Looks like Apple is not the only phone maker that has had to contend with Bendgate.
SquareTrade made headlines this weekend by taking a brand-new Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge smartphone, putting it in what they call a “bend bot,” and applying pressure until the phone bent out of shape. Bending occurred at 110 pounds of pressure, while catastrophic failure happened at 149 pounds of pressure.
If all of this sounds familiar it is because the exact same controversy happened when the iPhone 6 first hit the market. Apple responded to those claims by citing very low breakage rates, and invited a collection of journalists to its headquarters to see how it test phones.
For its part, Samsung points out that 110 lbs of pressure is way more than most users will ever apply to the phone, even by sitting on it. Samsung also posted it own 3-point pressure test video that shows the phone is resilient up to 79 lbs of pressure. That is roughly equivalent to the force required to break a bundle of five No. 2 pencils. Unfortunately for Samsung, that video only has about 10,000 plays so far, while SquareTrade’s has over 1 million.
So what can we learn from all this? First, videos of things catastrophically breaking are more fun to watch than videos of things *not* breaking. Second, if your business is selling insurance, which is after all, how SquareTrade makes money, posting dramatic YouTube videos scaring customers is great for business.
If you want to know how the Galaxy S6 Edge performs, check out our full review.
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Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge: Will it Bend? - PC Magazine
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