Google’s Pixel 10 Pro Fold is the first to ‘go up in smoke during a bend test,’ JerryRigEverything says

Google mightiness person yet different Pixel with a artillery problem, and this time, affecting the marque caller Pixel 10 Pro Fold. In a video published today, YouTuber JerryRigEverything, aka Zack Nelson, subjected the foldable to his accustomed durability tests, but arsenic he’s filming his crook trial — aft having already breached the telephone unfastened — the artillery expands, appears to overheat, emits capable fume to acceptable disconnected a adjacent occurrence alarm, and yet ends up arsenic a charred wreckage connected his investigating table.

To beryllium fair, Nelson puts an bonzer magnitude of accent connected the phone. He primitively breaks unfastened the telephone by bending it backwards portion the telephone is afloat unfolded, and the artillery doesn’t swell up until helium exerts a batch of unit connected the breached portion of the telephone successful specified a mode that he’s fundamentally folding the surface down itself.

That’s not a script immoderate mean idiosyncratic is going to brushwood time to day. But it’s inactive antithetic adjacent fixed the utmost circumstances, according to Nelson. He says helium hasn’t seen thing similar it during anterior tests.

“Surprisingly, successful the decennary that I’ve been durability-testing phones, I person ne'er had a smartphone detonate before,” Nelson says. “The Pixel 10 Pro Fold is the archetypal telephone to spell up successful smoke.” And portion helium notes that this is an “extreme test,” helium adds that “I’ve besides subjected each mainstream smartphone made successful the past 10 years to these nonstop aforesaid tests. And this is the archetypal clip I’ve ever had 1 neglect truthful spectacularly to the constituent wherever my occurrence alarm is going off.”

Google didn’t instantly reply to a petition for comment. But this isn’t the archetypal of Google’s artillery issues this year: the institution updated the Pixel 6A to “address a imaginable artillery overheating risk,” and it besides pushed an update to the Pixel 4A to “improve the stableness of their battery’s performance.”

“As melodramatic arsenic a artillery occurrence is, we don’t deliberation this is needfully a motion that thing is incorrect with the Pixel 10 Pro Fold design,” iFixit’s Elizabeth Chamberlain tells The Verge. “The anticipation of thermal runaway is conscionable a world of Li-ion batteries. Looks similar Zack astir apt didn’t discharge the artillery earlier opening up the telephone (most caller phones person 60%+ complaint retired of the box). We usually urge discharging a artillery beneath 25%, but with the utmost stresses Zack places connected devices, that whitethorn adjacent beryllium excessively high.

Chamberlain adds that “thermal runaway is fundamentally a section abbreviated circuit, and it is astir apt to hap erstwhile you interruption done the insulating layers of a jelly roll-style battery.” She besides pointed to a post and a video from iFixit astir batteries catching fire.

Nelson enactment the Pixel 10 Pro Fold’s IP68 particulate absorption to the test, too. While Google has called the telephone its “most durable foldable yet” and highlighted the benefits of the phone’s gearless hinge, Nelson pours immoderate particulate close onto the hinge and opens and closes the phone, resulting successful immoderate sickening crunches arsenic particulate gets stuck inside. “This is benignant of embarrassing,” Nelson says.