Gadgetory

it's time to tear down the galaxy s nine and take a look inside of that crazy variable aperture camera unit my phone has been through a lot lately and it's not quite over yet let's get started you've already seen me open up glass backbones a million times so you know the drill heat is your best friend glass is glass and luckily replacement panels are pretty cheap if you accidentally break one or if you managed to scuff up the paint on the underside of the glass ad brand skin is equally inexpensive I'll link all that stuff down in the video description let's get to the good stuff there are 15 screws holding down those black plastics and the wireless charging coil I'll pop off that coil the center plastic and the bottom loudspeaker and then I'll unplug the battery there's some very strong adhesive holding this battery to the frame of the phone you can see how it bent my pry tool trying to get this thing out I'll soften up the adhesive a bit with my heat gun and give it another shot prying out that 3000 milliamp hour battery it's the same size of the previous Galaxy s8 samsung claims 95% battery capacity retention after two years meanwhile Apple says plan for a 20% drop in capacity about every year if they don't manually throttle you first anyway you know you sign up for the screen ribbon unclips like a little Lego and then I'll make my way up to the front-facing camera it's an 8 megapixel HD are capable unit and pretty much the exact same thing we saw in last year's phone we'll get to the new stuff here in a second but first I'll unclip the volume buttons and these little signal wires down at the bottom along with the white and blue wire cables and then of course the SIM card tray comes out with its 400 gigabyte capacity SD card slot it also has the water resistant rubber ring around the opening the whole motherboard can fold up and out of the phone at this point allowing us to access the final Lego style connector attached to the bottom of the motherboard for the charging port I'll set the motherboard off to the side so we can tear open that camera unit in a second the interior of this phone is solid metal samsung must anodized the entire frame at the same time because it's all painted the same color inside and out but you can see the metal shining through the scratch marks underneath it's a very very solidly built phone there is a long copper heat pipe to help keep the processor cool and then another copper sticker over some of the front-facing sensors and lastly a water damage indicator right up here by the SIM card tray this is how Samsung knows if your phone has gotten wet or not remember the galaxy s 9 is ip68 water-resistant definitely not the same thing as waterproof I would just plan on keeping your phone dry it's got a little circular coin vibration motor inside with its little gold contact pads I still need to make that vibrator explanation video since there are several types used in cell phones these days so watch out for that one our little buddy jack is tied in with one screw and a Lego style connector here at the bottom of the phone I'll release those and pop him out then there are four more screws holding down the charging port into the phone frame there's a little bit of adhesive under there but the whole thing pulls up and away pretty smoothly it's got a little rubber ring around the USBC port to help keep water out and the microphone holes down here on this board as well now if I was going to do a screen replacement I would use a ton of heat and basically break the screen off of the phone frame there are massive machines that can do this safely and salvage the display if it's not already damaged but without those machines just plan on the screen breaking completely during the removal process and then installing your new one let's jump into one of the major improvements on this Galaxy S 9 the camera I don't tear down cameras very often but I'll make an exception for this one after popping it out from its slot in the motherboard we can see a couple things first we still have that optical image stabilization that oh is that help keeps video footage looking super smooth but that's pretty common now I'm interested in this variable aperture you know the little gizmo that physically changes how much light can hit the sensor at a given point popping off the metal protective housing we can see that this aperture variation happens on the exterior of the lens since I can touch it here with my tweezers and the control mechanism for that aperture happens over here on the left hand side of the lens where I can manually open and close the little circle by sliding my tweezers up and down on the internal switch of course all of this happens electronically automatically inside the camera it would automatically switch from one point five to two point four depending on the lighting situation on hand but it's cool to see the hardware side of things during a teardown thumbs up to Samsung for doing something new visit the same hardware you would find in a professional DSLR camera Apple is usually about two years behind so you'll see this in an iPhone around 20 funny we aren't done with the teardown though I'll pop out the lenses from the housing to reveal the camera sensor underneath this multicolored 12 megapixel rectangle is what receives the light through the lens and turns it into an image for your phone one last look at the switch on the side of the lenses for the aperture movement that switch including the optical stabilization our most likely accomplished through magnets as you can see each side of the lens has a little magnet attached that attracts this screw and each magnet lines up with the copper coils inside of the housing pretty cool they help keep things balanced and stabilized I'll start reassembling the phone the camera won't ever be the same since there are some tiny little stabilizing rubber balls inside that escaped when I took it apart luckily replacement cameras are pretty inexpensive so I'll just buy another when replacements become available the charging port is in place and screwed down and if we look up here on the Left we see Bixby's little home it's got the one button and a little ribbon with some gold contact pads it looks pretty easy to remove if someone wants to be adventurous they can just pop the button out or leave the button in place and just rip off the contact pads so he never works again I'm not suggesting murder I'm just saying it's possible the motherboard gets clipped in at the bottom first with the charging port and then set down into the aluminum frame of the Galaxy S nine if you noticed I'm leaving the camera unattached right now but the phone should still work without it front facing camera is plugged in and then the screen ribbon is clipped into the motherboard like a little Lego along with the three little signal wires at the bottom now one more subtle difference between the s9 and the s8 that you probably won't hear anywhere else is about the camera flash it's still a single colored LED flash but the s9 has a diffuser in it while the s8 does not light diffusers are usually preferred among photographers sense is a little less harsh on the image and the Galaxy S nine now has one in place not a reason to go out and buy a whole new phone of course but it is still something new and I guess if I have to be nice Apple has been diffusing their flashes on their iPhones for quite a while now anyway the battery is back in place and plugged in along with the headphone jack and this little screw and this is the part where you would normally get to plastics back on and the 15 screws screwed back into place but since my phone has been torn down and clarified a bit this portion of the video is going to be a little different I'll get some double-sided tape to hold that glass back panel in place and after clipping in the fingerprint scanner I can see if the whole phone works or not it turns on even without the camera unit in place and the whole thing appears to be working it finds Wi-Fi Bluetooth and the front camera works but as soon as I flip it to the rear camera the camera app dies with the camera failed warning probably because it just doesn't exist anymore but yeah if you're bored of a normal looking phone make sure you check out the D brand link in the description show them some love for supporting my channel and build your own phone by clicking that link I think this camel skin is pretty sweet thanks for joining me on the teardown of the galaxy s 9 and if I've earned it hit that subscribe button thanks for watching and I'll see you around