Gadgetory

the Galaxy s8 the newest infinity displayed flagship from Samsung but what happens when that display breaks there's being already past my durability test with flying colors now it's time to see what this thing is made of and what it looks like on the inside let's get started there are no visible screws along the outside which is pretty normal for Samsung these days it does make the phone slightly harder to repair but not impossible the process I am demonstrating is going to be pretty much the exact same for both the galaxy as 8 and the s8 plus but the replacement parts are going to be different I'll have those linked separately in the description I warmed up the back of the phone with my heat gun or a hairdryer until it's just barely too hot to touch then I can stick a thin metal pry tool between the metal frame and the glass of the phone lift it up just high enough to strip a playing card or business card inside and that will help you get around that curve without breaking anything if you need replacement backs or if you break yours during a repair they are pretty inexpensive so don't stress out too much after slicing through both sides I'll split my green pry tool in and hold the glass up and to keep it from resealing itself down to the foam body the rest of the adhesive will be easy to cut away after that remember it's important not to go too deep inside of the phone because there is important stuff under there that can be punctured like the wireless charging or the battery so stick around the edges once the back glass is free we can see the fingerprint scanner up along the top it's still attached to the rear panel the first interesting thing that we find is all the warnings on the battery you got normal stuff like don't burn don't puncture avoid extreme temperatures and then you get this no dogs allowed sign like I'm not a dog person myself but I don't advocate pet discrimination either our cats and goldfish ok I don't really understand the rules anymore and Samsung just kind of made it weird there are 14 screws holding down the first layer of guts the circle thing is the wireless charging we cut open one of these on the what's inside YouTube channel the copper wires coil up to receive power through inductance and then pass that power through the battery into these pins on the motherboard pretty sweet technology Apple will probably invent this technology in the future for one of their next iPhones so that's something for iPhone users to look forward to the better disconnects from the motherboard is enough but there are no magical pull tabs underneath like we've seen on some other phones so it's time to use brute force I'll use the rounded end of my metal pry tool taking extreme care not to slice or puncture the battery I also took special care not to use a dog at any point during this procedure since that's one of Samsung's battery requirements the battery does look pretty cool it's got a 3000 milliamp capacity and it even has a see-through area up at the top for the protection circuit that I talked about during my note 7 video the clear plastic on the battery makes me want a clear phone even more it's also cool that the inside of the phone is the same color as the outside just like what we saw with the red iPhone that I took apart a few weeks ago the loudspeaker is the next piece to come out it's got a little water damage indicator on the bottom remember these phones are water-resistant and not waterproof still has those golden contact points where it receives its power and signal from the phone before we can remove the charging port we have to take out the mainboard I'll start disconnecting the wire cables at the bottom there are three of those then the screen ribbon unsnaps like a little Lego from the side of the motherboard after that I'll move up to the front sensor array ribbon cable and the front-facing camera ribbon connector and then you know there's the SIM card tray that I should have removed before we started at the base of the motherboard there's a Lego connector for the charging port but it's on the underside of the board making things a little more complicated than it should be I'll give you a better view of that in just a second now that the motherboard is out we have the classic Samsung heat pipe this helps keep the processor cool since copper is a better conductor of heat than aluminum is the thermal transfer away from the processor is more efficient with copper now the rear 12 megapixel camera has its own Lego type connection on the motherboard I'll snap that off and push the camera through the board this is definitely replaceable just for kicks and giggles I'll pull out the front-facing camera as well this little guys attached to the iris scanner if you look at the rear camera you can see it move around inside of the frame this is called the OIS or optical image stabilization I'll show you more of how this works in just a second on the front camera unit the iris scanner is solid and normally the front-facing camera is solid as well but this one has movement Samsung didn't advertise having stabilization on this front camera but it looks like they might have been playing around with the idea of adding it ôs takes image quality to the next level so it would be pretty awesome if they did I took that front-facing camera back into the frame and then clip the rear camera back into place as well let's take a look at that earpiece speaker remember during my durability test I complained that the grille size was way smaller on the new s8 