Manufacturers quote hinge cycles the way laptop makers once quoted battery hours: a number produced under conditions no owner will ever reproduce. So we built a rig and folded until failure.
What actually fails
Not the hinge. In three of four units the display laminate delaminated near the crease long before the mechanism loosened, and in the fourth, dust ingress killed the fold sensor at around 140,000 cycles.
The best performer here earned its 8.4 by being conservative: a slightly thicker cover layer, a gasket that survived our dust chamber, and a crease that stayed optically stable to the end of the run.
A hinge rated for 400,000 cycles is meaningless if the screen bonded to it gives up at 90,000.
Our recommendation has not changed much: buy the foldable with the best ingress protection, not the one with the biggest cycle claim.
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