hey this is taylor today i'm going to be
tearing down the amazon echo frames
these are part of amazon's day one
program like the echo buds which i also
tore down on our website
this is basically a pair of glasses with
amazon's digital assistant building
so you can put them on and ask it about
the weather or
upcoming events or take a phone call or
anything like that interestingly
these do not use bone conduction to get
sound into your ears
there are four micro speakers two on
each arm here
and those fire sound downward into your
ears so that you can hear what the
assistant is saying to you additionally
there are two microphones one
in each arm i'm guessing so that the
assistant can hear you
there are three buttons on the right arm
here the smaller one
triggers the digital assistant without
you having to say the keyword
if you double press this button this
little red indicator light turns on and
that means that the microphones are
muted
this longer button is a volume rocker so
you can turn the volume up and down
then on the end here we have the charge
port which is magnetic
always a nice feature amazon says these
will last about one day
on a full charge with intermittent use
or about three hours
with continuous audio playback at sixty
percent volume that number seems a
little low to me given that there are
other wearables in this category that
have more functionality with smaller
batteries
and have longer battery life but it is
possible that amazon just put
a really small battery in here because
these are surprisingly lightweight
let's tear them down and find out alexa
enter
tear down mode sorry i don't know that
if these are anything like normal
glasses
i'm guessing that there will be screws
here close to the lens on either side
that will hold the arms in place
and if we can get rid of those we can
detach the arms and that will make our
lives a lot easier
don't want to be too destructive here
looks like it's coming up a little bit
so these little panels
are just adhered in place it looks like
there's one and we'll grab this one
so these look like
phillips screws going to try
phillips zero
that feels pretty good
these are super tight i'm sure part of
the problem here
is there's adhesive
also holding screw in place i'm probably
pushing against some of that all right
and there it is that's first screw that
was a little harder than i expected it
to be
but not too bad all things considering
i am going to leave the second screw for
later
let's just keep going on this arm this
is where all the interesting stuff is
anyway
i'm bending these a little bit and i can
see a small gap between this chrome
piece
and the rest of the frame here i am
going to
stick an opening pick in there and
see if i can get that separated
i'm going to try to tug on it a little
bit and see if
this whole inner piece will just
separate
maybe get an opening pick in there
the bottom part is separating easily but
the top part
is not separating easily i'm wondering
if there's another
fastener up there that i can't see but
i'm just going to keep prying at it
and hope for the best
oh yeah just came out
there's still a cable connecting the arm
to the front of the frame here
for the status indicator led just above
the eyebrow
so i can't separate it yet but it does
look like
this whole hinge mechanism
is press fit into place here
as well as being screwed in place so
to disconnect that wire and fully
separate the arm
i don't see any easy way to do that
i was hoping to separate the arm from
the rest of the frame before
we disassembled it but maybe the
connector for this cable
is inside that arm so i'm going to take
my heat gun
and try to separate the arm along this
panel right here
um that's what i'm gonna do
again i don't think we need that much
heat let's get our pick in there
all right that's both sides let's see
if we can get it apart
yep there it goes don't want to
break the plastic here on this thin part
hopefully that's just the part of the
same panel
and we can wriggle it free
it's a little bit stuck at the narrow
end here
and then maybe it slides in
this way oh yeah there we go
so we're inside
let me just disconnect this cable
on the inside of the arm here we can see
the two micro speakers
and a microphone now that i have the arm
apart i've got good news and bad news
the good news is the cable that i was
looking to disconnect earlier
does indeed have a connector on the
inside of the arm here
the bad news is that connector is glued
in place
separating the two halves of the arm has
revealed one more screw that we can
remove so let's get that out of the way
this screw seems like it might separate
the hinge from the rest of the arm but
we all know i've been wrong about
this hinge before i'm just trying to pry
up the hinge here
to see if it will disconnect now
we loosened this part with that screw
looks like it comes out here
does not seem particularly useful in our
disassembly
journey i think i'm going to heat up
this glue and try to disconnect this
cable so that we can finally remove the
arm from the rest of the frame
i think now all i need to do is unthread
the cable from the hinge
now i want to remove this board it looks
like it might be glued in place a little
bit so i'm going to hit it with some
heat before i do any prying
and now let's see if we can get it out
just prying with my spudger here hoping
to not break anything
it does look like it's coming out
looks like there is a plastic frame
underneath the board i'm trying to get
that
up with the board here
and once it's all out
the touch panel for the outside of the
frame here
is left glued to the bottom
of the arm here going to pry that out
there you go
on the first side of the main board we
have a realtek bluetooth low energy
system on chip
a cypress system on chip a smaller board
for the buttons
and then a capacitive touch strip on the
other side we can see the charging pins
a texas instrument's linear battery
charger and a maximum low power stereo
audio codec
nice slice
clips clips clips
now let's flip it over and do the other
side
and now we can pull it apart
just pull to release the last clip at
the end here
that one does look like it's adhered a
little bit
and we unclip this cable here and we are
inside
inside the other arm we've got two more
micro speakers
and then the battery if i would have
known the battery was in this arm i
would have started here
so that we could disconnect the battery
before doing any disassembly
before i can see just how small this
battery is though i'm going to need to
get this board out of the way
and on this board are a couple more
gluey connectors so let's
dispatch those
now i'm going to pry up the board very
carefully
so i'm not damaging the battery
very carefully and then
pull it out
and there's the battery it's lightly
adhered in place
and a lot bigger than i expected it's a
0.589 watt hour lipo battery cell
which is the equivalent of almost two
sets of airpod batteries
and much bigger than the .07 watt hour
battery that jeff found
in the aura ring that he just tore down
so how repairable are the echo frames
well given this is the first pair of
smart glasses we've torn down at ifixit
we're going to hold off on scoring them
until we have a little more data about
common repairs and other devices in the
category
that said assuming you could get
replacement parts something amazon
doesn't have a great track record for
the frames are actually fairly modular
and you could conceivably perform
battery speaker or even a full
motherboard replacement without too much
drama or destruction
i wouldn't say they are designed to be
serviced but given the form factor i'm
pleasantly surprised
well that's it for this video give it a
thumbs up if you liked it we've done
a bunch of amazon device teardowns in
the past you can find those on our
website or
our youtube channel let us know what you
think about the echo frames in the
comments below and i'll see you in the
next one