Samsung built a robotic bum to prove that the Galaxy Note 4 won’t bend

By Andy Boxall October 3, 2014

Samsung’s not going to let anyone forget about #BendGate, and has made a video specially demonstrating how tough and resilient the Galaxy Note 4 is, when repeatedly assaulted by a human posterior. “Leaving things in our back pocket can lead to, well, bent things,” says Samsung. Not the Galaxy Note 4, though, if the following video is to be believed.

Forget about all Samsung’s hot air, this is a thinly disguised, lab-based strength-test video. We get to see the Note 4 withstand the “three-point bend test,” where the phone doesn’t buckle under enough pressure to break three pencils at the same time. It’s suspended between two metal blocks, and the force is exerted through its center.

Breaking three pencils at the same time doesn’t sound so difficult. We’re going to need something more to really believe in the Note 4’s strength. We need a bottom.

Samsung, always at the forefront of innovation, has delivered too. It has built a robotic bottom — wrapped up in a pair of decidedly unsexy jeans — that simulates a 100kg person sitting up and down on the phone. The process is repeated several hundred times, proving without any doubt the Galaxy Note 4 is way stronger than the iPhone 6 Plus. No, Samsung doesn’t come out and say it, but we all know that’s what it really means.

Bubbling under all this bluster about the Galaxy Note 4 being stronger than other, lesser smartphones, is Samsung’s own build quality controversy. Owners in Korea have noticed a larger than expected gap between the screen and body, which according to the owner’s manual is a “necessary feature,” rather than an issue. Not all owners will agree, and it may become more widely criticized upon the phone’s international release. The Galaxy Note 4 goes on sale later this month.

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Andy is a Senior Writer at Digital Trends, where he concentrates on mobile technology, a subject he has written about for…

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