Teardown

Not since Baywatch in the days of Pamela Anderson has silicone proved so fascinating to so many, as Apple using it in the third-generation butterfly keyboard on the controversial 2018 MacBook Pro. The reworked keys are, Apple insists, all about reducing noise, but that hasn't stopped plentiful speculation that in reality they're intended to address the spate of stuck buttons that forced the Cupertino firm to offer free repairs.

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Apple just launched its mid-year lineup of MacBook Pros and not without some controversy, specifically around the keyboard. The mid-2018 generation features much-needed upgrades in specs but keeps everything else almost the same. One the one hand, that’s good for repairs since there’s nothing new to trip technicians up. On the other hand, it also means the MacBook Pro retains its low, low repairability score as well, which shouldn’t be news to anyone by now.

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Today the backside see-through edition of the Vivo Nex S shows what's going on inside one of the strangest phones ever made. The Vivo Nex S is a smartphone with no immediately apparent frontside camera. Instead of an exposed camera, this device has a camera that pops up when it's activated by the camera app or a 3rd-party app.

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As you may have heard, Apple released new MacBook Pros earlier this week, featuring the usual processor and RAM updates, along with True Tone displays. Less touted, however, was an "improved third-generation keyboard" which only promises to offer a quieter typing experience. Apple didn't say anything about making real changes to the keyboard's butterfly switch mechanism, leaving us wondering if they'd even addressed the recently acknowledged "sticky key" problem. As it turns out, they did.

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Smartphones with mechanized parts may well be a stopgap measure until we figure out better ways to hide the cameras, but there's no denying that OPPO's Find X is fairly hypnotic with its pop-out top. Announced last month, it's the second Android phone we've seen this year to take an unusual route to both accommodating the desire for minimal screen bezels and a general dislike of "notched" panels.

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Teardowns are often done to discover how hard it is to open up and repair a device. Some teardowns, however, are more interesting because of what they might reveal inside an unconventional product. Take for example the Vivo NEX, the first phone to have an elevating front-facing camera. You might expect MyFixGuide’s teardown to just reveal how that camera works but, surprisingly, the phone apparently has more secrets inside.

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The newly launched OnePlus 6 has already been torn down once, and that didn't exactly end on a high note. That said, iFixit's process was more interested in checking out how easy, or hard, it is to repair the smartphone outside of official channels. JerryRigEverything's Zach Nelson, on the other hand, had a specific question in mind when he took his OnePlus 6 apart: just how water-resistant is the OnePlus 6. The answer might just surprise you.

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iFixit has wasted little time in tearing down yet another flagship phone: the OnePlus 6. US orders for the OnePlus 6 opened only yesterday, and a mere 24 hours later, iFixit is getting its hands dirty and telling us just how easy it is to repair the phone as a DIY project. As with most phones iFixit takes a look at these days, its findings are both good and bad.

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Inside the Huawei P20 Pro is proof that the industrial designers behind the phone were extraordinarily talented. With such a strange amalgamation of parts in this smartphone, it must have been difficult to arrange its innards in an aesthetically pleasing way. Not that this was Huawei's primary goal, but they've succeeded nonetheless.

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Apple’s devices have never been easy to open up and repair. They are intentionally designed to discourage tampering, which, sadly, also makes repairs harder and more expensive. Especially since most owners are pushed to only use authorized Apple repair services. The newest iPad, a.k.a. the 2018 iPad or the iPad 6, carries a lot of the previous generation’s design so its iFixit repairability score isn’t exactly surprising. That said, sticking to that almost ancient design ironically gives this iPad an advantage when it comes to repairs.

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Samsung’s slogan for the Galaxy S9 is “Camera Reimagined” and it has so far proven that with the Galaxy S9+’s top DxOMark score. But benchmark scores come and go with each new phone launch. Samsung’s real achievement is hidden deep inside in the Galaxy S9’s variable aperture lens. It’s something that’s never been seen before in a smartphone, but fortunately for us, JerryRigEverything was willing to sacrifice his Galaxy S9 for science. And YouTube hits, of course.

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When Samsung boasted that the Galaxy S9 reimagined the camera, it wasn’t actually referring to a completely new image sensor, though that has been upgraded, too. DRAM on (or rather, under) the image sensor is something Sony already did last year. It was, in fact, the dual aperture feature that gave the early 2018 flagship its unique flavor. iFixit tears the Galaxy S9+ down to take a peek at those lenses. And, of course, to see just how easy, or how hard, it is to take the phone apart.

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