LG brought me to New York City to review their brand new LG G6, and they actually left me
alone in a room with the phone.
And while the does look pretty cool on the outside, I'm here to see what it looks like
on the inside.
Lets get started!
[Intro]
In front of me I have the LG G6 in two different colors.
A brushed metallic silver, and a glossy black version.
These phones feel heavy and solid in my hand, and like ive mentioned in previous videos,
thats a very good thing.
My favorite thing about this phone so far though is the screen size.
With that ratio there is so much room for activities.
The phone is completely flat too.
No camera bump, no fingerprint scanner bump and no earpiece hole.
And no curved screen edge which is also nice.
When gripping a phone with a curved screen like the S7 Edge. the palm of my hand always
touches the curve, making the phone hard to use with just one hand.
So I'm glad LG is staying away from that type of design.
But seriously, I hope this wide screen trend continues.
This is the best looking phone ive seen in a long time.
But I'm also about that inner beauty, so thank you to LG for sponsoring this video and letting
me analyze this thing from the inside.
Remember, this is not an activity that you want to attempt on your own.
The phone has an IP68 water resistant rating which means that the back is sealed shut with
adhesive.
This is great for keeping the water out, But also makes the phone a bit harder to work
on.
Warming the phone up softens the adhesive.
I use a suction cup and my thin metal prytool to lift up the bottom edge of the glass and
slip my prytool inside.
The rear glass panel has a slight curve to it.
So im using a soft paper business card to slice through the adhesive.
While not putting too much pressure on that curve of the glass.
Once the back panel is off, we can see the little golden contact points for the fingerprint
scanner.
The golden pads just rest on the mother board to transfer signal.
The back panel is made out of gorilla glass five.
And is surprisingly thin and very light weight.
The black and silver coloring on the LGG6 come from a light coating on the underside
of the glass.
This coating can be scratched off, but remember I am scratching underneath the back panel
right now.
The exterior surface of the phone will not scratch like this.
The letters I just scratched into the back is completely see through.
Which is a good indication of real glass.
And its actually surprisingly resilient.
It held up to two solid hits from my tweezers before I resorted to a pointy screwdriver
bit to help me out.
And here we can see that the back panel is indeed 100% glass.
Once that back panel is off, the rest of the teardown is pretty simple.
There are 11 philips head screws holding down the midframe plastics.
Once those are removed I can lift off the wireless charging pad.
Wireless charging is currently only available in the US at the moment.
So depending on where you live, your LGG6 might be a little bit different.
Wireless charging does not work through metal phones, which is one of the reasons why the
G6 has a glass back.
You can see the golden contact pads from the wireless charger that rest up against the
motherboard.
The loudspeaker is attached to the bottom plastic section.
This uses the same golden pads to communicate with the main board.
Its also interesting to note that the speaker is completely sealed off from the rest of
the phone.
So if water were somehow get inside the speaker through the frame, which Ill show in a second,
the liquid would not get into the more important components of the phone.
The battery unsnaps easy enough.
BUT there are no magic pull tabs like ive seen on some of the other phones.
Luckily some gentle heat softens the adhesive under the battery, and a little gentle prying
can lift it out.
Notice I'm using a plastic tool for this part.
Puncturing the battery with metal is very dangerous.
Ill just straighten the adhesive out so I can reuse it when I reassemble the phone.
Good as new.
One thing I notice right off the bat is that the sides of the battery are completely straight
up and down.
If you remember, Samsung said one of the reasons their battery failed in the Note 7, was because
of the curved corners causing a short between the diodes.
With the completely straight sides on this LG battery, that particular failpoint shouldn't
be an issue.
LG did tell me they have multiple fail safes in place to insure the batteries do not over
charge and over heat, which will help insure long term battery safety.
Lithium batteries like this DO pack a lot of energy and power though.
LG did not give me permission to perform my next test, but since I have a pair of pointy
tweezers...
Even thought the battery clearly says do not puncture.
Instructions have never been my strong point.
Watch closely.
Even though I purposefully introduced metal impurity into the lithium, there was no spark
or flames like weve seen with other phones.
AND as you saw from the beginning of this video this battery had almost a full charge
when we started, at 81 percent.
Thats impressive.
A little bit of smoke... but no sparks or fire.
