hey this is taylor with ifixit samsung's
new galaxy buds live
more like galaxy beans am i right are
the newest buds on the block
featuring a new open sound design with
active noise cancellation and up to six
hours of battery life
previous galaxy buds have been among the
most repairable we've seen so i'm
curious what compromises their engineers
might have had to make to bring this
form factor to life
hopefully they're not just full of glue
before we dive in though we turn to our
friends at creative electron for an
x-ray sneak peek at what we might find
inside these bean-like
contraptions as the x-ray beam spins we
can see that the 12 millimeter speaker
driver and what looks like a button cell
battery take up
most of the space inside with a bean
shaped circuit board laying over them
if you look carefully you can also spot
the three microphones and what looks
like a phillips screw
these look really cool let's get them
open like most buds
these beans sit in a wireless charging
case
and the first thing that you can notice
is the seam here
between the mystic bronze finish and
this plastic
finish on the underside i'm going to try
to get in through this seam
so to get this separated we are going to
put it in a vise which is quickly
becoming our go-to accessory to get into
these buds
now there's a gap i'm going to try and
insert an opening pick and slide it
around to try and separate the two
halves
these really didn't take too much prying
they're actually some of the easiest
buds we've ever opened
hold on just a minute editor zoom and
enhance
it looks like samsung knew these were
beans all along alright
back to the tear down in the top half of
the bud we can see this
silver gasket which is lightly adhered
in place
this contributes to the buds ipx2 water
resistance rating
on this other side we have a press
connector here just one lonely ic
and then this looks like a microphone
the ribbon connector
and the microphone look like they can
come up so that will be our first step
here
it also looks like this pink bracket is
just clipped in place here i'm going to
try and pry that up with my spudger
and now we can see the motherboard it
looks like the motherboard
is just adhered in place on top of this
other pink bracket
so i'm going to use my sputzer to try
and pry it up
[Music]
on the first side of the board we see a
broadcom low power bluetooth audio
system on chip
and one of the three microphones each
beam is equipped with
on the other side we can see a bunch of
other ics
a second microphone and the power
contact that connects to the battery
with the motherboard out of the way it
looks like there's just one more pink
bracket we need to dispose of
this one is screwed in place so i'm
going to use my phillips double zero
driver to get rid of that
now i'm gonna pry up this pink bracket
with my spudger
the battery is free to come out at this
point but it's held down by the base
duct on this driver
so what we need to do is slightly lift
up the driver so that the battery can
come free
this battery is avarta cp1254
rechargeable lithium-ion button cell
identical to the one we found in the
original galaxy buds
unfortunately these have become harder
to find online
but at least the repair is pretty easy
if you can find one with the battery out
of the way you can see there's not much
left in the case here
but it does look like there could be
some more chips or a board under this
last pink bracket so let's get that out
of the way
[Music]
once we lift up that pink board the
driver comes out along with the
charging contacts and a microphone even
though we were able to lift up one side
of the pink bracket pretty easily
you can tell that the far side is
strongly adhered in place this is the
one
place inside this whole bud that samsung
has used
strong adhesive okay that bud
disassembly was leaks better than what i
was expecting
i knew based on previous buds that
samsung could cram a lot of technology
into a small package without sacrificing
repair ability
but i was a little concerned that all
that would go out the window with this
new design
that's definitely not the case here
though my one concern so far is having
to displace the speaker to get to the
battery
but hopefully that won't mess with the
sound of the buds too much after
reassembly
moving on to the case i'm gonna try and
stick an opening pick in here and see if
we can get in without
any heat or even our trusty vise
well that came off pretty easily inside
we can see the charging contacts here
and this black support bracket which is
pretty standard for galaxy buds cases
that i've seen
that is held in place with four screws
so
i'm going to get that out of the way
once i release all those clips that
support bracket comes loose with the top
half of the case here
then in the lower half you can see we
have the motherboard
and a battery underneath it to get to
that i'm going to need to
get rid of this metal bracket over the
usbc port
which is held in place with a couple
screws
[Music]
and it looks like there's one more screw
holding the board itself in place
so the board is loose but it's not
coming up all the way quite yet
looks like the battery is connected on
these solder pads
and underneath the board the battery
has another plastic bracket here
so i need to loosen that and then they
should come out together
so unfolding this little package here i
can see i was wrong about those
solder pads it's the wireless charging
coil that's connected here
the battery is connected with these
contact pins
so to get to the battery
[Music]
you probably have to peel off the
charging coil
and then i'm guessing this is adhered in
place
just unthread the cable there
and the battery's free the case battery
comes in at 1.81 watt hours which is
substantially bigger than the battery in
the buds and the buds plus cases
alright with everything in pieces it's
time to give these beans a score
the samsung galaxy buds live scored an 8
out of 10 on our repairability scale
for their simple opening procedure
impressively modular construction
and easily replaceable batteries and
that's it for this video be sure to give
it a thumbs up if you liked it
and get subscribed for more wireless
earbud content coming up
we still have to take a look at the
google pixel buds
the oneplus buds and the microsoft
surface earbuds
see you then
you