New iPhone Air survives Utah YouTuber's brutal durability test but then he breaks it anyway
Published on Sep 29, 2025 at 3:52 AM (UTC-4)
by Jason Fan
Last updated on Sep 29, 2025 at 7:09 AM (UTC-4)
Edited by
Emma Matthews
The new iPhone Air just faced its first big durability test at the hands of YouTuber JerryRigEverything, and let’s just say the results were quite unexpected.
Zack Nelson, the Utah-based creator behind the massively popular channel, is known for bending, scratching, and torching devices until they fail.
Apple, meanwhile, has been loudly touting the Air as its thinnest yet most durable phone.
So when Nelson got his hands on one, fans were eager to see if Apple’s claims would hold up.
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Durability is a key for the iPhone Air
Apple has made durability a key talking point for the iPhone Air, even challenging interviewers to try bending the device.
At its launch, the company declared that the phone ‘exceeds Apple’s stringent bend strength requirements‘ and is ‘more durable than any previous iPhone.’
A tech expert recently did a teardown of the phone, and its engineering left people blown away.
That marketing set the stage for Nelson’s hands-on showdown.
In his video uploaded on the JerryRigEverything channel, Nelson set the titanium-framed device on its side and pressed down with his bare hands.
Pushing from the back, nothing happened.
From the front, the phone bent slightly, then snapped back to its original shape within minutes.
His conclusion? The Air was far tougher than he imagined.
“The iPhone Air has no business being this indestructible,” he admitted, joking that his thumbs and pride were the only things that broke.
The titanium frame is paying off
But Nelson wasn’t done yet.
To truly measure the phone’s strength, he used a specialized machine to apply steady pressure until the device finally gave way.
The result: it took a staggering 216 pounds of force to snap the iPhone Air in half.
For comparison, most phones collapse at far lower thresholds, making Apple’s titanium design stand out.
Interestingly, while the iPhone Air uses a titanium frame, like Apple’s previous iPhone 15 series, the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro return to aluminum.
This means that the iPhone Air is clearly the durability champion in the lineup.
Nelson, who has more than nine million subscribers, summed it up bluntly:
“Both my thumbs now hurt, along with my pride. The iPhone Air 100 percent passes my durability test.”
