After giving us a look at the Motorola RAZR’s internals last week, iFixit has now posted a teardown video of Samsung’s new Galaxy Z Flip. Unsurprisingly, iFixit says Samsung’s clamshell foldable is slightly easier to repair than Motorola’s RAZR. Still, a repairability score of just 2 out of 10 is certainly quite disappointing.
When announcing the Galaxy Z Flip at its Unpacked event last week, Samsung claimed the “fiber shield” in the phone’s hinge helps keep dust from getting inside. Unfortunately, however, iFixit found that the layers of fibers built into the Galaxy Z Flip’s hinge aren’t very helpful at keeping stray dust from entering the phone’s internals.
The Galaxy Z Flip was dropped inside a bag filled with purple dust to test how effective the “fiber shield” really is. After taking the Galaxy Z Flip out of the bag, iFixit disassembled it and found a pile of purple dust around the hinge as well as other parts of the phone. The biggest collection of dust was found in the hinge, which caused it to make a “terrible noise” while opening and closing the phone.
Even though Samsung doesn’t say that the Z Flip is water-resistant, the teardown revealed a hydrophobic nano-coating on the motherboard. This means the Galaxy Z Flip is slightly water-resistant and can easily survive an accidental spill.
