Today we're going to take apart the brand new Galaxy S22 Ultra... the one we did our durability
test on. In the previous video we took apart the s-pen. This is what's left of it. And in today's
video we're going to see how the S22 works from the inside and how they manage to waterproof the
s-pen hole in the bottom because it's one of the biggest holes in a smartphone that has ever needed
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and get your first three months free with a subscription. Now it's time to
dive inside of the Galaxy S22 Ultra to see inside the s-pen cavity. Let's get started.
[Intro]
The S22 Ultra is probably the most powerful Android phone on the market...at the moment.
I say most powerful but remember it's only a super small increase over last year and the year before.
Personally I think smartphones have kind of plateaued and any phone from the last 3 years
is still pretty great and can kind of compete in the same realm. Even the design hasn't changed
that much. On this S22 Ultra we have the adhesive attached glass back that Samsung's been using for
the past 7 years with the same removal steps: with a whole lot of heat and quite a bit of slicing,
that softened adhesive from around the edges. Once it's cut away, we can get our first look
inside of the S22 Ultra. It's interesting to note that inside of the glass back the
5 individual camera circles are all attached on the same metal lens body. Kind of cool.
We do have a wireless charging coil back here. This guy can charge up the
phone at 15 watts and reverse wireless charge other devices at about 5 watts.
These copper coils are pretty cool and we'll come back to them in a minute.
The top of the phone has 9 normal Phillips head screws holding everything down.
They are the same size which is convenient. I can detach the metal plate which has a NFC pad and a
Lego-style connector, and then the battery with it's own Lego-style connector can be unplugged.
The top plastics also come loose at this point. Then we can head down south and remove the 6
silver Phillips head screws holding down the bottom. At first glance I thought this time
around the lower loudspeaker might not have any balls inside, but it turns out they're
all dropped inside of the unit from over here on the edge of the speaker...it's still got them.
With the plastics gone I can remove the 3 super long extension ribbons that connect the top board
with the bottom board. And three more screws that hold the charging port board in place.
After removing the SIM card tray the bottom board can be taken out. The 45 watt USB-C port does have
a red rubber ring around the tip to help out that ingress protection. Another point that
water can get inside the phone is down here by the loudspeaker. Samsung is once again using rubber
and a watertight mesh to keep water out which is all very securely glued to the frame of the phone.
Samsung is pretty much a master of glue, as you'll see in a minute, but when it comes to
waterproofing screens, that's totally fine and a valid purpose for using strong adhesive. The same
thing goes for the microphone hole mesh as well. Before we can check out the s-pen's waterproofing,
let's remove the motherboard. I'll unplug the s-pen charger, the s-pen screen digitizer,
along with the front facing camera. Then the motherboard is free. It's interesting that with
the motherboard out we can now unplug and detach the camera units and it really goes to show just
how much real estate is dedicated to these cameras inside of the phone. They take up an impressive
amount of space. The camera block has a 12 megapixel wide angle camera up top which does not
have OIS. Then the 108 megapixel main camera in the center which does have OIS. The 10 megapixel
3x telephoto also has OIS. And finally the big boy unit down at the bottom is a 10 megapixel 10x
telephoto camera which also has the optical image stabilization but it's all internal encapsulated
inside of the periscope since the sensor is at a 90 degree angle from that rear lens. I took apart
one of these in my Galaxy S20 video if you want to see how it works, but it is indeed anti-jiggle.
The motherboard is also dual stacked. A whole lot of technology in a super small form factor.
The top loudspeaker also has balls of its own. The speaker has balls in two locations
and I'm no expert on ball to speaker ratios but Samsung obviously thinks that a lot of balls are
a good thing. They do help the speaker sound louder than it actually is since there is more
surface area inside for the sound to reverberate off of. The frame is milled out of aluminum,
probably one of the reasons why it has so much strength during the bend test.
