Motorola MotoZINE ZN5: Kodak vs. Carl Zeiss & Cyber-shot?

This article is a bit divergent from our usual style. Various e-zines occasionally publish a very specific sort of ‘unboxing’ articles, showcasing the process of cracking open a freshly acquired box with some gadget and accompanying accessories. Targeted at inciting the viewer’s curiosity, it escapes the most interesting facts always concealed deeper than the cardboard. At times you want to see what the inside of this or that device looks like. Let’s call this type of test ‘disassembling’. Motorola MOTOZINE ZN5 is the subject of today’s debut article under this rubric – that’s exactly the same handset that we drowned in beer and got run over by a car.

Motorola ZN5 Crash-tested

The handset wasn’t a finished commercial piece, but rather an early technological sample. It one year of age in three days following the crash test. Despite the slight deformation of the casing that resulted from the wrath of elements that it faced in the crash test, the phone was in a good condition (the screen and its protective glasses were the only components to suffer serious damage). After two weeks, distinct marks of corrosion appeared on the main board, the inner protective screens became overrun with rust. This is a normal outcome for any drowned phone (let alone milk, beer or coffee), so it’s always advisable to dry the handset well as soon as possible to prevent the further decay that may eventually cause a condition beyond repair. Another general rule is to remove the battery and keep the handset powered off until it is completely dried unless you want the device to commit an electrocution suicide. If the phone gets up conscious the next day, that doesn’t mean it will still be working in a month.

In our case, the span of time between the drowning and disassembly is rather short, so the unlucky Motorola makes a good visual aid for those apt to see the ravage that moisture can cause to the electronic stuffing unseen to the naked eye, just after a mere 15 seconds of exposure.

First we disassembled the outer shell of the mobile, then proceeded to cleaning the main board. The casing of Motorola MOTOZINE ZN5 consists of two parts fastened together with six screws, to of which are only accessible after removing the speaker’s protective shell. A number of plastic ‘latches’ help to ensure an extra bit of integrity. The speaker itself shares a bay with the antenna (the latter looking like a copper strip running along the bottom edge of the casing). After the back panel was dismounted, we got full access to the inside components. The 3.5 mm headset slot can now be easily detached. In its mounted state, it’s pressed hard against the five contacts on the main board.

 

 

For a start, we detach the three sleeves running from the side buttons, camera and flash. After that, the camera and the flash can be easily removed from their niches. A large quantity of dampener pads are dispersed all around the inside – the engineers did their best to provide for a good protection. The high-profile capacitor of the xenon flash is marked 28,5 mF / 330 V. That’s a very high score, no wonder the flash is so powerful.

  

Next to the flash module, another small chip is located, housing the SIM and memory card slots, connected to the main board with a long sleeve. It’s easily detachable. After the removal, the protective shell of the CPU becomes accessible. Generally, every chip in a phone is protected with a soldered-over shell crafted from metal. They offer some protection against physical and EMP damage, grounding the electronics. These shells also serve as improvised indicators of unprofessional intrusion, making it easier to determine whether a case of damage is covered by the warranty. A bit later we’ll dwell about the chips concealed beneath, but for the time being just let’s dismount the main board. This requires detaching one more sleeve leading to the keyboard, which is built right into the face panel of the casing and can’t be detached or replaced separately from the said piece.

 

   

Let’s see how the casing looks inside. The first thing that catches your eye is the metal plate residing under the keyboard. An arch-shaped framing runs encompasses its sides, the protective glass resting on another metal frame. The whole face panel is made of metal, but that’s something we knew from the very beginning. So now it’s clear why the casing was able to sustain the substantial pressure of a car’s weight. The broken glass still formed a solid piece without any fragments missing.

Finally we remove the screen. It’s resting on two legs connected to the main board and uses a differently designed sleeve for communication with the rest of the electronics. A quantity of rust is clearly visible along with a moisture indicator saying hey, we had a flood recently. That’s a type of sticker that changes its color from white to red if some moisture is applied. If it turns red, your warranty is cancelled.

  

   

 

Further dismantling took place on a special table equipped with a miniature air solder. This device blows a current of air heated to a desired temperature (it was 300°С) and makes an only possible means for detaching the protective screens, for it’s a must to keep the thing heated evenly at all spots. Mishandling often results in irreparable damage like all the small parts falling apart from the main board, which is something you would never want to see happening unless it’s some cruel type of crash test. Much to our dismay, one of the capacitors mounted on the FM unit fell victim to an awkward stroke of the solder, only to be successfully put back into place with the help of a smaller solder some minutes later.

 

 

 

After the last, seventh screen found a resting place near the phone on the table, it was about the right time to apply some special chip cleaning solution. Having sprayed a good deal of this stuff all over the motherboard and the internal connectors, I was able to remove the rust from all the exposed metal parts with the help of a plain toothbrush. That’s how our fix-up ended. A scrupulous examination reveals Freescale brand markings scattered on the majority of the chips including the CPU (ARM11, 532 MHz, MXC275-30 platform). Some of the controller chips are tagged as the production of Broadcom, Marvell, Atmel and Texas Instruments.

 

 

 

 

 

Besides a minimized use of glue (much favored by Sony Ericsson), Motorola phones are also remarkable for a total lack of technical apertures on the chip, commonly found under all onboard components in Nokia and Samsung products. Please don’t take this point for an attempt to start another holy war, an ordinary consumer shouldn’t normally get concerned about this sort of things. Every company does their best to minimize the production costs, but somehow it’s ZN5 alone that uses metal not only for product image purposes (like the face and back panel pieces), but inside the casing as well – to ensure a maximum durability. What goes to the above-mentioned apertures, those have a bad habit of harboring condensated moisture, leading to the decay of neighboring components and lowering the chances for successful recovery after drowning. These subtle nuances concealed from the buyer is what constitutes the difference in lifespan of differently crafted products.

After reassembling the handset (we didn’t think it was possible to weld back the screen), ZN5 powered on and passed through a normal boot cycle, as if it never were damaged. In a couple minutes an incoming call slipped in, and much to our delight the speaker worked just fine. The only thing that went totally defunct was the screen, it perished during our crash test. This didn’t make a huge problem though, for we used the wireless desktop service to project the screen picture over Wi-Fi to the screen of a desktop PC. That makes a good point about the potential of the MOTOMAGX platform and the resources that were passed into the hands of third-party developers after the release of an SDK. No Symbian phone can currently offer a comparable degree of liberty in software development. A replacement for the broken screen is already on its way to out lab, and currently we are looking for another martyr to put to the ordeal. You can’t argue that ZN5 defeated the various hardships with dignity. Once again, we quote the link to the corresponding article: Motorola ZN5 Crash-tested