first let me welcome you to our brand
new studio we're still moving in and I
promise I will give you a full tour soon
but there are more pressing matters at
the moment for instance the brand new
HTC one there's been a lot of buzz about
the next-generation HTC one like what
are they gonna call it HTC One to the
original HTC One was released last year
to a ton of praise from its reviewers
but when it got on our teardown table it
scored a dismal one out of ten on the
repairability scale will the m8 score
better today all your burning questions
are being answered because the HTC One
m8 was released and we're tearing it
down for you
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hi I'm Gwendolyn with iFixit and today
we're tearing down the brand new HTC One
m8 while retaining the same basic
appearance as its predecessor including
the eye-catching unibody case the m8 is
actually slightly larger measuring in at
140 6.36 millimeters by 70 point 6
millimeters and 9.35 millimeters thick
the m8 is also a bit heavier weighing in
at 160 grams the increase in size is due
mostly to its slightly larger screen a 5
inch full HD 1080p screen with a pixel
density of 441 pixels per inch
getting into the phone was easier said
than done after dealing with last year's
model we were prepared for a fight
luckily this version is slightly easier
to open slightly with our trusty eye
opener on hand to soften the adhesive we
used one of our prying picks to pry the
small coverings on the top and bottom of
the phone which revealed six screws once
we got those guys out it just took some
careful prying to get our first look
inside the phone well as much as we
could see given all the copper shielding
tape what was underneath all that tape
connectors connectors connectors before
we could perceive with removing the
motherboard we needed to disconnect a
whopping 10 cables now we can finally
move on to the battery you don't see it
well that's because once again HTC has
hidden it underneath the motherboard
which of course means a simple battery
replacement will require removing your
motherboard the battery itself was
lightly adhered to the LCD shield
and comes in at 2600 milliamp hours an
upgrade from the 2300 milliamp hour
battery found in the original HTC One
and what about the motherboard well with
all the shielding removed we are finally
able to get a look at the chips on the
board first up is the quad-core Qualcomm
Snapdragon 801 system on a chip clocking
in at 2.3 gigahertz with two gigabytes
of RAM and right next door you'll see
the SanDisk flash memory which on our
model contains 32 gigabytes of nand
storage one circuit board not enough for
you good the HTC One m8 also has a
daughter board the daughter board is
home to our two rear facing cameras and
unfortunately it is glued in place which
means we've got some prying to do the
HTC One m8 has a total of three cameras
two of which are rear-facing why would
you need two rear facing cameras that's
a good question
the second camera collects depth
information which allows the user to
choose which elements of their
photographs are in focus after the
picture is taken thanks to the inmates
you focus software the primary camera is
a four megapixel that uses HTC's ultra
pixel technology which focuses on larger
more light absorbing pixels rather than
a greater number of pixels facing the
other direction is the front-facing
camera which got a very nice upgrade
from 2.1 megapixels in the last version
to 5 megapixels in the m8 that's right
the front-facing camera actually has a
higher megapixel count than the
rear-facing one lastly we got around to
removing the display the fused LCD and
digitizer are remarkably slim coming in
at only 2 point 10 millimeters thick and
while that is impressive we are less
than thrilled with how its adhered to
the phone our I open er sure is seeing a
lot of action on this teardown basically
if you ever crack your m8 screen you
will have to completely disassemble the
phone before you can replace it with a
new display 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 HTC One m8 scored a 2 out of 10 and
here's why on the upside the m8 has a
solid external construction which
improves durability but on the downside
it is very difficult although no longer
impossible to open the device without
damaging the rear case
this makes every component extremely
difficult to replace the battery is
buried beneath the motherboard and
adhered to the mid frame the display
assembly cannot be replaced without
removing the rear case and finally the
copper shielding that is on many
components is difficult to remove and
replace and that's our teardown for the
complete teardown including tons of
beautiful high quality images head on
over to fix it comm don't forget to
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