Motorola Razr foldable phone: We go in-depth on the hinge

I'm here at Motorola inside their lab holding a brand new Motorola Razr phone, notable for the screen folding in half. And while the display might by the star of the show, it's this hinge that does all of the heavy lifting and we're gonna take a close look at what makes it up, and what makes this phone fold in half. [MUSIC] Hey guys I'm back here at seen that after my tour of the Motorola lab, and it was really impressive being there not gonna lie not only did I get to see the phone itself, which was the highlight of the day, let's be honest, but actually got to see all the little pieces that go into making the hinge that go into making the chassis of the phone, the glass For that little belly button camera, it was all really cool. I kinda wanted to see if I can put together and make it fun but they wouldn't let me. That being said, I also got to see all the tools they used to torture test the device, like dropping it, dropping things on it opening and closing the hinge. Fortunately, they wouldn't actually let me run any of those tests myself, but they were impressive nonetheless. The list is talking about this phone. This phone has a lot of things going forward. It has an astrologer, it has a small size, but really it's all about that foldable display. And the foldable display is only as good as the hinge mechanism that supports it. So let's say we're gonna design a phone and we have a paper thin foldable display like this piece of paper if I want the phone to fold in half I can do that. But the problem is I now have a giant crease and my display probably will have damaged it as well. Another option would be to take the same display, but not fold it completely flat. So maybe two thirds of its flat, but at least this little bit of an I don't know, well, air pocket here. Kind of like a tear drop shape. In this [UNKNOWN], if I go to open it again, I don't have a [UNKNOWN] and I can do this over and over again. Now, the challenge of this is what are you gonna do with this tear drop shape? While it has anything to do for their foldable phone, what they actually put to display on the outside of the device. That allows the body of it to stretch the screen out, so it's constantly being taut, whether it's closed or open. Motorola took a completely different approach, as opposed to putting the display on the outside of the device, They put the display on the inside of the device. Not only does this allow the phone to go from a normal-size shape to a pocketable shape, it also helps protect the screen. And as you know from the Galaxy Fold, and from this debacle, these screens are very fragile. So how do they make a hinge for this? So if you think a hinge, like a door hinge The whole hinge is solid. If you put a display in there, it's just going to crush it. What Motorola did is they actually made a small cam system for the hinges on either side. This allows a gap for the display to live in. And when it's closed, you don't see that gap and as you open it You see a top flat screen. Now, if only it was that easy to engineer it, it definitely wasn't and that's where Motorola's parent company Lenovo comes in, where they had a very similar style hinge on their users. Yoga laptops. So would have thought a yoga laptop and a Motorola razor, would result into this really cool looking foldable phone that we have today? So at this point we solve for the crease in the screen. We solve for how the screen opens and closes But we don't have a lot of support for this screen and that's where the next part of the [UNKNOWN] and comes in and it's using stainless steel plate the stainless steel plates some of them are actually glued to this display and others of them are standing freely, it doesn't go across the whole back of the display in fact there's probably a third of display that is as free that's where that bend is going to happen. So the [UNKNOWN] have to do two things right, It has to strengthen and stretch the display when it's flat. So it's like a normal phone, but it also has to get out of the way of that bulge again. And so to do this, there's a spring cam system. Yes. Again, we're talking about cams. How crazy is that? My very non scientific way to describe this is kinda like nothing. So if I cross my fingers like this. And I opened up my fist, the top of my fingers are relatively flat and that's would be the, the open position the phone. But as I start to close my knuckles, you can see there's a gap in between them and that's where. Where the steel plates are getting out of the way to hide the bulge of the screen. All the metal for the steel cans and steel plates are made of hardened steel. They're also covered in a diamond like coating. This allows it to move back and forth so that we're not using like lubricant or anything there. Because no one wants that. In fact, as you open and close your phone, if you look Very closely at the edge at either side of the screen, you can not only see the flex of the display, but you could also see the gears of the corner as they move back and forth. We asked Motorola about this and you could cover them up, is what they said, but it would just add another thing that would have to move and not fail And by showing you the mechanism with which this phone opens and closes, it looks kind of cool. It's kind of like seeing a watch when you see the gears underneath the face. Another thing to look for as you open and close the phone is the bottom of the screen. In fact, the whole screen moving as you open and close it, and you can really see that At the bottom where the chin is because you can see the screen move ever so slightly back and forth in and out of that gap there. Okay. So, aside from the camps, aside from the steel plates, aside from the display, there's also Power lines that have to go through this. In fact, they're eighty different signal lines that go through the hand, as well as power between the two battery has on the top and bottom of the phone. All of these things have to move in synchronicity every time we open and close this phone. So, that's when I say the display is the star of the phone, but the hinge is really doing all the hard lifting.