Gadgetory

Google's Nexus 4 offers a pure Android experience on an unlock device add a great no-contract price it's also fairly easy to disassemble and hides a bit of a hardware secret inside let's find out what it is I'm Bill Detweiler and this is cracking open with its 4.7 inch IPS display quad-core CPU two gigs of RAM and an 8 megapixel main camera the LG Bilt Nexus 4 holds its own among high-end smartphones and given its support for NFC and wireless charging it's even a step ahead of many it's also well-built feels sturdy in your hands and as I'll show you fairly easy to take apart first remove the SIM card and the two Torx t5 screws along the bottom edge then using a thin tool gently pop off the back cover now attached to the inside of the back cover are both the NFC antenna and wireless charging induction coil the 3.8 volt lithium ion battery is held to the motherboard by a pair of screws and to the internal frame with a lot of adhesive removing it takes quite a bit of patience the speaker enclosure comes out next followed by the plastic frame covering the motherboard the phone's vibration motor and earpiece speaker are attached to this frame after detaching a few connectors and cables you can remove the motherboard and separate the front and rear facing cameras we can now remove the metal shields from the motherboard that concealed most of the phone's chips prominent chips include the RAM chip that's likely stacked on top of the Snapdragon CPU as well as a Qualcomm modem now what's really interesting about this modem is despite the Nexus 4 not officially supporting LTE this chip actually does and I've read online reports of people connecting to some LTE networks that operate on band 4 in the 1700 and 20 100 megahertz spectrum but there's no guarantee it will work for you in your area or that the functionality won't be disabled at some point so even with this modem there's still no real LTE support now turning our attention back to the disassembly we can now remove the smaller circuit board which contains the phone's microUSB port a microphone and several speaker contacts as well as the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack assembly which also houses the ambient light sensor as the front glass panel LCD and internal frame are all fused together our teardown is complete the Nexus 4 may not have the stylish design of Samsung's Galaxy s3 or the outstanding battery life of Motorola's Droid RAZR MAXX HD but it's a solid phone and one that's not too difficult to crack open and at 299 dollars unlocked without a contract it's definitely priced right now for more information on the nexus 4 including real world tests and pricing check out Lin laws full CNET review now to see more tear down photos and read my full card warehouses go to TechRepublic comm forward slash cracking open I'm Bill Detweiler thanks for watching