Gadgetory

it's time to open up the elegant LG g7 then Q has told me not to remove the battery several times for my phone's own safety or something which means it's time to remove the battery and review this LG g7 from the inside let's get started the funny thing is that removing the battery of a sealed shut phone is near impossible as you'll see in a second I'll link all the tools and stuff I'm using in the video description but the average Joe will never just pop the battery out on a whim once the adhesive is warmed up I'll slip my metal pry tool between the edge of the glass and the metal frame and cut through that adhesive all around the outside of the phone I keep warming up the adhesive about every 30 seconds or so since it'll harden up and not move as it gets colder metal can damage the underside coloring on the glass but I imagine if you're opening up your phone there are bigger hardware problems to worry about than just the aesthetics finally the back glass panel pulls away from the phone and there's a lot going on in here this is gonna be a fun one there's the thin rivet and along the bottom of the battery that we've never seen before it's taking my metal tool in too far would have damaged this or torn it so we got lucky we have the large wireless charging coil here in the center of the phone and over off on the back panel we have the fingerprint scanner without any ribbon cables all of its communication is going through these Colton contact pads which is super smart one less ribbon cable to worry about when opening up the phone speaking of which it's time to get under the plastics 7 Phillips head screws along the top of the motherboard and another 7 screws holding down the bottom black plastic segment then the plastics can start to come away the whole top including the wireless charging comes off as one piece it's got the same gold contact pads that rest against the motherboard just like that fingerprint scanner and now I'll unplug the battery that the phone was so adamant that I don't remove well mosey on down and pop off the bottom plastics to see what this extra ribbon cable over the batteries all about the loudspeaker is built into the plastics LG is calling this a boombox speaker with extra bass and I'd have to agree on this one when this thing is pounding it vibrates the entire frame of the phone with its power it's still a cell phone speaker of course but it is big and louder than normal under that speaker we get our first look at the wired gold cables lying on top the battery they unsnap from the motherboard but now with a Lego connector these are the wire cables we normally see convert it into a ribbon cable instead I'll unclip the screen from the motherboard and the eight megapixel front camera up at the top these are the normal Lego style ribbon connectors and also the SIM card tray comes out removing the motherboard is incredibly similar to the Galaxy S nine at this point with the board folding out and the charging port plugged into the underside of the board with a little ribbon I'll unclip that plug releasing the motherboard and exposing the dual dollops of thermal paste on the back along with the dual camera units I'll unplug the cameras one cool thing I want to point out with the SIM card tray housing is that this SIM card tray can handle a sim and SD card at the same time which is pretty normal but if you leave out the SD card and orient a second sim perpendicularly in its slot it becomes a dual SIM card tray pretty smart three different card orientations in one little slot back to the camera lenses LG has given us two lenses that accomplish different things the bottom camera is super wide angle 16 megapixels kind of like a GoPro with no optical stabilization the top camera is the normal non wide-angle 16 megapixel lens with optical image stabilization I'll plug those back into the motherboard and since the motherboard is out of the frame we can finally get a look at the charging port and get that you know battery out the headphone jack is its own little unit with red rubber waterproofing around the tip I'll set that off to the side and finally the charging port comes away from the phone with its little plastic supports to keep it elevated from the middle this time we have blue rubber around the tip to help keep water out of this hole it's USBC and now we can get a closer look at what's normally those wire antennas that are now turned into ribbon cables I'd be interested to know what sparked that decision and how different these perform over the original wires the inside of this phone looks amazing the aluminum is all anodized at the same time so the inside of the phone is uniformly the same color as the outside thumbs up for that you can see the mill markings from the machine that carved this shape out of a solid metal block the buttons are the normal clicky little guys which are easily replaceable the volume button flex for last year's LG g6 currently costs only six dollars which is a refreshing change from HTC's non-replaceable buttons on the u 12 we have the front camera and the earpiece at the top and a few water-resistant microphone holes and of course the circular coin style vibration motor and over here we have the copper heat pipe for thermal dissipation it's not quite as big as the raiser phone but every little bit counts now the battery the thing our phone begged us not to remove from the moment we turned it on is the last thing to come out from inside this phone it was tucked up underneath those charging ports signal ribbons and it doesn't have any magical pull tabs I did try warming it up since warm adhesive separates better than cold adhesive but eventually with a combination of metal and plastic pry tools I was able to get it out of the phone the screen ribbon cable is tucked up under the bottom half of the battery so avoid that area if you need to reuse your screen one rip on that cable and your screen will stop functioning LG still says no dogs allowed which is cool everyone's entitled to their own opinion the screen is glued into the frame of the phone like we've seen on most other glass pack phones these days heat and prying is used to pull the display away from the metal frame the old screen won't survive the removal I'll link replacement parts in the description when they become available let's get this thing put back together see if it still works it's nice that everything in here is pretty modular but it's unfortunate that some of the most common repairs like a battery and screen replacement require every component to come out to get the motherboard back into place I'll clip the charging port board into the bottom first and then gently lay it down into the frame making sure no wires like the battery and front camera are caught underneath I do feel like as phones get harder to repair less people attempt the project I think the moment a heat gun is required a lot of people will give up what do you think at what point would you give up on repair I got the bottom loudspeaker in place then lastly I'll plug in the 3000 milliamp hour battery before putting on the top plastics with that attached wireless charger I think the LG G 7 is one of the most feature-rich phones of 2018 and is definitely a phone worth taking a look at I'll get the 14 screws back into place to hold everything tight and read here the back glass panel to the phone with double sided tape and check that out everything still works I love that the don't remove the battery warning still pops up sure ain't gonna fall out on its own I'll tell you that much hit that subscribe button if you haven't already and coming out with me on Twitter and Instagram thanks ton for watching and I'll see you around