Since the battery has been punctured though, I wont be installing it back inside of the
phone.
I'm at LG, So I found a spare, and Ill be useing the good unpunctured battery instead.
To remove the motherboard from the phone Ill unsnap the screen ribbon, the charging port
ribbon cables and the front facing camera ribbon, each of these are just like a little
legos that unclips from the board.
Then that sim card and removable SD card try comes out, I should have taken this out at
the beginning of the video, and I also want to point out that this water resistant phone
has expandable memory, THAT deserves a thumbs up for sure.
Flipping over the motherboard and we get our first look at the thermal gel that lies between
the main processor and the copper heatpipe.
The processor is the hottest part of a working cell phone.
And there are several things working together to keep it cool.
First of all, the frame of the phone is metal.
And the processor is located directly in the center of the phone.
And since metal is a good conductor of heat, the phone body itself Is working as a heat-sync.
The bulk of the cooling is done by that thermal gell and a copper heat pipe though.
This is even more effective than the metal frame.
The copper is wicking heat away from the processor and pulling it towards the edge of the phone
away from the main board and battery.
Now ive been curious if these heat pipe contraptions actually work.
So I set up a thermal imaging camera with 2 LG G6 phones in front of me.
The one on the left with the circle sticker has no heat pipe inside of it, and the other
on the right is a normal LG G6 with a heat pipe inside.
And now that we are looking at the visible facts, its easy to see that the phone WITH
the heat pipe is performing much cooler.
And a cooler phone means it will last longer.... and improving the lifespan of your device.
A longer lasting phone is always a good thing.
Now, I always perform durability tests on my cell phones.
And while this is indeed an official LG G6, it is still a pre production device.
So I'm going to wait and test the actual retail version.
I can still analyze this device though.
This bottom corner has the water resistant screen that helps keep water out of the phone.
LG hasnt failed one of my durability tests yet, So Im pretty confident in their structural
integrity.
There is a lot of metal inside this device.
Up here at the top we find our headphone jack with its gold contact pads.
The corners of this phone are pretty thick.
And the antenna lines for signal strength can also be used to absorb the impact of corner
drops, since plastic is more malleable than metal.
I dont want to pick on Apple too much, but this Android phone has a headphone jack, removable
memory, wireless charging, water resistance, and a screen the size of Texas...
Its like comparing a Swiss army knife to some fingernail clippers.
There are two cameras inside of the LGG6.
The main camera has the optical image stabilization.
That means that the camera physically moves around inside your phone like a gymbal to
stabilize your pictures and video.
The wide angle camera lens is solid.
Its only the main camera that has the OIS on it.
Ill just snap those components back into place like a little lego, then Ill move onto the
charging port.
This little component has both the USB C charging port on it, and the microphone.
You could see the adhesive on the microphone stretches as I pulled it away from the metal
frame.
This adhesive is part of the waterproofing.
The charging port has a yellow rubber ring around the tip that helps keep water outside
of the phone.
Now, the average person is never going to attempt any of this.
But its still interesting to see how all of these components are assembled.
The front screen also has adhesive all round the edge.
I was able to push up on the glass from underneath the frame to start a gap, and then slide my
pry tool all along the edge to cut through the rest of the adhesive.
I noticed the corners of the LCD arnt actually corners.
They are rounded.
This is interesting because it eliminates one of the most fragile parts of the LCD,
the corner.
Hopefully this small change will help keep the LCD itself from cracking underneath the
glass layer if it is ever dropped.
Its also interesting to note that the metal frame is shaped like an ibeam.
Its the same structural shape that adds strength to the metal beams inside of sky scrapers.
Assembling the phone is easy enough, Just pop the LCD back in its slot, A new LCD would
come with additional adhesive.
But I'm just going to reuse the old one.
After the LCD is in in place, I can get the charging port back in, The motherboard is
tucked under the ribbon cables, and then snap everything back into place like little legos.
Including the new battery.
The back black plastic clicks in as well, and the 11 Philips head screws hold it in
place.
Huge thank you to LG for letting me borrow their phone for a few minutes.
I'm looking forward to using this phone in real life.
All of the behind the scenes for this video will be posted on my instagram and twitter.
And if you enjoyed this video and want to see more like it in the future, hit that subscribe
button, and turn on your notifications.
Thanks for watching!
Ill see you around.