Huawei Mate 10 Pro Teardown Reveals Hidden Repair Traps

The trend towards more fashionable, glass back phones come at the price of repairability and sometimes even durability. While Huawei is boasting of how it is challenging the giants with its built-in nueral processing engine and its new desktop mode, it sadly isn't daring to buck the trend when it comes to that new design fad. iFixit sinks its teeth into the Mate 10 Pro and discovers that Huawei's most premium model has all the disadvantages of a glass and metal sandwich without the perks.

The Mate 10 Pro doesn't have wireless charging. It is definitely a lost opportunity that comes when you have glass on your back. It's still a puzzle why it chose not to do so. Unlike OnePlus, it doesn't exactly boast of a very fast charging technology to make up for it.

The smartphone does boast of IP67 water resistance that the regular Mate 10 doesn't have. But that seems to fly in the face of two facts. One, the back adhesive is easily pried off when heated. Second, the volume rocker button uses easily broken plastic sealing parts, which also make it harder to repair.

But while it's easy to initially get inside the Mate 10 Pro, the rest of the journey is a bit weird and ends up in a disappointment. The screws, save for one, seem to be made of an alloy that isn't attracted to magnets, making them harder to pull out and easier to lose. Fortunately, there are only very few of them. The front camera is snugly screwed to the screen, which is nearly impossible to remove without breaking.

With its only saving grace the easy to open back and a modular USB port, the Huawei Mate 10 Pro unsurprisingly scores 4 out of 10 in the repairability index. Perhaps it's a good thing that it won't be coming to the US. Not unless the rumors of an AT&T exclusive come to pass.

SOURCE: iFixit