The Motorola Razr didn't have a good weekend. After a really strange launch where you couldn't buy the phone even if you wanted to, bad reviews started to come out and durability issues launched to make headlines. Not what you want from a first-gen product.
Moto Razr: easily broken, hard to fix
There are two sides to this coin. First off, we can talk about how the phone failed seemingly pretty early on in a stress test that folded and unfolded the phone over and over and over. The Razr made it to around 27,000 folds before showing damage, which isn't great compared to the original Galaxy Fold that withstood 120,000 folds.
But okay, that's just a robot test. Not indicative of real-world usage, right? Maybe, maybe not.
InputMag purchased a Moto Razr about a week ago, and they've already reported problems and damage right on the fold of the phone. The screen appears to be peeling away, and apparently it all happened without any impact or other damage. It's just coming apart.
Alright, so, screen's broken. What's the next step? Well, you're not going to easily get it repaired, according to iFixit's traditional phone teardown.
In fact, the teardown actually got the worst score possible. iFixit uses a scale from 1 to 10, and the Razr managed to bottom out and score a 1. There's a ton of glue used in the phone, you have to completely take it apart to swap out the battery, things are unusually soldered to the main board, and there are quite a few cables and wires that can be easily broken while disassembling everything. It won't be good for you or for customer service reps to try and fix this thing.
Fortunately, the screen does seem like it's doable, but that's assuming it's the only thing that's gone wrong. Any other issues internally or with the hinge are bound to cause more problems, and there's no telling what the cost of these repairs will be.
So yeah. If you do manage to find a Razr, and you do talk yourself into buying one, be extremely careful with it.
