Hasta La Gadget!

The Pebble smartwatch was all the rage on Kickstarter, and we eventually got our grubby little hands on the thing at CES back in January, with our full review being posted up last month. The amazing folks over at iFixit have also ended up getting their hands on the device, but they went about it in a different manner, completely tearing it apart to see what’s inside.

Since the watch doesn’t have any visible screws anywhere, you have to pry the outer shell apart, and there’s certainly no lack of adhesive holding the device together. iFixit even notes that you won’t be able to take it apart without compromising the glass display. Once it’s pried off, however, you get an all-access pass to the components inside.

By removing the lone ribbon cable that makes its way through the device, you can get better access to the internals that are deep down below the e-ink display. The ribbon cable alone houses all four buttons, three LEDs, and the Bluetooth antenna, which makes it nearly impossible to replace an individual component, according to iFixit.

In the end, iFixit noticed a few key points when tearing apart the little device. First off, it’s pretty much impossible to open up the Pebble smartwatch without busting the glass display, since the watch is held to together with strong adhesive to make it waterproof. Also, the low power consumption of the device decreases the frequency that you’ll have to charge it, which increases the life of the battery in the long run, with a possible life of 10 years, according to iFixit’s estimates.

Pebble smartwatch gets torn down, not much to it is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Warranties have their place, but there’s no shortage of techies who prefer to do their own device repair when something goes awry. Unfortunately, no matter how technically inclined you are, some devices seem built specifically to make the task as difficult as possible. The folks over at iFixit have released their Repairability Guide, which shows Dell’s XPS 10 as the easiest to repair, and Microsoft’s Surface Pro as the worst of the bunch.

According to the Tablet Repairability Guide, the Dell XPS 10 is the best option for those who plan to crack their tablet open and do some tinkering, with it being rated as easy to open, with labeled cables, color-coded screw, and an easy-to-remove battery. The only complaint listed was the fact that the LCD is fused to the display glass.

Amazon’s Kindle Fire comes in second, also being easy to open with standard Philips-head screws and no proprietary fasteners to deal with. Dell makes the upper list again at number three with its Dell Streak tablet, which is simply listed as being easy to open with an easy-to-replace battery, but marred by the same LCD-fused-to-glass issue. The Kindle Fire’s negative mark is that its glass is fused to the device’s frame.

Dropping to the bottom of the list, we find a lot of Apple and Microsoft products, with the Surface Pro coming in dead last. While the battery is not soldered to the motherboard, that is the only positive aspect that is listed, with it’s negative marks being comprised of “tons” of adhesive to keep the components in place, as well as DIYers risking severing the wires when opening the device. Next up, in order, is Apple’s iPad Mini, iPad 4, iPad 3, iPad 2, and then Microsoft’s Surface RT tablet. A consistent problem with the iPads is the risk of cracking the glass while taking it apart, as well as too much adhesive. The Surface RT is said to be hard to open with a fused LCD.

[via iFixit]

Dell XPS 10 and Kindle Fire are the most repairable tablets, Surface Pro and iPads come in last is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

A look at the adhesive Microsoft uses for its Surface Pro

iFixit has been taking apart tech-related products for years to educate us of their sweet, sweet innards, and today, they’ve released their Tablet Repairability list which scores a number of tablets based on their ease of repair.

According to their engineers, who have disassembled and analyzed each tablet on their list, the Dell XPS 10 receives a score of 9 out of 10 in its repairability due to the tablet being easy to open and even includes color-coded screws and labeled cables inside of it. (more…)

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Acer Wants To Ship 7 Million Android Tablets And 3 Million Windows Tablets In 2013, The New York Times Gets Flipboard Treatment On Android And Kindle Fire,

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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The Microsoft Surface Pro is just getting into its first week of consumer availability, and gadget repair blog iFixit has already cracked the case for a closer look at what makes the tablet/PC hybrid thing tick. The teardown reveals that Microsoft has essentially glued down anything that could be glued, making it incredibly difficult for a user to repair on their own – more difficult than Apple’s iPad, by iFixit’s standards.

The Surface Pro scored a 1 out of 10 for repairability, since just opening the tablet offers a high probability of completely cutting one of the four cables that surrounds the display, there’s adhesive on the battery and display keeping it stuck in, and the display assembly is incredibly hard to replace. There are also 90 screws scattered through the device’s interior, which iFixit says is exceptionally high for this kind of device.

By comparison, Apple’s latest fourth-generation iPad scored a 2 out of 10 in repairability when iFixit tore it to pieces back in November. That may not be much of an advantage, but it does show that while Apple gets a lot of slack for changing its designs to be less friendly to user-initiated aftermarket changes, the company isn’t alone in moving to designs that focus more on fitting as much as possible into as small a case as possible, rather than providing something users can fiddle with. The Surface RT, on the other hand, was more repairable than Apple’s iPad, so it’s a little disappointing to see the more expensive Pro version fail on that score.

It should be no surprise, given how much of an emphasis Microsoft put on the Surface Pro’s design and attention to fitting as much power as they could inside such a small space. But iFixit still takes away marks from Microsoft for doing things they feel are unnecessary to the space-saving nature of the design, including gluing the battery in, which they call “planned obsolescence” which is “completely unnecessary.”

A lot of people wondered what might be the role of OEMs once Microsoft started building its own PC hardware, but there’s clearly still room for them as producers of devices that appeal to hobbyists and tinkerers, who aren’t content to buy what’s essentially a sealed hardware platform only to upgrade again in two years’ time. The Surface Pro, with its fairly limited storage options and 4GB of RAM, would likely be a ripe candidate for aftermarket upgrades, so buyer beware if your plan was to crack the case and perform some at-home surgery down the road.