the HTC One m8 was one of the most
popular and well reviewed Android phones
we've seen but when we got it on our
teardown table in May 2014 we gave it a
dismal 2 out of 10 on our repairability
scale the m8 was a beast to open the
battery was buried under the motherboard
and glued to the mid frame and replacing
the display assembly required an almost
complete disassembly it's been a year
since then and now we've got our hands
on the brand new HTC One m9 will the m9
be just as disappointing as the MA
there's only one way to find out and
that's to tear it down
hi I'm Kate with iFixit and today we're
tearing down the HTC One m9 the third
revision of HTC's one line has arrived
and it looks pretty much the same as
previous versions measuring in at 144
point six millimeters long
69 point 7 millimeters wide and 9 point
6 1 millimeters thick the m9 is also
slightly lighter weighing in at 157
grams the dual tone metal unibody of the
m9 is practically identical to the m8
but a noticeable difference is in the
omission of the second camera the m9 has
returned to having a single rear camera
there's also been somebody shuffling
with HTC moving the power button from
the top of the phone to the side much
like the iPhone 6 and 6-plus
we've been hearing about some shipping
delays with the m9 presumably due to
lack of stock and coincidentally our
phone seems to have encountered some
pretty relaxed quality standards first
our screen had a pretty large scratch on
the lower left corner of the glass and
once we booted it up we were greeted
with a lovely defective pixel right in
the middle of the screen hopefully this
is not an indication of larger issues to
be found later getting into the HTC One
m9 was a little bit easier than the
previous generation some persistent
prying with our opening pic reveal the
two Torx screws holding the phone
together with those screws out we set to
work on prying the case off the m9 our
opening pic proved to be up to the
challenge and fortunately there were no
adhesives holding the rear case on
after dealing with some particularly
stubborn bottom clips we got our first
look at the internals of the m9 just
like the last HTC one we tore down the
m9 has sticky shielding we need to deal
with fortunately for us this year's
version has much less of that shielding
making the m9 a slightly cleaner and
more accessible design first things
first we set to work on getting the
motherboard out as with the m8 the
motherboard has been glued into place
and making things even more difficult is
that the board is glued to the battery
getting this board up will require some
very gentle prying before we had a
chance to celebrate the successful
removal of the motherboard we had to
deal with another unfortunate choice HTC
has soldered the rotational vibrator to
the motherboard making its removal that
much more difficult this motherboard is
home to such chips as the Qualcomm
Snapdragon 810 octa-core CPU together
with its three gigabytes of Samsung made
lpddr4 Ram and the 32 gigabytes of also
Samsung made emmc NAND flash storage
getting the battery out proved to be
another challenge as it was firmly glued
in place specs wise the m9 s battery has
been given a bit of a boost to ten point
eight seven watt hours up from last
year's nine point eight eight still a
little shy of the iPhone 6 pluses 11
point one watt hours next up we turn our
attention to the camera which comes out
along with a dotter board the rear
camera is a 20 megapixel camera with an
aperture of f-22 and is capable of
recording 4k video this camera also
sports a sapphire lens cover that should
be way more difficult to scratch than
the much complained about lens on the MA
lastly we get to work on separating the
digitizer from the display this is a
5-inch 1080p full-hd display with a
resolution of 1920 by 1080 we have come
to the end of our teardown which means
it's time to talk repairability here at
iFixit it's our mission to teach people
how to repair everything so we give
every gadget we tear down a repair
ability score between 1 and 10
10 being the easiest to repair and one
being the most difficult the HTC One m9
scored a 2 out of 10 and here's why
on the upside design streamlining makes
for slightly easier access to some
components but on the downside the
battery is buried beneath the
motherboard and adhered to the mid frame
hindering its replacement the display
assembly cannot be replaced without
tunneling through the entire phone
making one of the most common repairs
very difficult
and lastly intense adhesives make many
components difficult and even dangerous
to remove and replace for the complete
teardown including tons of high quality
beautiful images head on over to
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