Samsung Galaxy S21 Teardown reveals new secrets and promises easy repair

Samsung Galaxy S21 Teardown reveals new secrets and promises easy repair

As cell phones become more and more advanced, the repair process often becomes more difficult. Fortunately, according to a disassembly of the new Samsung Galaxy S21, repairs seem to be fairly straightforward.

The Galaxy S21 was recently disassembled by YouTuber PBK, who noted that it was fairly easy to disassemble and reassemble. The resulting repairable score was 7.5/10. Also, opening the phone revealed many secrets.

Repairs on modern phones can be hampered for a variety of reasons - Apple loves to use glue - but the Galaxy S21 does not seem to suffer from these problems too much. Parts are glued in place, especially the back plate, and there doesn't seem to be much of it unnecessarily holding down components. As such, PBK was able to get inside fairly easily.

In fact, most of the interior could be exposed with a simple prying tool and a Phillips screwdriver. Components popped out very easily, with no risk of damage; the only problem was getting the battery out. The front camera was held in place with glue and PBK did not attempt to remove it.

Most importantly, everything could be fixed back in place with minimal effort, and PBK gave this phone a high repairability score.

PBK also noted that Samsung still uses a graphite cooling system.

It also has optical image stabilization on both the main camera and the telephoto camera lens, a larger fingerprint sensor than the Galaxy S20, an improved speaker assembly for richer sound, and if you want to use Verizon's 5G network is also revealed to have two mmWave 5G antennas.

Oddly enough, PBK found that this Galaxy S21 has a dual-SIM reader inside, even though it officially only supports one SIM card at a time. Unfortunately, he speculates that this feature is probably locked by software.

While it is difficult to properly compare the Galaxy S21's internals to other phones at this early stage, it bodes well for repair enthusiasts. A high repairable score doesn't mean we recommend taking your phone apart if you don't know what you're doing, but it should be easy with any good repair store to sort out any out-of-warranty issues you may have.

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