Hasta La Gadget!

I’m a fan of gadget teardowns if for no other reason than to see exactly what’s on the inside of some of the coolest gadgets out there. Not too long ago I mentioned that iSuppli had performed a teardown of the Samsung Galaxy S4. The caveat there is that the company didn’t actually have a device to work with, so they only guessed what was inside.

On the other hand, iFixit has got their hands on the new HTC One smartphone and did a teardown the old-fashioned way using heat, screwdrivers, spudgers, and copious amounts of gadget lust.

The result of their work is a gutted HTC One smartphone showing us all the glorious insides. The downside is the One isn’t the easiest device to open up. In fact, it took the gadget surgeons over half an hour just to take the back cover off, and while doing it, they damaged the plastic bezel which surrounds the aluminum case.

Once inside, they found the brains of the operation – a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core CPU, running at 1.7 GHz, along with 2GB of DDR2 RAM, 32 GB of Samsung flash memory, Qualcomm power management and 4G modem chips, a Broadcom combo 802.11ac/Bluetooth 4/FM receiver chip, and a variety of other utility chips.

The HTC One’s 1080p 4.7″ LCD may look great, but it’s a pain to replace – as you have to take everything out of the rear case, including the motherboard – before it can be removed.

In the end, iFixit gave the HTC One an abysmal repairability score of just 1 out of 10. If you worry about breaking your smartphone and being able to fix it, you’d be better off buying insurance. Easy repairability just isn’t in the cards with the HTC One.

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

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If you were looking for the HTC One to be a device you were easily able to take apart for inner-bits replacement, you might not be all that pleased with the report appearing today. On the other hand, if you love it when iFixit gives a big shout out to the device you’re looking to buy for its immense durability, the HTC One might be the phone for you. It’s not going to be a device you’ll be popping open on accident, that’s for sure.

With the release of the HTC One, the manufacturer has bet a whole lot on the hardware as a proving point in their history. With this release, the company known as HTC says that they’ve done the best they’re able at the moment – this is the HTC One, and it’s named that for a reason. According to iFixit, this device is just about the most difficult smartphone to tear apart they’ve come across – but that’s not all bad news for you if you’re a general consumer.

The HTC One does not have a removable battery, nor is it able to take a microSD card. It’s got a body that’s made from one solid block of machined aluminum with a lovely pane of reinforced glass up front. A collection of awesomely odd bits and pieces can be found in the teardown, including this fun selection:

• Elpida BA164B1PF 2 GB DDR2 RAM
• Samsung KLMBG4GE2A 32 GB NAND flash memory
• Synaptics S32028 chip
• Cable for display labeled with DATE: 2012.11.30

That last bit proves that there’ve been bits and pieces of this device ready to rock for several months now – the back casing of the device can be seen to carry the date 2013/02/15, indicating that some of the parts have been added as recently as the middle of February (for this unit, anyway.)

Have a peek at the timeline we’ve got below of fabulous HTC One bits and pieces, and don’t forget to check out our full HTC One review as well. This is a device that’s set to either be a skyrocket-ready spaceship to the moon for HTC, or one of the biggest disappointments for the company in their history – if it doesn’t sell, that is. Have a peek at our full run-down now!

HTC One teardown proves durability a top priority is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

The BlackBerry Z10 is BlackBerry’s newest attempt at chiseling away at market share, and while the device is out now in several countries, including the US, it could take some time to find out if the Z10 is indeed stealing the hearts of iOS, Android, And Windows Phone users around the world. In the meantime, the curious minds at iFixit have gotten a hold of the device and did what they do best.

Of course, this isn’t the first teardown of the Z10, but it’s the first time that iFixit has had a chance to pry it open. Overall, there was nothing too special with this teardown. iFixit was pleasantly surprised by the removable battery, since that’s something we no longer usually see nowadays. After removing the rear panel and the battery, there are just a handful of screws and a plastic casing that hide the internals from curious eyes.

The screws that hold the plastic midframe in place also double as screws holding the motherboard in place, so once those screws are removed, a couple of disconnections is all it takes to pop out the motherboard, meaning that there’s no glue holding the main circuitry in place. The camera module pops off the motherboard with ease as well.

As for the unit’s display, it’s held to its frame with a few screws and a dab of adhesive to keep it in place, but it was also fairly easy to remove as well. However, as with Apple devices, the digitizer and the glass are fused together, making the entire display unit extremely thin. The glass is a hardened variant, but it’s not Gorilla Glass.

The only difficult things to remove were the smaller accessories around the edges of the device, including the headphone jack, power switch, ambient light sensor, and earpiece speaker housing, which are all built into a single assembly that’s held in place with stronger adhesive than any of the other components. Overall, iFixit gives the BlackBerry Z10 a repairability score of 8/10, which is certainly respectable.

BlackBerry Z10 gets torn down by iFixit is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.

Comments