then it was on the older s7 turns out that the internal speakers are pretty much the same size if anything the s8 might even be a little bit larger of a speaker so no worries there since the speaker does set a little lower than the actual earpiece lot this Chan direct the sound out of the hole in the front the sensor read the front is all connected with this ribbon cable and the volume and bixby buttons are connected with these golden contact pads the round vibrator has its own two contact pads and the power button is built the same way two little contact pads resting up against the motherboard now for the bottom of the phone the headphone jack is very easily replaceable just one little screw to hold it in place and it has the same little Lego style ribbon connector connecting it to the charging port board you can see the rubber seal along the lip of the headphone jack to help keep water out there are five more screws holding the charging port board to the frame and here is the charging port itself incredibly nice we don't have that front capacitive button reach around that we saw in the galaxy s6 that was a nightmare the charging port is pretty standard it's got the USB C port and the little microphone off to the side this stone is actually pretty easy to work on once you get inside that glued shut back glass from the exterior you can see that there is metal all around the edge of the phone but now that we have the guts taken out and the internals of the s8 exposed we can see that is the same hunk of metal throughout the entire device which fully explains the rigidity of the phone metal is pretty solid there's a little slot in the frame for the screen ribbon to poke through speaking of the screen replacing a crack display is not cheap or easy with the Samsung for one its glued into place and to the curved AMOLED panels are pretty expensive I'll have the current pricing linked in the video description for you since the screen is glued in the old display is essentially sacrificed in the removal process once it is heated up and removed similar to how we did with the back panel just feed the new screen ribbon through the metal frame of the phone and plop it down into place I did this with the galaxy s7 tear down if you're interested in seeing the exact process since the screen is not broken though I'll leave it intact and I'll talk about a few ways to protect your phone towards the end of the video assembling the phone is a piece of cake charging board gets tucked back into place along with the headphone jack this is a pretty great use of space Samsung there are six screws holding down all the components then get those round wires tucked into the grooves along the metal frame now the charging port is connected at the base of the motherboard which is normal for Samsung but strange to the rest of us I'll plug that in before setting the motherboard into place making sure there are no ribbons or connections underneath the board as it goes down equip in the front sensor array and then the iris scanner and front facing camera there are those three signal wires down at the bottom of the motherboard the circular heads are pretty fragile so make sure you are gentle as you press them into place and finally the screen ribbon snaps into place like a little Lego the loudspeaker is next it's easiest to snap the plastic into the metal frame from the bottom edge first and the last thing we plug in is the battery this is for the phone's own protection normally you want to put new adhesive under the battery as well and you should definitely not turn your phone on at this point but I kind of want to show you something cool so I'm going to do it anyway remember the camera stabilization I talked about earlier here it is in action the camera is turned on right now and the phone hardware is physically stabilizing the camera image to compensate for the shakiness or the movement of my hands huge thumbs up for that it's seriously one of the best features you can have in a smart phone and not every phone comes with this kind of hardware stabilizing my name is pretty sweet I check the front camera but it doesn't look like there is any kind of movement or stabilizing in the lens so while Samsung might have considered adding OIS on that front camera it's definitely not enabled at the moment now the phone is turned off again I will set the wireless charging into place and get all 14 screws screwed in and finally I can clip in the fingerprint scanner rivet this is a tedious process that reminds me a lot of the iPhone 5s I maybe could have popped the fingerprint scanner out of the back glass and set it into place on the inside but I wanted to keep that seal with the back glass as tight as possible and my green tool worked just fine the best kind of repair is the one you don't have to do the best way to keep your phone from breaking in the future is to protect it with either a case or a skin a naked phone is just asking for trouble a skin like the one you see here from D brand goes a long way for adding grip keeping that phone scratch free and adding a raised surface around the camera lens for little extra protection I'll toss a link in the description for you and thanks to D brand for supporting this video hopefully it'll save people money when they break their phones in the future if you want to check out a few other projects I'm working on Instagram and Twitter have all my behind the scenes and let me know if you were successful in repairing your own phone thanks ton for watching I'll see you around