So, I take apart high end phones for fun in my spare time. Ive been inside a lot of the recent big ones. (S5, S4, LGG3, iPhone 6, and 6+) After taking apart the Samsung Note 4 today, here are my feelings.
First off… A ton of things inside the phone are replaceable by anyone w/ a screwdriver, which is very nice. The charging port, SD card slot, simcard slot, headphone jack, screen… ALL of those components can be replaced individually, which is good for us as consumers, because repair prices are usually way cheaper than insurance deductibles.
My biggest issue though, is that the two parts that are MOST broken on the phone, (the screen and charging port) are the hardest to replace! Come on Samsung…. cut us some slack.
I made an 8 minute video of my tear-down, and you can watch it here if you so desire:
All of the repair parts you could possibly need can be found in the video description!
Ill be referencing the video every now and then throughout this post. First off… to get the back frame off the phone, you need a heat gun. Which is a little annoying… but hey, if it helps make the phone a tad more water resistant…than fine, I can live with that. Heating it up with a blow dryer or heat gun will help considerably during the back frame removal. Now… once the 16 screws, and back frame are off, you can replace multiple things without going farther:
–Headphone jack (0:48) This is connected via contact points on the main board. You’ll see little gold circles on the headphone jack. These circles rest up against the motherboard pins to allow signal transfer. Kinda cool, because it doesn’t have to be plugged in, or soldered onto anything.
–SD and Sim Card ribbon (1:15) This is HUGE! The SD and SIM cards were replaceable on the S4, Note 2, but NOT the Note 3. I am happy that they decided to go back to a replaceable unit for the Note 4, as the SD card slot does fail regularly a few years down the road on these devices.
–Rear Camera (2:10) It is pretty normal across all devices, including iPhones, to allow the camera to unsnap from the motherboard. The Note 4 is no exception. You can see some of the image stabilizing hardware though, which is interesting.
–Front Camera (2:21) Nothing super interesting about the front facing camera. It is attached to the proximity sensor though… so if that ever stops working, it is replaceable in conjunction w/ the front camera.
Ear piece, vibrator motor, power button, volume buttons, are ALL attached to ribbon cables and NOT soldered onto the main board, which makes them all replaceable by anyone with a tiny screw driver and huevos big enough to open up their 800 dollar device.
Now onto the harder stuff… the charging port. (3:25) Now this was way stupid of Samsung in my opinion; they have the charging port attached to the capacitive menu and back buttons. Which is fine… except that they wrap around the mid-frame to the front of the phone, UNDER the glass, which makes the charging port impossible to replace unless you lift up the screen. Which is hard to do….
Lifting up the screen (3:35) can only be done with heat, patience, and a pry tool. There are multiple layers to the screen, In order: it starts with the top glass, LCD, and then a copper foil that protects the back of the LCD. So when you heat up the glass, you want to slide your pry tool (or plastic card) between the COPPER AND MID-FRAME. If you slide between any of the other layers… you’ll probably ruin your screen really really fast.
Once the screen is up though, it is really easy to swap the screen, and pull off a charging port.
Anyway… I really do enjoy taking stuff apart and fixing things…. so if you have any questions about this phone, or any of the other top end phones… chances are ive been inside of them.