it's been a little less than a year
since we've seen a galaxy phone on our
teardown table so that means it's time
for a new one
last year the galaxy s6 scored a 4 out
of 10 on our repairability scale but
we've gotten our hands on the brand-new
s7 and we can't wait to see how well it
will do with some amazing new features
like expandable storage water resistance
and VR capability with the gear headset
the latest entry and the galaxy line of
phones is sure to impress but will it
impress our teardown engineers there's
only one way to find out let's tear it
down
hi I'm Gwendolyn with iFixit and today
we are tearing down the samsung galaxy
s7
while it's in a class on its own the s7
is around the same size as last year's
Galaxy s6 the new s7 measures in at 142
point four millimeters by sixty nine
point six millimeters by seven point
nine millimeters and weighs in at 152
grams a little heavier than the iPhone
6s the display is a 5.1 inch Super
AMOLED display that has a resolution of
2560 by 1440 and a pixel density of 576
pixels per inch we had to break out the
claws I mean the ice black and the eye
opener to get this guy open and found a
whole lot of glue and not much else the
opening procedure is similar to last
year's s6 the only difference being a
slight increase in stickiness and a
change of color in the adhesive tape
this adhesive is now black possibly for
better color matching possibly a new
formula with the rear case removed all
we find is a smooth surface for sticking
and fortunately for us some screws it
looks like we've got a few pieces to
remove before we can get to the battery
the antennas the speaker all come out
with little effort and underneath we see
the battery this is a three point eight
five volt 3000 milliamp hour battery
that is a significant boost from the s6
is 2550 milliamp hour it even beats the
iPhone 6 as pluses 2750 milliamp hour
battery on our way to get the
motherboard out we find the s7 s 5
megapixel front-facing camera and the 12
megapixel rear facing camera that is
capable of recording 4k video while the
s7 s rear facing camera may have lost
some mega pixels from the s6 which had
16
megapixels the s7s camera has 25% larger
pixels which will improve overall image
quality it also has dual pixel autofocus
technology also known as phase detection
for every pixel so despite having fewer
pixels even photos taken in the worst
lighting should come out crystal clear
our friends at chip works beat us to the
punch on identifying the chips on the
motherboard but that won't stop us from
telling you what they are on the board
you'll find 4 gigabytes of SK Hynix made
lpddr4 SDRAM layered over the Qualcomm
Snapdragon 820 32 gigabytes of Samsung
made mlc universal flash storage 2.0 and
on the other side you'll see the
Marauder made Wi-Fi module and the nxp
made NFC controller for the complete
list of chips head on over to our
teardown at ifixit.com we would be
remiss we didn't talk about Samsung's
waterproofing efforts and we see that
clearly when we take out the s7 s
modular headphone jack complete with
cute rubber seal looks like Samsung
decided to take its ruggedized sports
standards to their flagship with a hefty
ip68 rating finally we get to the
drumroll please
liquid cooling system it's a teeny heat
pipe with less than half a gram of
material measuring less than half a
millimeter thick we are guessing that
the pipe transfers heat to the phone's
metal mid frame where it then can
radiate out the side or directly into
your hands we've come to the end of our
teardown which means it's time to talk
repairability and I fix it 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 1 being the most difficult the
Samsung Galaxy s7 scored a 3 out of 10
and here's why
on the upside many components are
modular and can be replaced
independently but on the downside the
display needs to be removed and likely
destroyed if you want to replace the USB
port front and back glass make for
double crack ability and strong adhesive
on the rear glass makes it very
difficult to gain entry into the device
and finally replacing the glass without
destroying the display is
impossible and that's our teardown for
the complete teardown including tons of
beautiful high quality images head on
over to ifixit.com
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slash Isaacson