Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra teardown: Not the most repair-friendly phone
Samsung's Galaxy S20 Ultra offers the best hardware on a smartphone ever, but replacing or repairing its internal components might be quite a task. iFixit has taken apart the premium flagship to test its repairability and the results are not too convincing. Spoiler: The handset did not even manage to score passing marks.
Teardown reveals massive camera setup, big battery, intricate circuit board
The disassembling shows how all the components are cramped inside the metal-glass chassis of the handset. The gigantic 108MP quad-camera setup and the hefty 5,000mAh battery take up a considerable space. The complex circuit boards are laden with all possible components you can think of on a 2020 flagship phone: Snapdragon 865 processor, X55 5G modem, LPDDR5 RAM, UFS 3.0 storage, and several ICs.
But how did the phone perform in the test?
The long and short of it is: Repairing the Galaxy S20 Ultra is not easy. To start with, removing the glued rear glass panel to get inside the phone is quite painstaking. iFixit notes that replacing the glued-down battery is a tough task, given the intricate layout of board interconnect cables. Moreover, display repairs require "either a complete teardown or replacing half the phone."
S20 Ultra got an iFixit score of 3
iFixit gives devices a score based on how difficult or easy they are to repair. The Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra was awarded a disappointing score of 3 (10 is the easiest to repair). For context, the iPhone 11 Pro scored a solid 6.
Meanwhile, here's recalling the Galaxy S20 Ultra
The Galaxy S20 Ultra comes with a 6.9-inch Infinity-O Dynamic AMOLED 2X display, which offers QHD resolution and 120Hz refresh rate. For secure biometric authentication, the handset has an ultrasonic in-screen fingerprint sensor. It is powered by the flagship Snapdragon 865 or Exynos 990 chipset, paired with up to 16GB of RAM, up to 512GB of built-in storage, and a 5,000mAh battery.
For the shutterbugs and selfie lovers
The Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra features a 108MP main sensor, 12MP ultra-wide-angle camera, 48MP telephoto shooter with 100x Super Resolution zoom, and a DepthVision sensor. On the front, it has a 40MP camera for selfies, video calls, and face unlocking.
