Water, scratch, bend, drop, and crush certified
Samsung’s highly anticipated Galaxy S22 series and Galaxy Tab S8 series have finally launched, and users can’t seem to get enough of the devices, judging from the overwhelming demand Samsung is facing. It’s not just users, though, as reviewers are already doing their thing, testing the devices, and we’re starting to get the early results showing just how much abuse these phones can take.
YouTube channel PBKreviews got its hands on the S22 and S22 Ultra and has proceeded to test their durability. The phones were subjected to the very familiar scratch and bend tests and other assessments like water immersion, with PBKreviews even running over the S22 Ultra with a car.
Starting the test with a one-minute submersion in shallow water, the IP68-rated devices emerge in perfect working conditions, as you’d expect. Things didn’t fare quite so well in the drop test, which saw the S22 Ultra released from waist height, in various orientations. Body damage shows up immediately, and it isn’t long before we start seeing screen cracks. After a couple drops from even higher up, the display starts glitching out, but to its credit remains functional.
Moving on to the scratch test, both phones — with their displays covered in Gorilla Glass Victus+ — show scratches at level 7 with deeper grooves at 8, using Mohs hardness picks. Inflicting similar damage on the screen over the fingerprint sensor did not affect its ability to recognize the user’s biometrics.
Thanks to the unique coating on the back glass, scratches up to level 7 are rubbed off with ease, while only 8 and 9 penetrated the casing. Scratching the sides revealed the mostly metal frame, with the area over the mmWave 5G antenna made of plastic. Both devices hardly budged when bent from the front or back, while running over a downward-facing S22 Ultra with a car only caused a few screen scratches (mainly from the pieces of concrete on the floor).
Overall, the tests reveal that both phones are as solid as you’d expect. However, we’ll be waiting for other tests to see how they fare when dropped. The same channel already performed a teardown of the base S22, revealing that the device is just as easy to repair as its predecessor, with battery removal remaining the key problem. Stay tuned for a similar disassembly of the more complex S Pen-toting model.
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