Gadgetory

today we're going to be taking apart and tearing down the galaxy s7 active this is the exact same phone that I did my durability test on and the same phone that we verified whether the screen was plastic or glass that's why it's all cracked up right now I'm gonna turn the phone off remember that the top layer of the screen is plastic we are going to use heat to soften the adhesive between the screen and the frame of the phone in order to remove it so make sure not to get your heat gun too close to the screen because it'll melt and if you're only doing a battery replacement and you want to reuse the screen it's very important to not damage it so I'm taking a heat gun you can also use your mother's hairdryer if it gets hot enough and I'm heating up the screen until it's too hot to touch it should only take about 60 seconds or so you want the heat to penetrate underneath the plastic layer underneath the glass layer and underneath the AMOLED layer now the screen is warmed up I'm going to take a thin metal pry tool and slide it between the rubber edge of the phone and the glass layer of the screen the screen does cool down after a while so I'm going to heat it up again about every 60 seconds good thing I have plenty of these thin metal pry tools to keep the screen from Riyadh hearing down to the frame you can also use a business card or a playing card this phone is very similar to the waterproof Galaxy s5 the screen lifts up the same way you have a much lower chance of damaging the buttons though with the galaxy s7 active as you'll see in a second so now I'm taking my playing card and slipping it underneath the AMOLED screen taking very special care not to hit that bottom edge corner because that's where the AMOLED screen is the weakest you can see as I slide my pry tool down my screen is already cracked so it's cracking more as I lift it out of the frame I had zero expectation that the screen was going to survive this teardown because of how little support the glass is giving the AMOLED display underneath you can see the glass crack because I was lifted up out of the frame a little bit softening the adhesive as I go I did drop the home button out of the frame that does need to stay on the frame of the phone as you lift the screen after about five minutes of heating and reheating and cutting the adhesive the screen was ready to lift out of the frame take very special care not to damage the top end of the screen because that's where the ribbon cables are located that gives signal to the screen if you damage those you're just out of luck there's a little plastic tab holding down the screen ribbon connector I'm going to pop that out remember that the phone is off at this point that's very very important so this is the replacement screen I will link the replacements down in the video description below as soon as they become available you probably will need to move the buttons from your old screen to your new screen the back end menu buttons there's a plastic connector over the home button scanner going to remove that it is easily replaceable and then there's one little screw over the battery connector I'm going to set that off to the side and then unplug the battery very important for the rest of steps then there are 12 screws holding down this super thick mid frame to the motherboard we're going to remove that just popping it out of the plastic frame and this is attached to the battery the battery is a four thousand milliamp battery it is super super thick and very heavy there are no pull tabs or anything underneath this where it's going to use the blunt edge of my pry tool and pop it out of the frame then you can set your new battery back down into place if you're replacing it let's give this phone a thumbs up for having such a beastly battery there's one screw underneath the proximity sensor and then I'm going to detach the front mic as well there's two ribbon cables down here at the bottom I'm also going to remove the SIM card tray and then the motherboard can just pop out of the frame here's the contact points for the wireless charger we have the contact points for the earpiece the headphone jack the side power buttons down here is the vibrator and the loudspeaker underneath the charging port which we'll get to in a second so here is the motherboard the front-facing camera pops off like a little Lego as well as the proximity sensor has a little Lego connection and the rear-facing camera also has the same Lego type connection as the other components which makes things easily replaceable so on top here we have the rear-facing 12 megapixel camera and on bottom we have the front facing five megapixel camera you can see that the rear facing camera does have the OIS image stabilization where the camera actually compensates for the motion of your hand during recording the front-facing camera does not have OIS it's pretty easy to attach the cameras back to the frame again just set them into place and you'll feel the little connection clip in exactly like a little Lego the SIM card tray is not removable and you can kind of see the discoloration from the processor but that's pretty normal with all smartphones the charging board has two screws along the bottom then you can pull it out of the little slot that's sitting in there is a little rubber ring around the end of the charging port I'll show you how to install that on your new one the loudspeaker is underneath the charging port so here is the charging port it also has the back button and menu buttons built into the charging port so if one of those buttons are messed up you'll need to replace the charging port to fix it it has a built-in microphone and then the microUSB charging port has a little rubber ring around the end of it and that helps with waterproofing as it rests against the edge of the plastic frame we're going to pop that back in and then put the two black screws in along the bottom to hold it tight now the charging port connects to the bottom of the motherboard but it's on the back of the motherboard so it's important to clip it in before you set the motherboard into place it's the same design as the Galaxy s6 and the note phones we're going to set the motherboard into place making sure that there's nothing being pinched underneath the bottom edge of it there's one screw at the top underneath the proximity sensor that we're going to screw in the SIM card tray can set into place and then we're going to connect these wire cables just position them over the top a little circle doohickey and then press them down into place then the thick mid frame and the battery gets set down into place on top of the motherboard you can hear it satisfyingly click in as you press it into place I'm not going to connect the battery yet I'm going to make sure all of these 12 screws are screwed in and then I'm going to connect the home button cable and put a little plastic connector over the top of this so it doesn't come loose now I can connect the battery take very very special care not to turn on the phone as you're connecting the screen having power through that connection as you're connecting it could be very bad for your new screen taking care not to touch the power button and clip your new screen into place I'm just using my old screen the same broken one as before because the new screens are not available yet and to my surprise the thing actually still works I had zero expectations that this thing was going to survive most phones have a glass digitizer the part that senses your touch and so if you crack that it doesn't sense your touch anymore in the screen breaks but this phone could very well have a plastic digitizer like the Droid turbo to your new screen will probably have a adhesive on the bottom of it so remove the protection over the adhesive and set it down into place and you should be good to go make sure the home button lines up through the hole in the screen and pinch everything down into place if you've liked what you've seen so far go ahead and at that subscribe button that does help me out a lot and helps me keep making repair videos far into the future if you haven't broken your current phone you might break your next one and hopefully I'll already have a video for it if you have any questions make sure to leave them in the comments below I do respond fairly regularly thank you so much for watching and hope to see you around