Gadgetory

Here we have the baby blue-pearlescent-unicorn-sneeze colored P30 Pro. Yeah, the outside looks cool, but have you seen the inside? Today we're going to find out what the periscope 5x optical zoom camera hardware looks like, and see how the P30 Pro operates from the inside. Let's get started. [Intro] The Huawei P30 Pro is glued shut, probably with more glue than any other phone I've taken apart recently. That's good news for the water resistance, but bad news for repairs. I'm using a glowing hot heat gun to warm up the back glass and soften the adhesive under the panel. Then I'll use a large suction cup, which I'll link in the description, to pull up on the glass while simultaneously sliding my sharp razor through the gap next to the frame. Some people use thin plastic tools for this which might be smart if you value your fingers. Using my metal pry tool to keep the glass propped open so it won't re-adhere, I'll keep the whole thing hot while gently slicing around the curved edges till the whole back panel is loose. Remember that the top glass is...glass, and the bottom layer worth about $1,000. So one wrong move in either direction could be devastating. No pressure. Finally, with the adhesive cut, the back panel releases showing no hardware connected to the back glass. We can tell though that a clear phone would look pretty epic. The quad camera array over on the left side looks impressive sitting above the wireless and reverse wireless charging pad. The lowest of the camera units, the square 8 megapixel periscope camera, is the one that I'm most interested in. It still has a protective covering over the square hole and the camera sensor itself lays off at an angle inside the rectangle, literally just like a submarine periscope. I'll take it all apart in just a second so we can see what's inside. The top 20 megapixel wide angle camera does not have OIS, but the main 40 megapixel does have the optical image stabilization. Let's go deeper. There are a total of 10 screws holding down the top plastics to the motherboard. There are some hidden screws in the corners covered by more black plastic and adhesive. Phones are getting pretty hard to fix these days. There are also 7 screws down along the bottom plastics, with a few screws also hidden in the corners. Luckily, Where's Waldo was my jam as a kid, so I'm real good at finding stuff. Finally the plastics can come loose, along with the wireless charging that's attached to those plastics. It can receive wireless power at 15 watts, and gives back wireless power to other electronics at a fraction of that...usually less than 5 watts. The connector for the battery is this little guy sandwiched between the two extension ribbon cables. I'll unsnap that like a little Lego. Then unsnap the two extension ribbons. And also the tan colored screen ribbon connector after that. Since we've already removed the bottom screws, the plastic can be taken off and the battery uncovered. I assume that the numbers on the orange colored battery pull tabs are for the removal. I'll grab number 3 and pull on it...and the whole battery comes out of the frame. This massive lithium ion block is 4200 milliamp hours and rests inside the rather stunning guts of the P30 Pro. The P30 Pro is milled from a solid block of aluminum. As you can see from the markings running diagonally from the battery cavity, after the phone's shape is cut out of the block, it's silver aluminum is dipped into an anodizing bath to give the frame color, before adding all the circuitry hardware and electronics. Down here at the bottom we have our SIM card slot. I'll remove that little guy, and the charging port can come out. This time around we have an orange ring around the USB-C port tip. Pretty nifty. I can unplug the under screen fingerprint scanner and the loudspeaker Lego style ribbon connector and detach the two wire connectors that run alongside. The tiny circuit board has this little slot for the SIM and proprietary nano memory card slot. Then the loud speaker can come out. As far as water proofing goes on the Huawei P30 Pro, we have the standard water resistant mesh over the loud speaker holes, and a circular white water damage indicator next to the SIM card tray. And we also have impermeable white stickers over the microphone holes. One question I get a lot is, 'Hey Jerry, I accidentally stuck my ejector tool in the wrong hole. Did I damage anything?' The answer is no. Pretty much every phone is built the same way. The microphone hole fits the ejector tool purely by coincidence, but the white impermeable layer is off to the side of the shaft and not directly at the end. So no matter how deep you go, the tool won't puncture any of the water resistance or poke the microphone hardware. It's just good practice to get it right the first time. The under screen fingerprint scanner has it's own baby extension ribbon...kind of weird. Then the optical fingerprint scanner can pull away from its little cavity in the frame revealing a hole in the screen that it takes pictures of your fingerprint through. What you're seeing here is the actual underside of the pixels in the display. While the screen is turned on, the pixels light up illuminating your fingerprint ridges. Then the sensor takes a picture to match it with the data stored in the phone and then unlocks the phone if it's a correct match. Pretty cool tech. Let's check out the motherboard and it's 5 cameras. There are 6 total cameras in the phone if you count the optical fingerprint scanner. With the motherboard out of the frame, we immediately see two circular vibrators and a lot of thermal paste over the top of a rectangular copper inlay. It's not a heat pipe, but it's still better at absorbing hot temperatures than bare aluminum. The dual vibrator set up is strange, but let's check it out. The larger of the vibrators here in the center is actually the earpiece that Huawei calls electromagnetic sound levitation. This little guy projects sound through the screen. Then the little guy over here on the right handles all the notification vibrations. There is an infrared LED built right into the motherboard that shines through the black circle on top of the phone. This controls TVs and other remote controlled tech. This phone has quite a lot of features, and we're finally getting to the good stuff....the cameras. The front camera on the P30 Pro is a 32 megapixel beast with no optical stabilization. Out of the 4 rear cameras, 3 of them are stuck together in the same L-shaped metal housing. I'll unplug the 3 ribbons and then pull the block out of the motherboard. The coolest camera though is the bottom 8 megapixel periscope camera. The reason it's called a periscope camera is because the image sensor is off at an angle, perpendicular instead of parallel to the back of the phone. I'll show you what I mean. The periscope hardware is comprised of 3 different sections all locked in tight with a full metal surround shell. You know me though – my razor will get into anything. Each side of the metal surround can snap off with a bit of force. This kills the camera but autopsies must be performed in the name of science. After the final metal side is popped off, I can turn my attention back to the end of the camera unit which is where the sensor itself resides...kind of like the camera body of a professional DSLR, since it is the component that captures all the image data and sends it to the phone. The rest of the block is the lens or glass, as photographers like to call it, this is the part that magnifies the object and brings it 5 times closer than normal - the actual telephoto lens. The third and last of the segments is the angled mirror that allows the whole thing to lay flat inside the phone instead of sticking out like 2 or 3 centimeters, which would look pretty funny. Pretty awesome technology. I can definitely see cool things happening with this style of camera hardware in the future. If you think about it, this 5x zoom lens is taking up maybe 30 or 40% of the lengthwise space inside the phone. By laying even more camera hardware flat inside the body, we could definitely see 10 or 15 times optical zoom with the right magnification and mirror combination. Congrats to Huawei for pioneering this idea. People are going to go pretty nuts when Apple comes up with it in a few years. I'll get the charging port back into it's slot in the frame, and drop the bottom plastics back on top again, then scooch the battery back into it's position inside the phone. The rear plastics, wireless charging, and 17 screws hold everything in place. And then I'll set the colorful rear glass panel back onto the P30 Pro. Even without my periscope camera installed, the phone still should turn on. And there we have it – a fully torn down and reassembled Huawei P30 Pro. One of the coolest phones we've been inside of so far this year. I might make fun of the color a little bit, but I think it's growing on me. Hit the subscribe button if you haven't already. I have some fun videos on the way. And come hang out with me on Instagram and Twitter. Thanks a ton for watching, and I'll see you around.