Motorola Razr 2019 teardown video shows a very different hinge

It’s the battle of the flip foldables – well, it’s a battle for survival in the hands of Zack from JerryRigEverything. In his latest video he takes apart the Motorola Razr 2019 and compares it to the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip, focusing mostly on the hinge mechanisms of both phones. Also, as promised after the Z Flip video, he shows a better shot of the bristles that Samsung relies on to keep the dust out of the hinge.

Motorola’s approach is different. Several times throughout the video you’ll see sticky goop over important connections inside the Razr. This is meant to catch dust and keep water away from the exposed electrical contacts.

The internal layout of the Moto is also hugely complicated as the foldable form factor has mate routing the cables tricky. Two separate videos labeled the Razr “impossible to repair”.

But the different hinges on the two phones are the most interesting part of the video. Motorola’s solution seems dead simple with two inserts on the side acting as pivots, two gears on each half of the phone and springs on the side to help open and close the handset.

Motorola did take great care to keep the fold in the middle of the screen as gentle as possible and also not to put too much strain on the ribbon cable that connects both halves. However, if you watched Zack’s previous video on the Motorola Razr 2019, you know that bending it backwards proved much more destructive than bending the Galaxy Z Flip.

Razr’s hinge failed after just 27,000 folds in a separate durability test, well short of the advertised 200,000 folds. The Z Flip is yet to go through a similar test, but the Galaxy Fold lasted 120,000 folds.