Skip to main content

Motorola’s folding phone just had a durability test — and it’s painful to watch

The Motorola Razr Plus half-opened and sitting on a glass table.
Joe Maring / Digital Trends

Motorola’s latest clamshell foldable, the Motorola Razr Plus, has won well-deserved praise for its design and the functionally rewarding cover screen that occupies almost one-half of the rear panel. In my brief time with the phone, I felt that Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Z Flip 5 will have a hard time beating this one.

Praise aside, it looks like the Razr Plus’ top selling point could also be its undoing. Zack Nelson of JerryRigEverything put the phone through his customarily brutal stress and bend test, and the Razr Plus failed at an unexpected point.

This has NEVER happened before...

While applying pressure on the rear side of the phone to check the hinge strength, the lower edge of the cover display breaks rather awkwardly. First, the screen shatters, and then, the glass assembly can be seen caving inside.

Recommended Videos

“Never have we ever been able to break a screen with a single finger,” says Nelson. However, it appears that the cover screen’s fragility has more to do with the gap underneath than the structural integrity of the glass itself.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

It seems the area right above the hinge is hollow, which means putting pressure on the cover display could damage the screen, as there is no solid support underneath. Simply put, don’t put the phone in the back pocket of your denim jeans, and take care about putting heavy objects over the phone.

What’s really surprising is that unlike the Google Pixel Fold’s fragile frame and hinge mechanism, the Motorola Razr Plus didn’t show any such signs of damage. There was no permanent damage recorded due to the phone bending in the reverse direction, and the flexible OLED screen also remained intact.

JerryRigEverything / YouTube

It’s quite paradoxical that the cover display — which Motorola markets as the Razr Plus’s standout feature — is also the part that is uncannily fragile. But the rest of the package seems solid.

Motorola told Digital Trends in an emailed interview that the Razr Plus ships “with an optimized inner structure stacking and stronger housing design” and that it also features “the industry’s first dual-axis tracking in the teardrop hinge.”

Compared to the previous-generation Razr foldable phones, this one can survive 400,000 folding cycles, twice that of its predecessors. It’s a great phone, and if you want to see how it stands out, Digital Trends Prakhar Khanna had some fun with its cover screen to see everything that it can accomplish. And it’s great! So long as you don’t accidentally shatter it like this.

Nadeem Sarwar
Nadeem is a tech journalist who started reading about cool smartphone tech out of curiosity and soon started writing…
One of 2024’s most unique folding phones may be getting a successor
The Huawei Mate XT.

The world's first triple-screen foldable phone is expected to get a successor. The Huawei Mate XTs is anticipated to replace the Huawei Mate XT revealed in China last year, according to Fixed Focus Digital (via Android Authority).

Information about the new phone is currently limited. However, it is expected to feature the HiSilicon Kirin 9020 chipset, which is already used in Huawei’s Mate X6 and Mate 70 series. Beyond this, few changes are anticipated as the company transitions from the Mate XT to the Mate XTs. Typically, the company follows an “s” model naming convention when introducing new products with updated internal components, such as systems on chips (SoCs), while keeping other features the same.

Read more
5 things Samsung needs to do with its folding phones in 2025
The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6 and Galaxy Z Flip 5's weather apps.

2024 was a challenging year for Samsung as its smartphone lineup has fallen stale just as it faces more competition in every smartphone segment than ever before. The Google Pixel 8a and OnePlus 12R challenge the Galaxy A, while the Galaxy S24 series faces challenges in every key market.

Then there’s the foldable lineup, and it’s where Samsung has improvements to make. The company made foldable phones mainstream, but while it drove much of the initial innovation, the competition has begun to surpass it. The OnePlus Open proved that there was an alternative to Samsung’s prowess in multitasking, and the Galaxy Z Fold 6 did little to dispel that notion last year. At the same time, Google made a much better foldable with the Pixel 9 Pro Fold; Honor proved that you can have a slim foldable with a big battery, and Motorola proved that it can outdo Samsung on the flip front.

Read more
The iPhone SE 4 price just leaked, and it’s better than we expected
iPhone SE

The iPhone SE 4 has been a highly anticipated choice for quite a while now, and we expect it to release sometime in the first quarter of 2025. While we know a lot about the iPhone SE 4, we haven't been able to nail down a solid estimate on its price. Now we have, and it's pretty awesome: the iPhone SE 4 is predicted to come in below $500.

Apple has been hard at work on its own in-house modem, and the iPhone SE 4 will be the first device to include that modem, according to a report from Naver. Since Apple is providing its own modem, it won't need to pay Qualcomm a fee for its 5G chips. The exact amount Apple pays Qualcomm isn't known, but it's a not-insignificant amount of money.

Read more