There’s something captivating about a mindless livestream. People, for instance, watched the minute-by-minute progress rebuilding the collapsed portion of I-95 in Philly.
An even less action-packed livestream has gone semiviral recently: A live YouTube stream of testers repeatedly opening and closing flippable smartphones until they break.
YouTuber Mrkeybrd, real name Kuba Klawiter, has dubbed it The Great Folding Test Vol. II, pitting the Samsung Z Flip 5 against the Motorola Razr 40 Plus Ultra. Klawiter’s intention behind the test, according to its website, is to put manufacturer’s claims to a human test.
“Smartphone producers seem to think consumers will be impressed by their ratings of 400,000+
folds, performed in a more controlled setting and most likely by a machine designed to fold the
smartphone only in the way it was intended,” the site reads. “But machines aren’t human.”
The stream started on August 2 and, at the time of this writing on August 8, it was still going. Unfortunately for Motorola, the Razr broke after 126,367 flips. The Samsung, however, was going strong at more than 346,000, though it apparently developed a “hinge” issue at 223,000 flips.
At the time of this writing, the live stream was racking up around 600-800 viewers at any given moment. It’s a somewhat boring, if kind of mesmerizing watch. It’s just someone flipping a phone open and closed, over and over. In the middle of my watch Tuesday morning eastern time, the flipper appeared to swap out for a new person and one commenter posted, “bro is closing it harder. It gives me anxiety.” It’s that kind of stream — strange, weird, but oddly captivating.
Klawiter told Insider that stream had totaled at least half a million views in total. The streamer ran a similar test last year and broke the Galaxy Z Flip 3 after around 418,000 flips. So we’re not in uncharted territory yet, but getting closer every second.
