Items tagged with Teardown
It seems like a million years ago when Samsung was known for using plastic in the construction of its Galaxy handsets, which had removable batteries to boot. But like most smartphone makers, Samsung went the premium route with tightly fused glass and metal. That is also the case with its recently introduced Galaxy...
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Andy Rubin’s Essential Phone has definitely gotten off to a rocky start. Following the flagship Android smartphone’s debut, Essential faced disappointing shipping delays, and more recently, a rather embarrassing violation of user privacy. Now, Essential Phone is being assaulted from another front thanks to a new...
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We have said it before and it bears repeating—the majority of today's mobile devices are simply not built with do-it-yourself repairability in mind. Some products are worse than others when it comes to home repairs and upgrades. Two products that fall into that "worse than others" category both belong to Microsoft—its...
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The industry's emphasis on increasingly thin and light devices has not come without a cost. The do-it-yourself (DIY) repair enthusiast has largely been shunned in recent years, especially by Apple, which both thrives in the mobile space and has never really cared about making its products easy to service at home. As...
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Historically speaking, all-in-one systems have not been known for their upgradeability. That has changed somewhat in recent years, with newer AIOs sporting swappable components, at least on the enthusiast end of the spectrum. The same is true of Apple's latest 21.5-inch iMac with a Retina 4K display. A teardown shows...
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Whether it is intentional or the consequence of building increasingly thinner and lighter devices with premium makeups, cracking open today's electronics for DIY repair is oftentimes difficult. Whatever the case might be, Samsung chose not to buck the trend with its Galaxy S8. As with most modern handsets, the Galaxy...
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The good news for iPad fans is that Apple's newest 9.7-inch model is the most affordable yet. Apple's upgraded tablet starts at $329, a shockingly low(er) price considering that each of its predecessors came out of the gate with a $499 starting price, and with less storage. So, that's groovy. What's not so great, however, is it continues to
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If you’re one of the lucky folks that was able to secure an early pre-order for the Nintendo Switch, then chances are that your $300 console arrived yesterday (or at least should be arriving shortly). While most of us who receive a newly released console are eager to unwrap it and begin playing launch titles, the...
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We are not sure of the authenticity of this one, but over at one of Baido's Chinese-language web forums is a teardown of Nintendo's not-yet-released Switch console. If it turns out to be fake, then someone put a lot of time and effort to make it appear otherwise, as the part selection lines up with what Nintendo has...
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We saw in a teardown analysis earlier this week how difficult it is to perform at-home repairs and upgrades on Microsoft's recently announced Surface Studio all-in-one desktop, which comes with several core components soldered to the motherboard, but what about the hockey puck shaped Surface Dial accessory that goes...
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Microsoft recently announced its first desktop PC, the Surface Studio, a sleek looking all-in-one with some unique features. As is the trend these days, the Surface Studio is pretty thin. It's also not a system that is easy to repair at home, a teardown analysis reveals. Much of the reason for that is because...
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A teardown analysis of the original PlayStation 4 console released in 2013 showed that Sony wasn't afraid to bare all its consoles naked bits. The company even posted its own teardown video, which owners of the console could use as a guide when attempting repairs or upgrading the storage drive. Well, good news for...
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Google Home is Google's answer to the Amazon Echo, both of which are smart home speakers that will happily play music and perform a plethora of other voice-activated tasks. You can think of these things as intelligent hubs for smartly connected homes equipped with a range of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, but...
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Apple touts its new MacBook Pro as "a touch of genius" on its website, a clever marketing tag playing off the system's new Touch Bar. The company also says its latest MacBook Pro "is built on groundbreaking ideas" and calls it "the ultimate tool of every trade." High praise (as you would expect) but what Apple doesn't...
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Sony's now an official contender in the VR gaming space with its PlayStation VR, which as the name implies is a VR headset designed for the PlayStation 4 console. Naturally, the teardown specialists at iFixIt wasted no time getting their nimble fingered mitts on one for a complete deconstruction. That's to be...
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Earlier today, we saw iFixit dismantle Apple’s new dual-camera and headphone jack-less iPhone 7 Plus. Not to be left out, iFixit also brought out its non-destructive tools to pry into the new 38mm Apple Watch Series 2.
The first thing noticed was that Apple has slathered on an extra dose of strong adhesives to seal...
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Apple didn't exactly reinvent the smartphone with the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus, but what it did do was implement several noteworthy upgrades, including a more capacious battery and a new water resistant design. And of course there's lots of adhesive, a staple of Apple gadgets, which along with the aforementioned...
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At long last, the Samsung's Galaxy Note 7 is here and available to order, provided you have $880 to spend on a smartphone (subsidized pricing and monthly installment plans are available too). One thing you might want to consider if picking up Samsung's latest phablet is warranty coverage, as based on the results of a...
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The technology teardown specialists at iFixIt wasted no times getting their eager mitts on Microsoft's brand spanking new Xbox One S console, a slimmed down version of the original with a few notable upgrades, including a GPU that's clocked around 7 percent higher. So what's it like playing a real life game of...
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A new teardown and piece by piece analysis of the bits involved in making the Oculus Rift VR headset reveals a "complex mechanical design" and relatively low cost of parts adding up to just over $206, hundreds less than the $599 the assembled package sells for to consumers, IHS Markit Technology stated in a recent...
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It's game-on between the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, both of which are battling for supremacy in the virtual reality space, but is one better than the other? That's a point of debate—both have their pluses and minuses, and while you're putting check marks underneath each one for various categories, go ahead and give one...
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Apple's been on a mission to shrink its mobile products for consumers who prefer smaller size gadgets, hence the recent releases of the iPhone SE and 9.7-inch iPad Pro. The folks at iFixIt already took the liberty of gutting the former, and now it's the latter that's fallen on the teardown site's operating table...
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