TL;DR
- The Motorola Razr Plus was put through YouTuber Zack Nelson’s famous durability test.
- It survived dust exposure even with an unimpressive IP rating.
- However, the bend test showed a peculiar weakness in the phone.
I have an almost two-year-old toddler who loves to flip open books. But she’ll often bend them in the opposite direction, breaking the binding and tearing the pages. After watching this JerryRigEverything durability test for the Razr Plus, I am pretty confident my child can break Motorola’s flagship foldable.
YouTuber Zack Nelson’s famous smartphone torture regimen begins by trying to scratch the display of the Razr Plus. The internal 6.9-inch display is covered with a screen protector, which scratches at level two of the Mohs hardness scale. Deeper grooves appear on the display at level three. Since you can’t remove the screen protector, you can end up with a damaged surface, even with fingernail scratches.
The Motorola Razr Plus offers limited protection against water and dust with its IP52 rating. However, it fares pretty decently after being exposed to a generous amount of sand. The YouTuber notes there were no significant grinding noises indicating potential damage to the device.
Where things get really strange is the bend test. Turns out that large 3.6-inch external AMOLED display can’t hold its own under pressure. That’s because it doesn’t seem to have any support. When the Razr Plus is bent outwards from the back, the internal folding screen remains intact. However, the outer display shatters into pieces. It also caved in where Nelson’s thumb was pressing in, revealing a hollow void behind the screen. That’s a peculiar way for a phone to break.
In contrast, the Galaxy Z Flip 4 showed no physical damage during Nelson’s durability test. It flexed pretty hard and made a popping sound but remained functional. So did Samsung do a better structural job on its flip phone than Motorola? It seems that way. We’ll have to wait and see how well the upcoming Galaxy Z Flip 5 holds up in this durability test, given it also has a large external screen this time around.
