After news broke yesterday that Motorola’s new flip phone would only last around 27,000 flips before the screen degraded, you shouldn’t be surprised that Moto has come out today and discredited the news.
For starters, Moto contends that Cnet’s folding robot was holding the phone incorrectly, which is what led to the failure after just 27,000 flips. Now, bear in mind that 27,000 flips works out to be about 37 flips a day over 2 years, which – if we’re honest – is probably not an unreasonable lifetime.
However, Moto contends that its phone can do significantly better than this. In a video posted to its YouTube channel, the company shows a “proper” test, which shows the phone folding in a more natural way, perhaps closer to the way a human would actually use the phone.
What’s interesting, though, is that Motorola hasn’t actually come out and said how many times the RAZR can be flipped before it starts to suffer defects. One suspects, perhaps by implication, that it’s more than 27,000 times and if it is, that’s perfectly OK by me. Some days I use my phone frequently, others I barely touch it, so a lifetime of 27,000 flips (or more) sounds like a reasonable promise to me for a first generation folding phone.
However, with the big price tag, you should probably (and reasonably) expect more than this, so we’re looking forward to going hands-on with our own Moto RAZR soon so we can tell you how it really is.
