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Teardowns |
Galaxy S6 Teardown
The Samsung Galaxy S6 is clearly the next-gen evolution of the S5—streamlined and more in-keeping with the current smartphone trends.
Samsung is learning from its mistakes… just not in the way we want them to. The S6 abandoned the display-first entry of the S5 and instead features a stubbornly-glued back panel in the place of an easily-accessed battery. And you still run the risk of shearing soft button cables during a display replacement. Gone, it seems, are the heady days of Samsung’s über-repairable phones. *Cue trumpet playing taps softly*
On our repairability scale, the S6 scored one point higher than the Edge—but with a 4/10, it still pretty much tanked our teardown.
Teardown Highlights: Removing the midframe reveals... an S6 Edge? Maybe not—but it takes a keen eye to spot the difference. Apart from a slight rejiggering of the vibrator placement, these internals are a dead ringer for that other flagship Samsung smartphone we tore down recently. Replacing the battery in the S6 will be a little bit easier than the Edge. In the Edge, the battery cable was routed under the motherboard before connecting on top, necessitating removing the motherboard to get to the battery. An odd cable design gets in the way of easily replacing the USB port—you have to remove the display first.
A Whole Galaxy of Chips:
- Samsung Exynos 7420 Octa-core Processor - 64-bit, 2.1 GHz Quad + 1.5 GHz Quad
- Samsung K3RG3G30MM-DGCH 3 GB LPDDR4 RAM
- Samsung KLUBG4G1BD 32GB NAND Flash
- Skyworks 78041 Hybrid Multimode Multiband (MMMB) Front-End Module (FEM)
- Avago AFEM-9020 PAM
- Broadcom BCM4773 GNSS Location Hub
- Samsung C2N8AF (possibly image processor)
- Avago A7007
- Wolfson Microelectronics WM1840 Audio Codec
- Samsung S2MPS15
- Samsung Shannon 928 RF Transceiver
- Maxim MAX77843 Companion PMIC
- Maxim MAX98505 Class DG Audio Amplifier
- Samsung Shannon 600B5D
- STMicro FT6BH touchscreen controller
