MOTOROLA & SYMBOL BARCODE SCANNER REPAIR

In-House Depot Repair · Ship In Nationwide · Phoenix Drop-Off

Motorola and Symbol barcode scanners are still repairable long after the manufacturer stopped supporting them. Sterling Mobile repairs Symbol, Motorola, and Psion Teklogix handheld scanners and mobile computers in-house at our Phoenix depot — scan engines, keypads, screens, batteries and housings — with a free 90-day warranty on every repair and no maintenance contract required.

Who Owns Motorola and Symbol Scanners Now

Neither brand exists as a scanner manufacturer anymore — both ended up inside Zebra Technologies through a chain of acquisitions that ran from 2007 to 2014. That matters when a unit fails, because the company printed on the housing is not a company you can send it to.

Symbol Technologies was acquired by Motorola in 2007. Motorola Solutions bought Psion for roughly $200 million in October 2012. Then Zebra Technologies acquired Motorola Solutions’ entire Enterprise business for $3.45 billion, completing the deal on October 27, 2014. Intermec went the other direction, to Honeywell, in a $600 million acquisition that closed September 17, 2013.

Zebra does still publish end-of-service-life dates for hardware it inherited, and you can look up a discontinued model’s support dates on Zebra’s support site. For most Symbol- and Motorola-branded units those dates passed years ago. If the device you are holding still says Zebra on it, our Zebra end-of-life repair page is the better starting point.

Motorola and Symbol Models We Still Repair

We repair the Symbol, Motorola, and Psion Teklogix models that warehouses standardized on and never fully replaced. The list below covers the units that most often come across our bench, and each links to its specification page.

The list is not exhaustive. Our five in-house technicians service more than 20 brands and hundreds of models, including the Motorola MC7090 and Psion Teklogix 7035. If your model is not listed, call with the part number — we will tell you honestly whether it is worth repairing.

What Actually Fails on a Decade-Old Symbol or Motorola Scanner

Age changes what breaks. New scanners fail from drops; fifteen-year-old scanners fail from cycles — things that were pressed, plugged, and charged tens of thousands of times. Four failure points account for most of what arrives at our depot.

• Scan engine. Laser diodes dim and oscillating mirrors wear. The symptom is a scanner that reads a clean label fine but can no longer pull a scuffed or curved barcode, so operators start re-scanning.
• Keypad and overlay. The printed legend wears off first, then the dome contacts stop registering. On terminal-emulation units where operators key the same sequence all shift, specific keys fail long before the rest.
• Battery contacts and charging. Corroded contacts and worn charge ports read as “bad battery” and get misdiagnosed constantly — fleets replace batteries that were never the problem.
• Display and digitizer. Delamination and dead touch zones, especially on MC70 and MC75 units that spent years on a belt clip.

Arizona adds one more. Warehouses along the I-10 corridor run hot and dusty, and fine particulate works into keypad seams, scan windows, and battery contacts. Units coming out of non-climate-controlled Phoenix-area facilities tend to need cleaning and contact service more often than the same model in a sealed distribution center.

When Repair Stops Making Sense

Repair when the failure is a single component and the fleet still runs the software it needs; replace when the operating system has become the limitation rather than the hardware. That second case is what usually forces the decision on Symbol- and Motorola-era units, because most of them run Windows CE or Windows Mobile, and the applications built for them are increasingly hard to keep supported.

Migrating a whole fleet at once is rarely the right call. Our guide to end-of-life scanner replacement covers phasing a transition without stopping operations.

Ship In From Anywhere, or Drop Off in Phoenix

Handheld scanners and mobile computers weigh about a pound and ship in a small box, so ship-in repair works economically from anywhere in the United States — there is no regional limit on this service. Follow our repair packing list before sending anything, and request a quote first so pricing is approved before work begins.

Phoenix-area businesses can skip shipping entirely. Our repair depot is at 5631 S 24th St in the South Phoenix industrial district, minutes from Sky Harbor, and convenient from Tempe, Chandler, Mesa, Scottsdale, Glendale and Gilbert. Every repair — shipped or dropped off — comes back under the free 90-day warranty described on our warranty and returns page. Scanners, mobile computers and printers all cross the same bench, so mixed fleets go to one address; see barcode scanner repair for the full program details.

Motorola & Symbol Scanner Repair FAQs

Last updated: August 5, 2026