic repairs are still
going to be tedious.
Based on what you’ve seen here, what repairability score would YOU give it?
Let us know in the comments, and click the link down below later tonight to find out
if we agree.