In August, a YouTube creator published a video showing how the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 easily sustained scratches in a durability test using a pick classified as level 3 in the so-called Mohs hardness scale. It now turns out that the test was flawed and the unfortunate device has been appropriately vindicated although belatedly.
To be fair, YouTube user JerryRigEverything, did not rig the test so that it leads to the Note 7's disadvantage. The user was himself perplexed by the outcome. In the video, he was heard explaining that he has a set of picks used to tell the level of hardness of the smartphone display. Most phones, he said, scratch at level 5, but in his test the Note 7 got its first scratch at level 3.
What the video meant was that the Note 7 display is just a level above plastic in terms of hardness. It naturally created a minor stir and certainly contributed to the pile of woes that the tech world lobbed against the device.
Corning, the maker of the Gorilla Glass 5 in the Note 7, was even called to task. The company was forced to issue a statement confirming that the glass display is as hard as its predecessor if not entirely harder.
There were even talks citing that, in Corning's desire to make a more drop resilient glass, it has sacrificed the Gorilla Glass 5 durability.
Now, however, JerryRigEverything is claiming that his durability test is an error. He blames the tool he used to sharpen the picks, which is a stone that apparently included traces of harder metals. The presence of aluminum oxide and silicon carbide has increased the levels of hardness of the picks used.
A new scratch test video has been posted, and the result was quite favorable to the Note 7. Under torture from a new set of Mohs pick, the device performed quite well, showing visible scratches at levels 6 and 7.
JerryRigEverything in his correction video stated that redoing the Note 7 durability test is purely in the interest of science as repeated tests eliminate statistical outliers. He also pointed out that it took him two months to update his video due to the Note 7 recall instituted by Samsung.
The Note 7 has been found to be prone to overheating and that an unusual number of consumers have reported that their handsets exploded. Samsung only began selling the Note 7 again last Oct. 5. The South Korean company has stopped selling the device altogether after reports of new cases of explosions began to emerge.
