Gadgetory

Samsung's Galaxy s5 may not look all that different from the s4 on the outside but on the inside it's a completely different animal there's lots of hardware upgrades a redesigned interior and a whole new way to open the case I'm Bill Detweiler and this is cracking open heavier than last year's s4 I doubt many buyers will notice the difference what they will likely notice is the new hardware our AT&T model with LTE has a quad-core 2.5 gigahertz Snapdragon 801 sock on models without LTE Samsung uses its own Exynos 54:22 sock now all versions have a 5.1 inch 1080p display two gigs of ram 16 gigs of built-in storage a micro SD card slot a 16 megapixel rear camera 2 megapixel front camera NFC support IR blaster and a brand new fingerprint sensor the s5 also has an ingress protection rating of 6 7 now this is the same rating given the s4 active which Brian Tong and I torture tested at CES this year and it means the phone provides complete dust protection and limited water protection now unlike the s4 active or the regular s4 for that matter cracking open the s5 is a rather complicated affair to begin remove the battery cover and the battery then remove the three screws on the inner cover now near one of the screws is a small panel you'll need to remove it and then detach the connector underneath now this is really important for the next step which is to remove the front panel and display assembly so break out your hairdryer heat gun or other warming tool and slightly heat the edges of the panel then gently pry it loose be extremely careful not to overheat the device and warp the plastic or insert your tools too far and damage the display or other internal hardware now starting at the top lift the panel away from the body but don't go too far there's a connector here that we must detach now remember that connector from the back of the phone it snakes its way through the device and it's connected to the home button on the bottom of the panel since we already disconnected it you can gently push and pull it all the way through and then completely remove the panel and display assembly the motherboard and other internal components are attached to the inner frame which is held in place with several screws after removing the screws we can separate the frame from the inner cover on which the external speaker headphone jack and buttons are located after removing a few screws and detaching the remaining connectors we can lift out the motherboard as the daughter board is glued to the internal frame I'm going to leave it in place finally we can detach the rear-facing camera front-facing camera and then remove the motherboards metal shields with that our teardown is complete so why did Samsung dramatically change the phone's internal design well I reached out to the company for an official response but didn't hear anything back as of this taping so I'm left to speculate now I doubt it has anything to do with the ingress protection rating as the ip67 rated s4 active was built like the original s4 and not like the s5 instead I suspect it has to do with durability and repair ability it may sound counterintuitive that making the phone more complicated to open would actually make it easier to repair but in the s5s case it really does you see opening the s4 case and removing the motherboard and other internal components was remarkably easy but because the front panel and display were basically fused to the internal frame it was difficult to replace a cracked screen on the s5 however replacing a broken screen is relatively simple even with the adhesive and it can be done without removing any other internal components having cracked open or tested every Galaxy S model I continue to be impressed by the engineering effort Samsung puts into their phones but I just wish they would put the same effort into giving their phones a more elegant and innovative design for more information on the s5 including real world check out the cold sea of gallilee to see more photos read my full heart when houses go to TechRepublic mom before /