Samsung Epic 4G Touch Teardown

By Chris Burns/Sept. 20, 2011 1:30 pm EST

As it does come to pass with all amazing and fantastic devices, so too must it happen with the Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch – a teardown, one that will leave this device in bits for the whole world to see. The folks at ifixit have torn apart this first Galaxy S II to hit the shores of the USA piece by piece for you and I, and with their perfectly accurate lighting situations and cameras with HD resolution output, we'll be looking rather deeply and in full detail at this lovely amalgamation.

This is about to get rather harsh with odd detail for those of you only looking to use the device for day to day activities, I must warn you! One of the most interesting things seen in this assembly right away is that the microSD card slot is not attached with masses of soldering as it has been with past devices such as this – only a simple attachment to an EMI shield removed easily. Also along those lines, instead of massive amounts of EMI shields as we've seen in previous builds, this device only has a single EMI shield that's removable with only a few gentle tugs.

Next is the camera which pops out easily as well, this 8-megapixel addition to the device attached to its image processor with ribbon cable, the processor marked with MBG043 for all to see. There's also the vibrator motor up near the camera area, this motor marked with 36CZB8QADHF, while the headphone jack, also nearby, is made by Samsung and marked SPH-D710_EAR. Then comes the fun part – naming all the bits:

Toshiba TC31501AAMBG WiMax package

Maxim MAX8997 Power Management IC

Avago CFI120 223713

Samsung K3PE7E700B-XXC1 Dual-Core 1.2 GHz Processor

Samsung KLMAG4FEJA-A003 16 GB Flash Memory

Qualcomm QSC6085 CDMA Processor

Yamaha YMU823 Audio Codec

and

Atmel mXT224E mutual capacitance touchscreen controller

Of course we know that the display is manufactured by Samsung, then there's some other factoids you might want to know for Repairability: 9 Philips #00 screws, several components share the same ribbon cable (this increasing the cost of repair if you have to) and the speaker is soldered to the motherboard – good luck replacing that if you have to. Finally, the glass panel and the Super AMOLED Plus display are fused, so you'll be dishing out quite the pretty penny if you crack that screen.

Also be sure to check out our full review of the Samsung Epic 4G Touch courtesy of Vince early last week – it's a doozy!

[via ifixit]