JerryRigEverything’s Passport-Style Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8 Survives the Full Treatment

Zack Nelson has a habit of taking brand-new phones and treating them the way most people accidentally treat their everyday carry. This time the victim is Samsung’s Galaxy Z Fold8, the shorter, wider passport-style foldable that opens into a nearly square tablet. He runs the usual sequence of scratches, grit, open flame, and the dreaded opposite-direction bend. What emerges is another quietly tough Samsung folder that refuses to fold the wrong way for good.

The outer glass on this phone is Gorilla Glass Ceramic 3, and scratches begin to appear at a Mohs hardness level of 6, as they do on most current flagship phones. Its inner flexible display, which is still coated with a layer of plastic that cannot be avoided, scratches at a super-low level 2, the same rating that foldables have had for years. You’ll notice lines left by coins, keys, and even the edge of a fingernail. The good news is that Samsung will continue to replace the inside screen protector for free once each year. After that, it’s $19.99, and underneath the pixels is a titanium substrate that is meant to help straighten out the crease, but to be honest, it doesn’t help the plastic surface on top, which is always scratched.

This phone has Advanced Armor aluminum framing, but the back is still glass. Now, the area around the dual 50 megapixel cameras is new, as it is constructed of plastic, which is unusual for a Samsung foldable device. If you ever need to change the lenses, you can easily take off the metal ring around them. There’s even a gasket in the SIM tray, which is nice to see given the IP48 rating. When you pour some dust on it and open and close it a few times, the majority of it stays out of the way, albeit some collects on the corner magnets, and the hinge continues to function normally.


The inside 7.6-inch display was irreparably damaged when he placed an open flame to it with a lighter, which occurred after around seven seconds. The 5.5-inch cover lasted around ten seconds before becoming dark and green, indicating that it was nearly done, although keep in mind that the titanium layer on the screen provides no effective heat protection.


When the phone is closed, it has almost no flex, and sitting on it in your pocket while folded is probably fine, but when you open it up and apply some serious pressure, the entire thing begins to bend. The glass back even lifts out of its frame, but nothing splits along the antenna lines, the screen remains intact, and the hinge holds together. Let go, and the back glass sort of reseats itself; the phone still folds shut and powers on normally. This is the first time a Samsung book-style foldable has passed this test, with the exception of the trifold, which was a one-off, and the bigger Fold 8.