Foldable OLED Displays And The Bane Of Dust

A teardown of the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 by iFixit exposes a durability weakness shared with foldable OLED devices generally: dust intrusion into the hinge mechanism. Despite an IP48 rating for water resistance, the phone offers no protection against particles smaller than 1mm. iFixit deliberately introduced UV-reactive dust into the hinge, and after exposure the phone made severe crunching noises when folded. Disassembly (which requires removing the flexible OLED screen) revealed the hinge mechanism caked in dust, rendering it effectively non-functional, while the two internal halves of the device stayed relatively clean.

Source: https://hackaday.com/2026/08/20/foldable-oled-displays-and-the-bane-of-dust. 8 Sync News only summarizes and links out; content copyright belongs to the authors and original sources.