The ROG Phone 6 Pro is marketed as one of the most powerful smartphones available, and is specifically designed for gaming on the go. However, despite its technical prowess, the phone performed exceptionally poorly in a durability test. While no phone is indestructible, the ROG Phone 6 Pro walked away from a standard durability test done by YouTuber JerryRigEverything looking like it just barely survived an explosion.
The test looked to see how well the ROG Phone 6 Pro stood up to things like scratches to its display and cameras, where it performed similarly to other flagship devices. Where the test took a turn, however, was during the bend test. JerryRigEverything was able to crack the phone almost cleanly in half with ease straight down the center, rendering it completely destroyed in just a few seconds.
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While it’s not uncommon for the smartphones featured on the YouTube channel to run into some issues during the bend test, the ROG Phone 6 Pro was something of an outlier due to how little force it was able to withstand before being pretty much destroyed. As JerryRigEverything notes during the test, the ROG Phone 5 Pro from last year fared just as poorly as it, too, snapped in half during the bend test.
It’s certainly frustrating a phone that costs $1,300 is so flimsy, but there were two indications that the Phone 6 Pro would perform so poorly on the test. The first is that it’s almost identical to the Phone 5 Pro in terms of design, which, as mentioned above, had the exact same durability issue. It was possible that ROG might have changed some of the internal components between versions, but that clearly wasn’t the case.
The second red flag for the Phone 6 Pro’s durability was its poor ingress protection rating. The ROG Phone 6 Pro has been rated IPX4, with the X meaning that it wasn’t tested for resistance to solid particles and the 4 indicating it’s splashproof, but will sustain major internal damage when exposed to liquids in any substantial amount. For comparison, the industry standard IP rating is hovering around IP68 for most devices, which means that the ROG Phone 6 Pro is far behind the curve when it comes to withstanding wear and tear.
The ROG Phone 6 Pro is still a solid device, so just make sure that you’re extra gentle with it should you buy one. Bends frequently happen when a phone is put in pants pockets, so it’s probably best to keep it elsewhere when on the go.