so far this year we've had both the
galaxy s7 and the galaxy s7 edge on our
teardown table on the repairability side
of things both phones left us wanting
more scoring only a three out of ten on
our repairability scale today we have
their Big Brother the galaxy note 7
complete with its 5.7 inch Super AMOLED
display wireless charging and even
fingerprint and iris scanning technology
this phone seems to have all the
features you could want
but how would score on our repairability
scale there's only one way to find out
and that's to tear it down hi I'm Kelsey
with iFixit infra Gwendolyn who's on
leave and today we're tearing down the
samsung galaxy note 7 getting into the
note 7 was a good reminder that is
related to both the s7 and the s7 edge
once again we'll need to break out the
eye opener and I slack to get inside
preventing us from seeing all the
goodies inside is the wireless charging
coil and what we suspect is the NFC
antenna fortunately for us it was held
in place by only a few Phillips screws
next out is the battery while the cable
design features some interesting curves
all it takes is the flick of our spudger
to get it disconnected but when it comes
to the battery itself it took a little
extra prying since it was securely glued
in place this is a 3500 milliamp hour
13.4 8 watt hour battery that is
significantly more powerful than the
similarly sized battery in the iPhone 6s
plus the motherboard comes out next
along with all three of its cameras
first out the 5 megapixel F 1.7 selfie
cam then came the note 7s trick iris
scanner and finally the rear camera
which is the same Sony IMX 260 we saw in
the s7 and the s7 edge earlier this year
the scanner is actually a two-part
system with a nearby infrared blaster to
invisibly light up your eye while the
sensor captures the image it's said to
be more secure than a fingerprint but
whether or not is more convenient to use
remains to be seen now we can take a
look at the board itself on board you'll
find 64 gigabytes of Samsung made flash
storage and 4 gigabytes of Samsung made
lpddr4
SDRAM with a Qualcomm Snapdragon 820
layered underneath to see the complete
list of chips we've identified head on
over to ifixit.com we're starting to run
out of things to take out of this phone
but we
still have some work to do down below
the modular headphone jack has a nice
ceiling gasket which contributes to the
note sevens ip68 water resistance rating
and below that the USB C port comes out
with a dotter board that makes use of
rigid PCB interconnects keeping the
spidery cable from being flimsy we've
come to the end of our teardown and now
we turn our thoughts towards
repairability
out of the galaxy note 7 score it got a
4 out of 10 and here's why on the upside
many components are modular and can be
replaced independently improved cable
routing means the charging port board
can be removed without disassembling the
display the battery can be removed
without first ousting the motherboard
but tough adhesive and a glued on rear
panel makes replacement very difficult
but on the downside front and back glass
makes for double the crack ability and
strong adhesive on the rear glass makes
it very difficult to gain entry into the
device and finally because of the curved
screen replacing the front glass without
destroying the display may be nearly
impossible and that's our teardown for
the complete teardown including tons of
beautiful high quality images head on
over to ifixit.com don't forget to
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