we hear it I fix it love our gaming
devices and with Valentine's Day right
around the corner we couldn't be happier
to spend it with you and our new
Nintendo 3ds XL while this is an
attractive piece of hardware it's the
insides that count right so from us to
you we're spreading the love and tearing
this new 3ds down
hi I'm Gwendolyn with iFixit and today
we're tearing down the Nintendo 3ds XL
2015 it's been a long time since we've
had a handheld gaming device on our
teardown table and we haven't seen a 3ds
since the original back then the
original scored a 5 out of 10 on a
repair building meter how does the new
model stack up let's find out the new
version is slightly larger and thinner
coming in at 160 by 93.5 by 21.5
millimeters thick and the new model is
also slightly lighter 7 grams lighter in
fact weighing in at 329 grams to get
inside we pop out the stylus and get to
work on a few screws and we get our
first look under the hood it doesn't
reveal much but we can't see the battery
and the microSD card that's right you
now need your screwdriver to remove the
micro SD card but once you get over that
minor annoyance both the battery and the
micro SD card are very easy to remove
speaking of the battery looks like
Nintendo stuck to their guns on this one
there's no upgrade on the battery from
the 2012 3ds XL this is a three point
seven volt battery rated at 6.5 watt
hours with the battery out it was time
to really dig into the 3ds XL a total of
eight screws including two hidden
underneath some rubber feet where all it
took to get the 3ds open and split into
two on our way to get the motherboard
out we were struck by some odd cable
wrapping with the circle pad the cable
actually wraps itself over its own zip
connector hindering access to itself hmm
setting the circle pad aside for now we
focus on getting the motherboard out at
this point our trusty Philips
screwdrivers and let us down as the
motherboard is secured in place by JIS
screws we've seen these before so we
knew right where to find the
fit for these screws now that we have
the motherboard out we focus on the
micro SDHC reader Nintendo claims that
the new 3ds XL will support micro SDHC
cards up to 32 gigabytes which is plenty
of space for storing all those files and
downloadable games now let's take a look
at those chips first up we see the
custom Nintendo CPU most likely based on
an arm core the four gigabytes of
Samsung made NAND flash memory and on
the back we find more goodies like the
NXP infrared IC chip once we finish with
the motherboard we took a slight detour
back to the circle pad we were curious
to see how they work and we thought you
might be too we were entertained for
hours just kidding we still have a lot
to uncover including the game cartridge
readers we can't help but imagine this
is a piece that might be extinct in a
few years with the popularity of
downloadable games and media in order to
get into the displays we had to remove a
large black frame that houses what
appears to be the NFC antenna for the
amiibo figurines the lower LCD came off
with just our hands no tools no heat
Bravo Nintendo onto the upper display
assembly
fortunately the display assembly was
only mildly adhered to the frame so
getting it off wasn't terribly difficult
unfortunately it's three cables were
routed through the hinge and needed to
be rolled up and pulled through which is
an especially easy way to damage them
it's our bet that these are the cables
that control the parallax barrier that
gives the 3ds XL it's awesome glasses
less 3d effect basically each eye sees
different pixels using some face
tracking cameras with a little geometry
the 3s knows which pixels each eye can
see and draws two overlapping versions
of the same scene one for each eye the
combination of the two versions get
slapped together in your brain as a 3d
image see science is cool finally we
check out the camera bar Nintendo
crammed three
onto this little cable the two
front-facing cameras for watching your
every move to give you the best 3d
effect possible and the rear-facing
camera tracks AR cards and takes photos
with apparently improved low-light
capture we've come to the end of our
teardown which means it's time to talk
repairability
and iFixit it's our mission to teach
people how to repair everything so we
give every gadget we tear down or repair
ability score between 1 and 10 10 being
the easiest to repair and 1 being the
most difficult the 3ds XL scored a 5 out
of 10 and here's why on the upside the
battery is fairly easy to swap out by
unscrewing 2 screws and removing the
back cover and screws and plastic clips
are the primary fasteners that means no
adhesive also no proprietary screws only
Phillips and JIS
but on the downside the top displays
cables are routed in such a way that it
makes them quite frustrating to remove
without ripping them off and just as
difficult to reset properly during the
vise reassembly there's a ton of little
components inside the 3ds XL which may
potentially cause problems if you happen
to lose one while performing a repair
the majority of connectors are zip and
it's difficult to ensure each one is
connected properly without reassembling
the whole thing and starting up the
device and finally the headphone jack
and charging connector are soldered to
the motherboard meaning you need to take
out your soldering iron if you
accidentally break them and that's our
teardown for the complete teardown
including tons of beautiful high-quality
images head on over to ifixit.com don't
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