“Surprisingly, in the decade that I’ve been durability testing phones, I have never had a smartphone explode before,” Nelson said in the video. “The Pixel 10 Pro Fold is the first phone to go up in smoke.”
“Having the audacity to call the Pixel 10 Fold extremely durable during their launch event while not changing the antenna line locations from the previous two versions that catastrophically failed is an insult to tech enthusiasts everywhere,” he said.
“This is like Vader building a third Death Star with the exact same exhaust port, or Voldemort hiding all seven Horcruxes in Harry Potter’s closet,” Nelson added. “Henry Ford said the only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing. And I’m not saying that Google hasn’t learned nothing, nor am I saying that a durability test is the only decision by which to base your phone buying experiences off of. But the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
However, Nelson’s testing raised questions about those durability claims. When he poured sand into the device’s hinge—a standard part of his dust resistance evaluation—the phone produced what he described as “disturbing crunching sounds,” suggesting particles had infiltrated the mechanism. “The screen is probably dust-proof,” Nelson said, “but the hinge definitely is not.”
“The pouch-style lithium batteries are made up of long sheets of foil that are wrapped around each other,” Nelson explained in the video. “Since my phone physically fractured along the antenna line, we must have pinched the layers of the battery together, causing a short circuit, which immediately dumps all of its energy into a self-accelerating, uncontrolled thermal reaction.”
Thermal runaway typically occurs when battery temperatures reach 150 to 180 degrees Celsius, triggering exothermic reactions that can drive temperatures beyond 1,000 degrees Celsius. The phenomenon is self-perpetuating and nearly impossible to stop once it begins.
Google did not immediately respond to Fortune with regards to Nelson’s testing results.
Nelson ended his video by suggesting Google should relocate the antenna lines in future designs. “I would, however, recommend that before Google attempts anything else, they should relocate the antenna lines near the hinge or not,” he said. “Either way, I’ll be here next year to keep them in check.”
You can watch Nelson’s teardown of the Google Pixel 10 Pro Fold below. It lights on fire at the 7:25 mark:
For this story, Fortune used generative AI to help with an initial draft. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.
