It's been a while since we last saw an LG phone on our teardown table so it's
time to check in on what they've been up to with the LG G7 thinQ.
The last LG phone we tore down was the very modular LG G5 which was super easy
to take apart and scored an 8 out of 10 on our repairability meter. Well it turns
out modular phones were a one-time thing for LG, because there are no signs that
LG wants you to open the G7 thinQ. There are no visible screws and this
thing is sealed shut, and while they've lost their interest in making modular
phones they join the ranks of tons of other phone manufacturers in
celebrating the notch. Getting into the LG G7 was a familiar enough affair. Heat
and gentle prying separates the glued on rear panel. While there was some
tougher than average adhesive near the cameras, freeing the rear panel was less
nerve-wracking than some other phones thanks to the fingerprint sensor cable
being integrated into the rear panel. The mid frame is secured by a number of
standard Phillips screws and comes out in two pieces. The top is home to the
wireless charging coil, and the bottom includes the speakers. There's only a few
cables to disconnect to free the motherboard, and then it lifts right out.
This thing must put out a ton of heat. Not only do we have a copper heat pipe
to help cool things off, we've also got thermal paste on the board. You can see
the four gigabytes of SK Hynix made LPDDR4X RAM with the Snapdragon 845
presumably layered underneath. And the 64 GB of Toshiba made universal
flash storage. The dual rear camera pops off the motherboard. and the front-facing
camera lifts right up and out of the display assembly. The rear facing cameras
are both 16 megapixels. One with a standard angle lens and the other with a
wide-angle. The front-facing camera is 8 megapixels with an aperture of f11. Down
at the bottom of the phone we find a daughterboard that's home to a modular
headphone jack and the dock connector. While the board is glued to some
delicate display cables, once you separate them the board pops right out.
Next out is the battery which is glued in place but a little alcohol seems to
be all that it takes to loosen adhesive, and get the battery out. This
battery is rated at 3.85 volts and 11.6 watt hours. Lastly we're left with a
display which is strongly fused to the assembly and is a 6.1" IPS LCD
display with a resolution of 1440 x 3120. With the LG G7 ThinQ fully
disassembled it's time to talk repairability.
the LG G7 ThinQ scored a 4 out of 10 and here's why. On the upside lots of
components are modular and can be replaced independently. The battery can
be replaced but adhesive and a glued on rear panel make it unnecessarily
difficult. On the downside front and back glass make for double the crack
ability and strong adhesive on both makes it tough to access the internals
for any repair. Finally screen repair the most common type of repair is not
prioritized. Requiring an almost complete disassembly while battling tough
adhesives.