Is Google's Nexus 6P Really The 'Jar Jar Binks' of Durability Tests?
A new video casts doubt on the durability of Google's shiny flagship handset, the Nexus 6P, and even elicits a comparison to Jar Jar Binks from the video's creator. Is the phone actually so badly constructed that it actually warrants a Jar Jar Binks mention? That's debatable, depending on what you make of the testing methodology.
The video was posted by YouTube user JerryRigsEverything, a self-proclaimed fix it guy who works on jeeps, motorcycles, cell phones, and pretty much everything (hence the name). In this instance, he got his hands on Google's Nexus 6P, built by Huawei, and ran a series of durability tests to see how it fares in its own right, along with in comparison to other handsets like the iPhone 6s Plus and Galaxy S6 Edge.
He kicked things off with a scratch test and that's where the trouble began. Using Mohs scale of hardness, the Nexus 6P showed a faint scratch at 6 on the scale and deeper, more noticeable gouges at 7 through 9 (10 represents the hardness of a diamond, which he didn't have on hand to test with).
After scratching the phone, he tapped the display with his finger and it cracked.
"I tapped the screen with my pointer finger and the glass cracked...from my finger, and a scratch test," JerryRigsEverything laments in the video. "These scratch tests are not overkill. Sand can be a level 9. Pavement in a parking lot can reach a level 9. And the glass from the 6P cracked from a scratch test."
He proceeded to burn the display with a lighter, which fared worse than other phones he's run the same test on, then began the controversial bend test.
We say controversial because in the video, the phone bends like a piece of cardboard. The narrator notes that his little sister could have bent the phone in half with her hands, and maybe she could. But as some commenters have pointed out, there are some problems with the test.
The first is that the glass was already broken when he performed the bend test. therefore the structural integrity was already compromised. At that point, he's mostly just bending the aluminum chassis. And the second problem is that it appears to bend where he performed the burn test.
Those complaints don't give the Nexus 6P a free pass for its poor scratch resistance, but it does call into question whether it's a structurally weak phone or if it would have fared much better in the bend test if it was performed first. And that's where the Nexus 6P gets a bit of vindication in the second video below:
The video was posted by YouTube user JerryRigsEverything, a self-proclaimed fix it guy who works on jeeps, motorcycles, cell phones, and pretty much everything (hence the name). In this instance, he got his hands on Google's Nexus 6P, built by Huawei, and ran a series of durability tests to see how it fares in its own right, along with in comparison to other handsets like the iPhone 6s Plus and Galaxy S6 Edge.
He kicked things off with a scratch test and that's where the trouble began. Using Mohs scale of hardness, the Nexus 6P showed a faint scratch at 6 on the scale and deeper, more noticeable gouges at 7 through 9 (10 represents the hardness of a diamond, which he didn't have on hand to test with).
After scratching the phone, he tapped the display with his finger and it cracked.
"I tapped the screen with my pointer finger and the glass cracked...from my finger, and a scratch test," JerryRigsEverything laments in the video. "These scratch tests are not overkill. Sand can be a level 9. Pavement in a parking lot can reach a level 9. And the glass from the 6P cracked from a scratch test."
He proceeded to burn the display with a lighter, which fared worse than other phones he's run the same test on, then began the controversial bend test.
We say controversial because in the video, the phone bends like a piece of cardboard. The narrator notes that his little sister could have bent the phone in half with her hands, and maybe she could. But as some commenters have pointed out, there are some problems with the test.
The first is that the glass was already broken when he performed the bend test. therefore the structural integrity was already compromised. At that point, he's mostly just bending the aluminum chassis. And the second problem is that it appears to bend where he performed the burn test.
Those complaints don't give the Nexus 6P a free pass for its poor scratch resistance, but it does call into question whether it's a structurally weak phone or if it would have fared much better in the bend test if it was performed first. And that's where the Nexus 6P gets a bit of vindication in the second video below:
The video pretty much confirms our suspicions that the Nexus 6P in the original video only bended so easily because it was already compromised, and should go a long way to giving current (and future) Nexus 6P owners some additional piece of mind.
