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I repair phones and make YouTube videos, so every time a new phone comes out I get curious
as to how much abuse it can take before breaking. Today I'm going to give the durability test
to a brand new fully functional HTC M9. To start off let's see how the brushed aluminum
body handles my car keys. Even though it left some pretty heavy marks most of them can be
rubbed off. I do make constructive videos as well like the M9 repair video you see in
the upper left hand corner. I'll also link that in the video description below if you
want to watch that after this one. If you take a razor blade and slice into the back
of your phone, it cuts pretty deep into the aluminum. Surprise surprise. Taking my razor
blade and carving into the side of the phone doesn't do as much damage. It takes that point
to make any grooves. Let's try the front glass. This is Gorilla Glass 4, the exact same stuff
on the Galaxy S6, so there's no surprise here that my keys aren't doing any damage to it.
The Gorilla Glass 4 is actually more hard than my keys are. So neither the keys nor
the razor blade can do any damage to this screen. You can see the screen flex with how
much pressure I'm putting on it. Now because the screen is so hard it does sacrifice a
bit when it comes to how brittle it is. An impact or extreme pressure can make the whole
thing shatter. You'll see what I mean when I start testing the rear camera lens. You
can see that there are zero scratches on the screen. This is super impressive to me. Even
with the sharp razor blade it does absolutely nothing to the glass. Here's a fun little
side lesson for you: your eyes can't see infrared light but my camera can. So if you take a
remote control and point it at the camera you can see the infrared light pulses. The
phone also has an infrared light that it uses a proximity sensor, so that's what you see
blinking at the top of the phone. You can try it yourself with your own remote and cell
phone camera. Back to destruction, the front-facing camera is easily scratched. It is not made
of Gorilla Glass or Sapphire Glass. The rear camera is supposedly made of sapphire glass
though. And it would make it unscratchable but due to the scratch-proof-ness it is much
more brittle as you can see. With hardly any pressure the back camera lens cracks. Probably
because there isn't much structural support underneath it. I expect this to be a big problem
with people's M9s in the future. Hit that Like button if you're glad this is my phone
and not yours. Just for kicks and giggles let's burn this guy. I did all of these same
tests on the Galaxy S6 if you want to check out that video. I will link it here and in
the video description below. The aluminum body holds up just as expected, it is easy
to wipe off the smoke marks. The screen on the other hand, the pixels stop responding
when there is extreme heat. This screen did not hold up as long as the Galaxy S6 did under
flame, but it still mostly recovered once the heat was removed and was allowed to cool
off. Before we hit that climax make sure you subscribe to my YouTube Channel. This next
scene is a little gruesome and I would hate if I lost you in the carnage. Let's move on
to the bend test. I thought the solid aluminum body would do a much better job of holding
this phone together, but I was actually really surprised at how easy this phone was to bend.
It looks like the weakest point is right there where that power button is. Right smack dab
in the middle of the frame. It wouldn't even turn on now that the button is broken. It
really did not take much force at all to bend it in half. The closest thing that I can compare
it to is taking three spoons and bending them with your hands. That's how little pressure
it would take to bend this phone. So unless you're Tinkerbell, don't sit on it. Long story
short I'm pretty disappointed in this phone. Not only is it extremely difficult to repair,
but it also royally fails durability on every account except scratches on the screen. Check
out some of my other videos. We have the M9 tear down, an invisible charging station,
and my Instagram is pretty fun as well. Thanks for watching!