Do you know the story about the blogger who goes to the phone store and gets the Motorola Razr a weird creaky sound while holding it half open? It's a fun one.
Max Weinbach — who is known for leaking out reliable information about Samsung phones for XDA Developers — went to a store to check out the new foldable Razr, which is now on display in different retailers.
He posted a video that shows him holding the foldable Razr at a 45-degree angle and moving it back and forth without closing or open completely. Check it out:
This is the sound of the hinge on the Razr folding. It doesn’t sound good. The hinge also feels flimsy and cheap for a $1500 phone. The rep at this store said she was afraid to use it. pic.twitter.com/dCXZNlCF0PFebruary 2, 2020
Nirave Gondhia, editorial director of Mobile Nations, replied to Weinbach's video with one of his own:
Can confirm this is on retail units. This is on mine after 1 day of use. https://t.co/lBXIWtE8fI pic.twitter.com/9XTNG4YBmMFebruary 2, 2020
But what Gondhia is showing makes a completely different sound than the creaky sound that Weinbach has recorded. This seems to be the click of the hinge coming into place, which seems like the thing the hinge should do when the phone gets into its unfolded position, as shown in other unboxing videos (see below).
As for Weinbach‘s, I’m not surprised that any hinge would make a creaky noise if you force it to hold it at that angle. Weinbach may be too young to remember the old clamshells, but anyone who had one and played with it would tell you that it made a noise like that when doing that very same thing. Holding the hinge and moving it back and forth will force the spring-loaded mechanism and make a noise.
Weinbach says that the hinge feels ”flimsy and cheap” for a $1,500 phone. I haven’t tried the Razr myself, but none of the hands-on reviews I’ve seen (including ours) have mentioned neither a strange noise nor a flimsy cheap hinge. On the contrary: all of them praised the satisfying hinge action and the clever folding hiding mechanism.
That said, perhaps the review Razr units were exceptions. Or it could be that this particular Razr has a problem, which may be more likely. Or maybe it’s just a matter of different expectations for different people — and most people don’t force phones into weird angles back and forth?
For comparison, here’s an unboxing of a retail unit made yesterday. Jump to 6:12 to hear how it sounds (there’s no creaky sound, just a satisfying click) and the reviewer's impression.
I’ve found a few of these videos already, all of them with the same impressions as the first review.
Weinbach also tweeted an image from a Walmart, showing a Razr with a destroyed screen.
He later added “keep in mind someone totally did this on purpose but you shouldn't be able to do this.” I don’t know what that is supposed to mean but, of course you should be able to do this given any hard tool. Any screen in any phone can easily be broken with a key. The fact that it looks different than a glass-based screen doesn’t change the fact that all images are fragile if anyone wants to destroy it.
So this picture really says nothing about durability. A more interesting thing would be a video of someone doing this — to show how easy it would be to reach this point as opposed to getting a hammer and hitting the screen of an iPhone.
