What happens when you use a smartphone as a brake pad?

Iqoo 3
IQOO 3 5G used as a brake pad for a BMW Weibo/iQOO mobile phone

Believe it or not, smartphones are one of the most abused and mishandled items of everyday life. Some people throw them in a fit of anger, while some treat their phones like babies. But even if you are of the second category, chances are one small trip while walking and your phone hits the gravel and breaks, or at least the screen breaks. May be that's why we have some many durability tests uploaded to YouTube every time a new smartphone hits the market.

Now, you may have seen the usual smartphone drop tests where the phone is dropped from different heights onto the pavement or floor to see at what height the phone's display cracks, or maybe even an "extreme" durability test where a car or a truck is run over the phone. But have you ever seen a smartphone durability test where a smartphone is used as the brake pad of a car, and a 2-ton BMW at that?

IQOO 3 5G used as brake pad for a BMW 530Li

Well, that's exactly what some geeky Chinese folks decided to do with Vivo sub-brand iQOO's first global smartphone the iQOO 3 5G which was launched just over a month ago. They've even posted a video of the most unusual durability test we've seen on Weibo.

In the video we can a shiny BMW 530Li on a race track, except this BMW has its standard brake pads replaced with two iQOO 3 5G smartphones, which means the phones were tasked with stopping the BMW on the race track!

The Weibo post which is in Chinese reads: "Can a 200 gram phone tame a 2 ton machine? A seemingly impossible task!"

Mission accomplished

At the end of the video, when the two "smartphone brake pads" are removed, they obviously look pretty beat up, but they were functioning at the end. So considering just two phones made a 2-ton car come to a complete standstill, it's a pretty remarkable feat.

The orange paintjob of two IQOO 3 5G smartphones did justice to their functionality and we can imagine just how hot the phones would have become from all the friction and speed, so it's impressive that they managed to survive. Makes us wonder what else can smartphones do.

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