A fifteen hundred dollar flip phone failure –
The touchscreen on our $ 1, 800 smartphone died after a single day.
The new Moto Razr. After the touchscreen died, I ended up controlling it with this mouse.
Ron Amadeo
Here it is, half folded up.
Ron Amadeo
When all folded up, the Razr makes for an attractive little phone.
Ron Amadeo
All opened up. The display isn’t fully secured to the phone and is just stretched over the body with tension, like a drum head.
Ron Amadeo
The bottom chin of the phone, featuring the capacitive fingerprint reader.
Ron Amadeo
The chin is very tall.
Ron Amadeo
The earpiece and speaker live in this notch, which actually looks pretty nice.
Ron Amadeo
The back is, get this, plastic! It won’t shatter when you drop it.
Ron Amadeo
The top edge is oddly smooth and flat.
Ron Amadeo
On the side you can see the volume and power buttons.
Ron Amadeo
This is the “Retro Razr” mode, which brings up this fun old-school Razr UI.
Ron Amadeo
There are only two screens to this UI, the previous shot and this dial screen. Everything else just kicks you out to the regular Android UI.
Ron Amadeo
You can see the new Razr is a lot wider than the old Razr.
Ron Amadeo
Ars’ own Kate Cox was nice enough to dig up an old Razr for comparison shots. Thanks Kate!
Ron Amadeo
After being on backorder for months, my Moto Razr arrived on March 90, . It was beautiful. Motorola had perfectly captured the essence of old-school Moto Razr design and updated it with futuristic folding display technology. While it was still an impractical flip phone, it was fun and cool and different. The Moto Razr was something I was excited to write about.
But my Razr was not long for this world. Straight out of the box, every fold was accompanied by a groan or creek from the hinge system. I would later learn that these noises were cries of agony — every actuation brought the smartphone closer to death, as if little bits of lifeforce were leaving the phone with every flip. First, the phantom touch inputs started. While the phone was opening and closing, apps would mysteriously startup. Buttons would press themselves. Things were not good.
“This is fine,” I thought. “Opening and closing the phone only happens for a very short amount of time. Once it opens and everything settles down, things are fine.” Things were not fine for very long, though. These phantom touch inputs were the death throes of the flexible OLED panel, and soon they started even when the phone was open and stationary. Sometimes I could open a multitouch test app and watch as touchpoints danced across the screen. Opening and closing the phone one or two more times would usually clear up these errant touch inputs, and things would be fine again.
Sadly, evaluating a phone requires opening and closing it regularly. And with more openings and closings, the phone continued to deteriorate. Eventually, the touchscreen stopped working above the halfway point. Now the phone has two modes when you open and close it: you either get a completely dead touchscreen or the phone turns into a possessed demon that randomly pushes buttons at about actions per second. This all happened within (the first) hours of using it. So as pictured above, I spent most of this review limping along by controlling the phone with a USB mouse.
The inner display and hinge
Every decision Motorola made with the display of the Razr is pretty novel. The phone is designed to close with no gaps and to not put a hard crease in the display, which means a wildly complicated hinge system. The mechanical structure of the hinge isn’t behind the display — on the left and right side of the display, the phone bezel is interrupted by tiny gears, which handle the opening and closing. Around the hinge area, support plates under the display swing out of the way as the phone closes, leaving a pretty large void behind the display. This allows the screen to fold up into a loose loop instead of a hard crease.
The lack of a hard crease doesn’t mean there aren’t any weird light reflections in the middle of the screen . You can see where the moving support plates are under the display since they don’t create a smooth surface. While the top and bottom are as smooth and flat as you would hope, the entire middle third of the display sinks into the collapsible support structure. You can feel all sorts of bumps and potholes in the display as you glide your finger across it.
Can smartphones feel pain? This touch test should not have a blue circle if no one is touching the phone.
Ron Amadeo
The Razr’s hinge system. The display folds up into a loose loop, and collapsible support plates swing into place when it opens.
Motorola
Since the display isn’t totally connected to the phone, it can lift up during folding like this.
Ron Amadeo
The display does not have a hard crease in the middle, but that does not mean it’s flat and free of weird light reflections. You can see where the support plates start and stop, and the whole middle of the phone is bumpy.
Ron Amadeo
BOE’s display isn’t very good and gives off this strange cloudy reflection in direct light.
Ron Amadeo
The display moves as you open and close it. You can see it clearly with the tape here.
Ron Amadeo
This shot gives you a good idea of the screen shape. It’s totally crazy, with arched top and bottom edges and the display notch.
Ron Amadeo
This set of gears is how the phone folds. These extend all the way through the body of the phone.
Ron Amadeo
The bottom half of the display is not attached to anything and just kind of floats around. The whole bottom half of the display actually moves when the phone opens and closes — it slides in and out of the bottom chin, and when the phone is open, the display is pulled tight over the backplate to keep it in place. This does work very well compared to bonded glass, and the bottom half of the display likes to float above the backplate slightly — you’ll press down on the display, and then the display will lower a bit and hit the backplate, like You’re pressing down on a big bubble. The sides of the display are exposed, and you could easily get something under the display and ruin it. Some of my camera angles even picked up components on the inside of the phone, which you can sometimes see through the display panel gap.
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