So in front of us today we have something we've never seen before, a smartphone made
completely out of carbon fiber. Carbon fiber is some impressive stuff. This is the Carbon
1 Mark II from a company called Carbon Mobile. What makes Carbon fiber special is its ability
to be incredibly strong, while at the same time being incredibly lightweight. Inside
the box we have just the phone which is super thin, and a USB-C charging cable. You can
see the carbon fiber weave all over the back and sides of the phone. Let's see how much
this thing actually weighs. In front of me I have an electronic scale. I'll take the
screen protector off so we can get the exact weight of the phone. And setting it one the
scale we get 128 grams, which is pretty impressive considering that if you take my own phone
and swap places, we are getting 243 grams. If we take my case off and weigh the phone
without it, we get about 200 grams, which is still almost twice as much as the carbon
fiber phone. A phone this lightweight and thin should make the durability test very
interesting.
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Now it's time to see if this super thin and lightweight carbon fiber cell phone can handle
a durability test. Let's get started.
[Intro]
This carbon fiber phone costs about $800. Carbon fiber is tricky to work with but can
accomplish some pretty cool things. This Carbon 1 is about half as thick as my Note 10 Plus
in a grip case, and like I mentioned earlier, also weighs about half as much. It might also
be my imagination or overconfidence, but it definitely feels like I could snap it in half.
But let's start with the scratch test.
In order to get this phone so thin, there is no camera bump, which is nice. And Carbon
Mobile is using a super thin slice of Gorilla Glass Victus for this screen, which as we
know, and can see by moving up the Mohs scale of hardness, scratches at a level 6 with deeper
grooves at a level 7. Up at the top of the phone, we get a 20 megapixel camera tucked
into the upper bezel protected by glass. We have a v-shaped earpiece, which is plastic
and securely attached to the display. It won't be falling out on its own. The bottom edge
of the phone has a matching bezel, and it's not a big deal, the carbon fiber, however,
is. So if you're curious as to what carbon fiber sounds like when it's scratched, it's
kind of similar to plastic since the fiber strands are held together with an epoxy or
resin. I'll talk more about that in a second. The fingerprint scanner can be scratched.
Then we have a textured metal power button, along with the individual metal volume buttons.
One downside of carbon fiber though is that it's an insulator, and like metal doesn't
really allow for the pass through of radio signals. So Carbon Mobile has engineered some
kind of special hybrid radio friendly composite material for the top and bottom ends of the
phone, which is basically just plastic end caps, so it can make phone calls.
The left side of the phone has more carbon fiber, along with the SIM card tray, which
doubles as an SD card slot. The tray itself is metal, but there is no waterproofing rubber
ring around the opening or any IP rating at all. The bottom has more signal friendly plastic
around the loudspeaker, the USB-C charging port and the microphone hole. Also the phone
just randomly turned off on me which isn't a good sign. There are two cameras on the
back protected by glass. Both are 16 megapixels and both are the same focal length, no telephoto
or wide angle. There is a dual colored LED flash.
Now let's talk about carbon fiber for a second. Carbon fiber is lighter than steel or aluminum,
with 2-5x more rigidity at the same thickness, depending on the fibers of course. That lightness
and rigidity is why Formula 1 race cars are built mostly with carbon fiber frames and
components. Even the drive shafts are made from carbon fiber. I've been following a YouTube
channel for the past year or so called DarkAero. They are building an entire airplane out of
carbon fiber. Super interesting to watch the carbon fiber cloth mix with the resin and
turn into super strong compound curve designs. The strength of the carbon fiber comes from
the direction that the fibers are oriented. Carbon fiber is great for two dimensional
loads that align with the direction of the fibers, but once you add that third dimension
of stress, like the stress that would come from a bend test, the carbon fiber is just
not designed for that. It's also not designed for extreme heat, but here we are. My Carbon
1 Mark II decided to just shut itself off again after about 2 seconds of flame. Hopefully
it's just my unit that keeps power cycling. After about 20 seconds we get the phone back
on again and we can see that the 6 inch AMOLED display does indeed have white burn marks
and does not completely recover from the fire. Normally, I do prefer my fingerprint scanner
to be incorporated to the power button, that way if it ever decides to not work, my finger
is already in place to manually unlock the screen. These guys though decided to add the
fingerprint scanner on the side, but as a separate unit not connected to the power button.
And it also just doesn't really seem to be working all that well. I did lightly scratch
it with my razor when we were analyzing the materials, and it's just currently toast.
Most fingerprint scanners can survive quite a bit more abuse than this.
Well, I think it's time we find out how structurally sound a carbon fiber smartphone really is
since smartphones are some of the most accidentally abused pieces of technology on the planet.
Sliding a Carbon 1 into your back pocket and sitting down with the screen curving along
with your curves would leave the phone mostly fine. No cracks or permanent damage, just
some pretty major flex. It's the bending from the other direction that we'll need to watch
out for. Carbon fiber is not so strong around it's third axis perpendicular to those fibers.
This phone is officially totaled and does not survive my durability test. To be fair,
it looks like Carbon Mobile used the bare minimum amount of carbon fiber in the build
to keep things super thin. If their fiber layering were thicker or more robust, it might
have survived. Of course, if someone were to sit on this phone vertically, the carbon
fiber frame would probably support far more than an aluminum phone of the same thickness
since that is the direction the strands are oriented. But I do hope nobody is sitting
on their phone vertically
Since we're already halfway taken apart, I say we just keep going so we can check out
the carbon fiber from the inside. The Carbon 1 has a monocock design, and no I did not
make that word up. Monocock means that the carbon fiber portion is acting as a structural
skin, like an exoskeleton or shell where the internal components are supported by that
exterior frame. Some of the F1 racing cars are built this way and offer a lot of protection
for the drivers. With all the screw out and the thin mid plate removed, along with the
SIM card tray, we get a look at that interior portion of the carbon fiber shell. It's unpolished
on the inside since this is the stuff people don't normally see...except for all of us
right now, of course. It looks like the 16 megapixel lens on the left does have some
kind of optical image stabilization, but the lens on the right does not. The battery is
also here attached to the midlate. It has magical pull tabs which would be used of course
if someone were dissembling this phone correctly. Just pulling the adhesive strip allows the
battery to come free with zero bending or prying on the battery itself. Much safer.
The battery does say it's a 2800 milliamp hour which is a little bit off from the 3,000
milliamp hours advertised on Carbon Mobile's website.
Finally, the carbon fiber frame. Two things call our attention: first of which is the
little circles of plastic, probably used to join the top layer of plastic that the antennas
can go through to the carbon fiber frame that the antennas can not send signals through.
Also these cute little threaded inserts for holding the electronic components to the carbon.
Metal is just better at the tiny tolerant stuff like screws and threads so it's natural
that these little metal inserts would be embedded into the carbon fiber. We see this a lot with
3D printing and plastic. In summary, carbon fiber works great for race cars and airplanes
where the stress and impacts can be calculated, but with cellphones where damage is willy-nilly,
and any type of abuse can happen at any time, the carbon fiber should either be thicker
or there needs to be something in addition, like some kind of mid plate to provide that
perpendicular third plane of stress relief that the carbon fiber isn't equipped for.
I'm sure it's doable. I think a heavy duty phone that isn't thin, made of real carbon
fiber would be pretty awesome. Either way, it's cool to see innovation in the smartphone
space, even if it didn't survive.
What do you think of carbon fiber? Let me know down in the comments. Hit that subscribe
button if you haven't already. Come hang out with me on Instagram and Twitter. And thanks
a ton for watching. I'll see you around.