Welcome again to the JerryRigEverything durability circus! In this ring, we have the highly praised Motorola Droid Turbo 2! Step right up to see how this shatterproof screen holds up to scratches dealt by special picks made to assess the hardness of the phone’s screen according to Moh’s scale of hardness. Lean in closer to watch this rather large phone burn. Hold your breath as we bend this durable phone to it’s farthest limits. Do you want more than words racing through your screen? Watch the video on YouTube:
and follow along to JerryRigEverything!
Smartphone repair tool kit on Amazon can be found at this link.
The Motorola Top layer replacement can be found at this link.
Before we begin, as always, please remember that there is more than durability to take into account when making a smartphone purchase. Also,even if they pass these tests, I keep my personal phones in cases and cover my screens with screen protectors for safe keeping.
Starting out the festivities is a scratch test. Moh’s Scale of Hardness goes from one to ten with one, the softest material, being equivalent to Talc powder and ten, the hardest, being as hard as a diamond. The Droid Turbo 2 is actually made up of 5 different layers and while that does help make the Droid Turbo 2 shatterproof it hurts the phone’s score in the scratch test. Most phones are equipped with Gorilla Glass which doesn’t scratch until about a level 5 or 6, but the Droid Turbo 2 ends up scratching at a level 2! Keys and even coins in pockets will end up scratching the screen of the Droid Turbo 2 quite a bit. The camera’s lens on the other hand, is much harder, thankfully. When a razor blade is scratched against the camera lens, there are no marks left behind. The back of the phone seems to be made up of tough, braided nylon. A razor blade slices through easily, but the back should be safe against keys and coins; plus the back panel is replaceable. The Droid Turbo 2 trades shattering for easy scratching; how do you feel about that?
Next up, is the burn test. Most phone screens do well on this test by turning off and going black where the flame is held, but once the flame is gone the screen pixels come back on. Unfortunately, the Droid Turbo 2 has pixels that turn white and they do not recover in the face of that heat. My theory is that the flexible, plastic AMOLED layer inside the phone trapped the heat more than on another screen and the heat melted the pixels beyond repair. Even after turning off the screen, the white melted pixel mark is still visible. The Droid Turbo 2 unfortunately fails the burn test, as well.
Finally, the most exciting test: bending! An initial bend shows the phone’s ability to flex a little more than the average phone, but other than that, not much happens, even after bending it in the opposite direction the Droid Turbo 2 holds up. Finally, a solid pass for the Droid Turbo 2 on the bend test.
Let’s talk about the five layers of the screen for a moment. From the bottom, closest to the phone body, to the top, the most exterior layer, these are the layers of the Droid Turbo 2 screen: the aluminium chassis, flexible plastic AMOLED, flexible plastic digitizer, clear, plastic polycarbonate lens, and plastic acrylic polycarbonate lens. Motorola claims that the outermost plastic acrylic polycarbonate lens layer is scratch resistant, but we obviously found out that this is very untrue. The plastic acrylic polycarbonate lens layer is simply an over glorified screen protector that is easily replaceable and costs about thirty dollars to buy from Motorola’s online store. While this layer is shatterproof, the AMOLED beneath it can still shatter as a result of drops or hits, so don’t claim that the Droid Turbo 2 is unbreakable.
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