Samsung Galaxy S 4G gets iFixit teardown
updated 04:20 am EST, Thu February 24, 2011
Set part of phone on fire to test magnesium claim
Following yesterday’s teardown of the Motorola Atrix, the team at iFixit have stripped a shiny new Samsung Galaxy S 4G of all its dignity and reduced it to a pile of pieces in their latest teardown. This time, there was the added twist of setting a piece of the Galaxy S 4G on fire to demonstrate that the structure of the phone was in fact comprised of magnesium, for weight reduction, as Samsung had claimed.
Based on their break down, iFixit discovered that the phone was middle of the current pack of smartphones in terms of both its features and repairability, for which it received a 6 out of 10. They also noted that the build quality of the device was surprisingly poor as it was noted that there was a gap apparent between the glass front panel and the outer framework.
Where it lost points on the repairabilty scale was the way the device’s LCD is fused to the front panel glass. This will result in double the repair cost if the device is dropped. A heat gun would also be necessary to perform a repair, making it a somewhat painful process.
On the positive side, iFixit found that swapping out the high capacity 1650mAh battery was simply completed with a #00 Phillips screw driver. It is also put together with connectors that can be carefully, but relatively easy to disconnect.
Key package components in the device include a 1GHz Intrinsity Processor paired with 512MB of RAM in a package-on-package configuration. It also uses an ST Ericsson HSPA+ Thin Modem and single chip GPS solution. Its Wi-Fi (802.11n), Bluetooth 2.1 and FM tuner is provided by Broadcom. Rounding the list out is a DAC supplied by Wolfson for audio.