Finally, let's work on this battery so we can check out the s-pen enclosure. For the past ever
Samsung has been extremely excessive with how they attach batteries to their phones. I'll drip some
isopropyl alcohol in here to start softening the adhesive while we see how the s-pen enclosure is
made watertight. The s-pen is charged by this little tiny coil of copper here at the top.
The energy goes from the motherboard into the coil and wirelessly transfers into the copper coils of
the s-pen's tip and down to the tiny capacitor at the other end of the pen, the side closest to the
bottom of the phone. It's interesting to see how it works. Now, when milling out the body of the
S22 Ultra, it would have been extremely difficult and expensive to just drill an s-pen sized hole
through the middle of the block. Difficult to line everything up just right. Plus if it were
just a hole drilled into the metal it would no longer be able to charge wirelessly. So to solve
those two issues, charging and expensiveness, Samsung has actually made their s-pen compartment
watertight with a thick piece of plastic glued down over the top of the hole, which is smart.
It saves time and money and still allows them to charge the s-pen while it's inside of the phone.
There is a little piece of rubber at the end of the channel to protect the tip of the
s-pen from ever hitting metal. It keeps it from flattening out. But yeah, it looks solid to me.
And the adhesive making the plastic watertight seems just as strong on the s-pen hole as it does
on all the other ip68 ingress points. So thumbs up for that. Adhesive is normally a good thing.
Now every smartphone manufacturer uses some kind of adhesive on the battery as well. Don't
get me wrong, adhesive is the norm. Apple uses magic pull tabs, and everyone else like OnePlus,
usually uses that adhesive gentle enough that batteries can be removed by hand...usually.
Samsung, however, locks down their battery like it's going into space. There's more white web
in here than an entire Spiderman movie, like a straight jacket of glue. And yeah,
I get that Samsung has had bad experiences with batteries, but when they use an apocalyptic amount
of adhesive, it makes the battery a lot harder to be recycled at the end of it's lifespan.
Lithium batteries are 95% recyclable at this point in phones and electric vehicles. But they are only
able to be recycled if it's easy to separate them from the rest of the materials inside of
the phone. It would be very worthwhile for the planet for Samsung to implement a better form of
adhesion. It would benefit repairability as well of course, but with Samsung selling 250 million
phones every year, recycling is pretty important as the devices fade out. We gotta think long term.
There is a copper heat pipe under the battery ready to dissipate heat from the motherboard out
through the screen, but yeah, for me personally, the recycling aspect is pretty darn important.
I do wish Samsung were designing their phones in a way that facilitates the end-of-life experience.
So even though I don't need to upgrade my 2 ½ year old phone at the moment, when the time does come,
I probably won't be picking a Samsung phone until they attach their batteries better. There
are plenty of good phones out there to choose from so there's no need to pick one that makes
recycling difficult. And, you know I really hate to say it, but Apple is looking pretty
good environmentally-wise with their new repair program, longevity, and end-of-life experience. So
an iPhone is not off the table. It feels a little dirty to say, but I said it. Luckily,
I don't have to decide any time soon since my current phone is still working great. But
one phone that's not working great, however, is this one. Normally when I reassemble my teardowns
they work, but this time around after some close inspection, it looks like I sliced through the
display ribbon extension ever so slightly with my pry tools as I was removing the back cover.
Everything else is still working of course. The phone is still on and functional under the dark
screen. It's just unfortunate that this 25 cent extension ribbon is what's keeping my
screen from turning back on. Either way, it's a minor issue, still very fixable. I'll either
repair this phone or use it for parts to repair other phones. Nothing goes to waste on my end.
And there you have it, the S22 Ultra, watertight with no foresight on end-of-life. Is repair and
recycling important to you? Let me know what you think down in the comments. And remember,
your phone is infinitely less likely to die while installing a Teardown Skin
than it would be if you took it apart. Hit that subscribe button if you haven't already. Come
hang out with me on Instagram and Twitter. And thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.