With Google making available its new Pixel line of smartphones this week, the overall impressions so far have been positive. The flagship phone features a glass and aluminum design, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 processor and 4GB of RAM. Either way, it wouldn’t be a launch without the likes of YouTuber JerryRigEverything performing the normal range of smartphone torture tests. In this latest video, JerryRigEverything examines the ‘Very Blue’ Pixel in a multitude of ways including scratching the front display and back, burning the display with a lighter and of course, trying to bend the phone in half.
In the video posted on October 20, one of his the big takeaways was that their weren’t really any big surprises. Starting with the front display scratch test, the Google Pixel scratched at a level 6 on the Mohs scale of hardness and left an extensive groove on the harder level 7. This was to expected due to the fact that the Google Pixel uses Corning Gorilla Glass 4 and is a pretty common score for most high end smartphones. The glass on the back however appears to be not quite as durable compared to the Gorilla Glass 4 found on the front. It started to show tiny scratches using the blade of a paper knife. The part of the test that surprised him the most was the durability of the front speaker grill. Because its made from cloth and not metal or plastic, it is much more susceptible to ripping. In addition, the aluminum back on the Google Pixel actually holds up better to keys and coins compared to the new iPhone. Lastly, even with the fingerprint scanner heavily scratched, it still worked 100% of the time.
JerryRigEverything proceeds to perform the flame test on the front display of the Google Pixel. The pixels on the display were able to last 11 seconds before they started to turn white and never fully recovered after the intense heat was gone. Last but not least, JerryRigEverything proceeds to do the bend test. Last years durability video featuring the Nexus 6P left some people nervous because of how potentially easy it was to bend the device. However, bending it from the back, he was able to get the screen to bulge out a little bit, however, after relinquishing the pressure, it pretty much went back to its original shape. JerryRigEverything also tried to bend the device from the screen and was not able to get it to bend at all. Overall, the YouTuber seemed to be very impressed with the durability of the Google Pixel. You can view the video in full below.