2020 Moto Razr Teardown! - Better Hinge than the Z Flip?

The new Motorola RAZR

2020

is ridiculously complex but also incredibly simple. I will explain it today. Let's take apart the new flexible folding screen shaver. We've already taken apart the other foldable foam, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip, so we can compare the two internal

hinge

mechanisms side by side. Just a side note before we get started when I was tearing down the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip and looking for the bristles that They helped keep dust out. I was so focused on finding the bristles inside the

hinge

itself that I didn't notice that Samsung had placed the bristles elsewhere on the bottom of each half of the frame.

Luckily you guys caught this pretty quickly and I was able to update the description and pin a comment on the

teardown

video, so thanks for that. At first the bristles look like strips of black duct tape, but I want you to see what they look like up close. These bristles extend across the entire frame and this is what helped keep dust off the phone during my bid test, even after the phone was bent back and the frame broke. I ran it through its own dust test and found that fine particles still managed to get into the phone, but for normal-sized dust and sand particles, I think it does a good job of protecting the inside.

Now it's time to see if the Motorola Razr has any protection built into its own hinge, let's get started. When I said the Motorola RAZR was ridiculously complex I was talking about the organization of the components inside, it's all a bit of a mess until we get to the hinge, but it's still very interesting to get into the phone. I'll start by heating up the back plastic cover and then I can pry it off the phone with my razor blade and move it down out of the frame at the same time as closing the plastic case.

It's still connected to the phone, although with the flat fingerprint cable attached to the base, there's no good way to disconnect it at this point without removing these 43 screws. I'll link the tool. Can I use the video description? The internal plastic casing that you just took out is for the speaker and antennas. I can unplug the speaker like it's a little Lego. You can see the singular speaker here inside the plastic frame. There's a water damage indicator down here, next to the charging port. You can see that. It's white on one side and red on the other, so if the phone never gets wet, the red will bleed through and turn pink.

Motorola has come up with some very creative ways to make this phone waterproof despite all this goo surrounding the ribbon cable. Connection aid keeps dust and liquids away from important parts. This sticky substance feels exactly how you think it would feel when you turn your phone around. I now have access to the fingerprint scanner cable and can take it out of its small connector now that the smaller glass screen can be seen on the phone it is bent and closed it is stuck quite tight much more solid than usual it is very difficult to separate the glass from the phone's frame eventually after many rounds of heat and gentle cutting I was able to separate the screen and bend it away from the phone, then I can detach the OLED panel and free the 2.7 inch screen.

What makes this disassembly complex is that there are actually four sides to the phone, these two sides on the back of the phone and another two sides under the screen. We're already pretty far into this thing and we still have to see the motherboard. I'm going to reach in and disconnect the bottom battery. There are two of these inside the phone. Each half of the phone has its own battery. Then I'll remove four more. t3 and release the tape of the folding screen and NFC, then the battery and motherboard can be removed. This motherboard looks a little different than what we're used to, I think that's because each of the little chips on the board has its own cheese grater. you can see it well.

Cage shield on top. These shields block the electromagnetic fields of most regular phones. You know, the non-foldable ones are encased in a metal and glass sandwich, but this motherboard just has a thin foldable plastic screen on top for protection and that's why cheese graters were added over the chips. anyway. I think Motorola gets the nod because of how cool it looks. The battery has a capacity of 1245 milliamp hours. We'll find the top battery here in just a second. Now this is where we have some problems. I remember my phone was accidentally bent in the wrong direction, which ripped the bottom of the screen out of its normal position and everything is very stuck.

Motorola is now offering screen replacements for this phone for $299, which is pretty fair considering it's a futuristic new flexible piece of technology and is already the same price as an iPhone 11 pro screen replacement, even after aggressively trying to slide the screen in. down with some pliers, it still wouldn't move so I'm sure I did this the wrong way and just jumped. I pulled it out the top and then peeled it off the rest of the phone. It's still crazy how thin he is. You can physically see the four puncture wounds on the back of our phone folded upside down.

Yoga is quite dangerous. I found eight screws holding the top together. the phone to the frame once they were outside I was able to start removing the top battery but everything is still very attached. You can see the long extension ribbon floating through the hinge mechanism, just like we saw with the Samsung z

flip

, we all disconnected the side buttons and the large extension ribbon, but before I can separate all the pieces, they are still attached with one more t3 screw on this little top plate and a connector under the phone. It's not very well organized inside, but what it lacks in organization it makes up for. because in silly putty there is a layer of clear goo on all of these top boards and if I had to guess how sticky it is, it will probably be quite effective at keeping dust and liquid off the board, the 16 megapixel rear camera does that. we don't have optical image stabilization, we have another water damage indicator here next to the battery and although I'm calling this phone complex to have it taken apart, there's probably a reason for it, normally on cell phones it's easy to act on all the connections the board, but on this knife the board is screwed on and everything is clamped underneath, which complicates things, but if you think about it, it probably helps keep everything plugged in while the phone is rotated 200,000 times during its life, so What the complexity could be The good thing is that the battery is glued in place, it is 12.65 milliamp hours, so now we are only left with the shaver frame and the hinge, and this design couldn't be more different than the Z

flip

.

Check it after removing it. two screws we can see that the center of the phone has to flap, these hold each half of the screen as a complete closure. Remember that the knife has a much smoother curve on the inside without folds in the center of the screen. I will remove two. more screws holding the silver bit in the center, this heavy guy is the culprit for our four damage marks in the center of the screen during the container test, if you remember, the four corners of this guy must have been what he pressed towards out on the screen from behind, hopefully that doesn't start to happen with normal use, the curved back of this piece of metal helps prevent the Riven extension from bending inside the hinge while folding.

I will remove two more screws on each side of the hinge that hold the outside in place. pins in place This is where we start to see how much simpler Motorola's design is than Samsung's. This will blow your mind. If we zoom in, we can see that these side parts of the shaver are not just for decoration, they are the hinge. Like literally everything, you can see that each half of the phone has little gear teeth to keep each half folded equally, but these two little bars on either side of the phone are what hold the halves together and allow the hinge to bend.

You can see that the left side has the same dual prong design and once they both come out and are removed, the entire phone can fall apart. Now all we have left are two metal flaps and the ribbon cable that is glued inside them and that's it. It's really simple. I can hold both halves of the phone together so we can see how the stationary gears line up. There are no other moving parts inside the spine of this phone. It becomes more amazing when we hold the Samsung hinge upwards. next to Motorola's hinge, Samsung is here doing rocket science and Motorola just shows up, they're like a door and it's ready to move.

Door hinges have been around for thousands of years and will Motorola still use them, you may be wondering. Hi Jerri, how do you open and close the phone? I'm glad you asked. It would be very embarrassing if I miss something important like that. Motorola has very cleverly hidden its spring mechanism inside the foam frame, away from rocks and dust. When the guts of the phone are in place the springs are protected within the side walls of the frame and can be pressed against the latch. the hinge to keep the phone open or closed and provide resistance during the opening and closing process pretty solid design overall I'm impressed with both Both phones feature new and unique ways to use flexible screen technology and I'm excited to see where we go from here.

I'm pretty happy with my personal Note 10 plus for now, but there's a good chance my next phone will just be a Flip Phone, the price is dropping quite a bit with each new version and I'm sure they'll eventually be as durable as the phones we have Now, now that you've seen how both phones work from the inside, which one is your favorite? I know it's in the comments, hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. I have some great videos coming up with me on Instagram and Twitter, thanks sucker for watching. See you there.