Gadgetory

it's been a while since the release of the essential phone but with the recent price drop it's worth delving into and taking a second look my essential phone has been durability tested and dropped a few times to test this ceramic back panel and well the screen isn't alive anymore it's time to take this essential phone apart and analyze it from the inside rumor has it that this is a very difficult phone to repair and I found that to be true kind of it's one of those phones that's glued shut which means that the screen is most likely going to be sacrificed if you ever need to open it up to access the battery or charging pit but in my case where my screen is already destroyed I don't have too much to worry about it came up just fine since I wasn't trying to save it prying isn't too dangerous to the internal components either though cuz once the screen lifts up there's a large metal plate protecting the insides from damage kind of like we've seen on the pixel phones heat is gonna be your best friend unlike the pixel phones though this essential phone has zero replacement parts for sale even now four months after its release there are two Phillips screws holding down the Lego style connector for the LCD panel I would link to the replacement parts in the video description but they don't exist which is unfortunate anyone who breaks their phone or needs the battery of placement in the future as Apple could tell you batteries don't last forever speaking of batteries the battery is under this metal plate held down by six screws there is a cute little heat pipe on the bottom of the metal panel not even close to the monstrosity we saw inside the razor phone it's interesting that the back of the camera unit also gets to rest up against some copper I wonder how hot that gets the 3040 milliamp hour battery has a metal bracket over at the Lego style connector and to magical pull tabs underneath holding it in place thumbs up for those now the rest of this phone is pretty unorganized but I'll try to make sense of it all there are a ton of brackets holding down each of these little connectors like this one over the camera connectors and this one over the front-facing camera and two screws hold down this clear plastic bracket another screw over here for the volume ribbon bracket and there's a little bit of black tape over the loudspeaker ribbon this just tucks into a latch style connector and of course the SIM card tray is removed as well and the whole motherboard can pull up and away from the phone body it's a bit disappointing to see the USB C charging port soldered onto the mainboard making it not replaceable but to be honest now that the charging ports are reversible there are less physically damaged charging ports from people accidentally plugging it in the wrong direction so an attached charging port is not as big of a deal as it used to be still not ideal though the fingerprint scanner is replaceable but no wireless charging and you are to be found the dual rear facing cameras have two screws holding it in place I'll remove those and we get a close-up look at the 13 megapixel lenses no wide or telephoto and no optical image stabilization on this phone my 8 megapixel front-facing camera popped out with the earpiece kind of an interesting looking contraption it's still kind of disheartening that no one will ever actually use this video to fix their phone since replacement parts don't exist and the screen is most likely going to get obliterated during any removal process but at least we get to see the inside of the essential phone it's going to be a complex process to get this thing back together I'll start with the front-facing camera and the dual rear cameras and the screws that hold them both in place before I set the motherboard all the way down let's take a look at the loudspeaker and vibrator here at the bottom of the phone where the headphone jack isn't with one screw holding down yet another bracket over the vibrator motor which seems rather redundant the loudspeaker can come up from the frame it has some of that water-resistant mesh covering a speaker hole it is nice of essential to add a little bit of protection even though the phone itself is an IP water-resistant rated now that we've got those back in place we can get the motherboard situated with the ribbon cables plugged back in the loudspeaker ribbon and its little latch cable and the front and rear facing cameras get plugged in like little and of course all of their little corresponding metal and plastic brackets there are a total of nine extra little metal bits and pieces inside of this phone holding it together making it one of the more complicated phones to repair of this year the screws are different sizes as well adding yet another level of complexity I wouldn't recommend repairing this phone to anyone which is good because with that replacement parts available it's going to be impossible anyway the next video you see on my channel will be the 2017 smartphone durability and repair ability Awards 2017 has been a great year and I'm looking forward to all the sweet technology we'll get to see the insides of in 2018 the metal plate is back on the phone but since the screen is obliterated and there are no replacements available it's not turning on hopefully essential organizes their guts next year with the essential - it does subscribe button if you haven't already and thanks a ton for watching I'll see you around