Gadgetory

the triple camera smartphone from Huawei the p20 throw it barely survived my durability test the screen shattered while the phone is being flexed unfortunately but it still functions and now it's time to tear it down review it from the inside and see the hardware behind those three camera units let's get started heat is mandatory for opening the back glass panel on the Huawei P 20 Pro this thing is ip67 water-resistant and glued down pretty tight luckily heat softens the adhesive and allows us to slip a metal pry tool in there to slice under the glass and remove the sticky stuff it's incredibly tight though and a lot harder than it looks the big suction cup does help out and I'll link the tools that I'm using in the video description one thing to watch out for is to not slice too deep into the phone the adhesive is only around the edges and there is a fragile ribbon cable next to the camera lenses which I'll show you in a second it looks like there might be some pull tabs attached to the adhesive along the sides but I'm not sure how you would access these without removing a glass panel first anyway the tabs might be there just to help during the installation procedure instead of the removal I'll unplug this small sensor from the motherboard with a plastic pry tool the sensor fits right between the two camera lenses and probably helps with the autofocus to get a better look at the triple rear cameras we're gonna need to pull off the protective plastic surround our mainboard the top plastic section is attached to this black NFC pad flopping around similar to what we saw on the translucent HTC phone this one just isn't as aesthetic since it's not meant to be seen except for by me and all of you there are eight Phillips head screws surrounding the top edge of the phone and once those are off I can peel up the plastics and the NFC pad to reveal the motherboard I'll unplug the charging port connector like a little Lego and the smaller battery plug and the display ribbon which I'll talk more about in a second there's also two antenna wires over on the right side and then the whole motherboard can just lift out just seen if you guys are paying attention the SIM card tray obviously needs to be removed first nice catch guys it's got a red rubber ring around the edge to help keep water out goes hand in hand with that ip67 rating the motherboard is now free we got some purplish thermal paste plopped in the center of the phone thermal paste uses the aluminum medal of the frame to help keep the processor cool it's time to look at these triple cameras there's some copper shielding tape over the connectors I'll peel that off and unclip the two connectors going to the three sensors and pull it away from the board and here we are an 8 megapixel telephoto lens up top a 40 megapixel sensor in the middle and a 20 megapixel black-and-white sensor at the bottom it looks like the only sensor with oh is optical image stabilization is the top telephoto lens the other two don't have any hardware stabilizing the slight movement of the lens is probably just the focusing mechanism it's pretty cool to see all three of these lenses side-by-side you can see how far the telephoto lens protrudes out the top personally I think would be cool to swap out the monochrome lens for a wide-angle but I'm sure that'll come out soon enough on a future phone I'll clip the two camera connectors back onto the motherboard and you remember that circular earpiece grille I mentioned during the durability test well the speaker under that grill is actually rectangular which is pretty normal for inside a cell phone it's just interesting that the decided to go circular with the grille on the front that's unique and I think kind of cool-looking the charging port of the p20 pro is pretty interesting I'll have to remove ten screws along the bottom of the phone to get access to it but once the top plastics are off I can pull the incredibly small USB C port from the bottom of the phone it has that same rubber sealing ring that the SIM card tray has but it's not read I think more things should be read personally the little circuit board at the bottom pops out next followed quickly by the loud speaker this speaker doesn't have any water-resistant meshing built into the part itself it's actually down here at the bottom of the phone on the frame we get all the mesh and look red rubber this time perfect the circular vibrator motor seems to be pretty small on the p20 pro it's probably about one-fifth the size of an iphone vibrator it still works though you don't need a big vibrator to get the job done for the battery this 4,000 milliamp hour beast is pretty large but there are no magical pull tabs like the ones we see inside of iPhones and the adhesive is not gentle this stuff is permanent which is unfortunate because once you've been to battery like this removing it it becomes incredibly unsafe the internal layers of the battery are wrapped up like a roll of paper towels and if the layers touch or compress into each other it starts on fire like we learned with the note 7 so it's super lame that Huawei is using permanent at under their battery because if you ever need to do a screen replacement the battery has to come out the only way to access the screen display ribbon is under the battery and now the battery is unsafe to really reuse again because of that vintage we inflicted earlier trying to remove it continuing with the screen it is glued permanently onto the middle frame so a screen replacement would require a lot of heat and prying to get rid of the old glass and display panel it's kind of a pain but I'll link replacements in the video description now it's time to see if it all works when I put it back together I'll get the battery back into place it's honestly probably gonna work just fine even after the removal abuse but still magic pull-tabs would have made things way easier I'll get the loudspeaker back into place then I can flop the USBC port and do it slot between the loudspeaker and the little tiny circuit board then I can plug the charging port into the circuit board like a little Lego pro tip you can magnetize your screwdriver bits on top of the loudspeaker magnet inside of most cellphones you can use an earpiece as well I'll use that little trick to get the tin Phillips head screws back into place holding down the bottom plastics and components it's kind of like a rocket surgery for ants there's a whole lot going on down here the motherboard is next goopy side down I'm making sure no wires or cables get caught under the board as everything gets put back into place once the board is secure and clipped in I can plug in the black and white wire cables the screen connector next to the built-in LED flash the charging port ribbon the front camera up top and finally the battery connector itself I'll get the protective black plastic shielding over the top of the components and finish it off with those eight Phillips head screws the last thing we plug in is the laser autofocus and the back panel can go back into place with new adhesive of course the whole thing won't be water-resistant anymore but if any of your glass was cracked like mine was that was already compromised anyway and it works another successful teardown it's always impressive how much abuse these phones can handle and still function this p20 Pro is a trooper coming out with me on Twitter and Instagram and hit that subscribe button if you haven't already it's totally free thanks dumb for watching and I'll see you around