Droid 3 torn down by iFixit

A new teardown of Verizon's just-launched Motorola Droid 3 has shown a link to its rival at Verizon, the iPhone 4. iFixit's disassembly found that the Droid 3 was using the same Qualcomm MDM6600 as in the CDMA iPhone 4. Unlike the Apple-made device, though, the Droid 3 makes full use of its chip and can roam in Europe and elsewhere with both GSM and HSPA 3G.

Many of the other parts are appropriately different. The 1GHz, dual-core TI OMAP 4430 processor was known to be different, but Motorola also makes use of SanDisk rather than Toshiba or Samsung for its built-in flash memory.

Repairing the Droid 3 isn't always easy, the breakdown showed. While the battery wasn't trapped inside and there weren't security screws, many of the common tricks to slim down a phone made it difficult to fix. Adhesives hold much of it together and render parts tough or impossible to repair. Many things inside area also joined on a single ribbon cable, which leads to having to replace all of the components on that ribbon if just one breaks. The LCD also can't be easily removed and makes repairing a broken screen impractical.

The Android 2.3 phone is already on shelves in the US for $200 on contract. In Canada, it will be available without the CDMA features as the XT860 4G sometime this summer.

By Electronista Staff