Today we're going to tear down the rather flashy OnePlus Nord. Even if the display did
break during the durability test, I still think it's one of my favorite phone colors
of the year so far. Vibrant and recognizable. The OnePlus Nord does have a plastic frame.
During the bend test it cracked along the power button and the volume rocker. And then
the display bit the dust also between those same two points. Today we're going to find
out why. I do have an extra OnePlus Nord phone over here with my custom hard case. I'm going
to give it away to a random person over on Twitter, so come hang out with me over there.
Yeah, the OnePlus Nord is not the most durable phone we've ever seen, but it's still worth
taking a look at from the inside.
Let's get started.
[Intro]
Just like all glass backed phones, I'll start with my heat gun to warm up the adhesive.
And normally once it's hot I like to find an antenna line in the metal frame to insert
my razor blade, since plastic is a little more forgiving than metal. But since this
OnePlus Nord has a completely plastic outer frame, there are no antenna lines and I can
just insert my razor blade wherever I want and start slicing that adhesive.
One interesting thing to look for inside this Nord is the water-resistance. The OnePlus
Nord doesn't have an official IP rating and is the cheapest OnePlus phone for sale right
now. So it'll be interesting to see if they got rid of any of that ingress protection.
There is still quite a bit of adhesive holding the back panel in place.
Our first look inside reveals that the internal battery, of course, is not blue. Dbrand and
I added our own color to the OnePlus Nord Teardown design, just like we've done with
the red battery on the last few OnePlus phones.
I'll remove the 11 screws holding down the top plastics to the motherboard. The back
plastics also have the NFC pad attached, but no wireless charging. The bottom of the phone
has 7 screws of it's own holding the loudspeaker plastics in place. Then the loudspeaker can
be removed. Besides the blue colorization, everything else matches up inside perfectly.
One thing that is not represented on the Nord hard case, but is represented on the Teardown
skin is the camera modules. I'll leave a link for the skins and the case down in the description.
And remember, OnePlus doesn't pay me anything. But the skins I make with dbrand are my own
product.
The Nord only has a mono loudspeaker, meaning that the sound is only coming from one location,
or one end of the phone. But the speaker itself does still have a rubber seal and water resistant
mesh over the speaker holes, which is good for basic water-resistance. So OnePlus hasn't
cut any corners as far as water-resistance is concerned.
I'll unplug the battery, and since it has its own little pull tab... [plastic stretching
sounds] it comes out of the phone entirely on its own with zero prying. Thumbs up for
that. Replaceable batteries are pretty great. This is a rather large 4,115 milliamp hour
battery that can charge at 30 watts. Almost the same size as my 4,300 milliamp hour battery
inside my Note 10 Plus. I'll remove the two extension ribbons at the bottom of the motherboard,
along with the large charging port ribbon – each unsnapping like little Legos. The
white and black wire cables can be removed, along with the dual front camera. Here we
have a 32 megapixel regular selfie camera, along with an 8 megapixel ultrawide camera.
Neither of which have optical image stabilization. There are 4 rear cameras, 3 of which have
different perspectives. I'll unplug those and then remove the two screws holding down
the motherboard before pulling the rear camera units out. They all reside in one large metal
housing which keeps them aligned so they can all work together.
The top camera is an 8 megapixel ultrawide. Then we have the 48 megapixel main sensor,
followed by the 5 megapixel depth sensor and a 2 megapixel macro camera. The only one that
has optical image stabilization is the main 48 megapixel camera. There is the normal thermal
paste and copper heat pipe on the back of the motherboard. We normally see this in flagships
and it's nice to see that the copper and thermal paste also exist here in the cheaper phone
as well. The red rubber surrounding the motherboard connections also helps keep liquid-free if
the phone ever accidentally gets wet. There is a white water damage indicator here at
the bottom of the motherboard that does turn pink to tattle on you if water does ever get
inside.
We have the cute little earpiece up here at the top of the phone. This thing does not
double as a loudspeaker like we see on most other phones. Before we can get a close look
at that heat pipe though I'll have to take out the charging port. There is one silver
screw right below the small circular vibrator motor. Then the SIM card tray can pull out
and also has its own water-resistant ring around the opening. I'd say this phone is
just as water-resistant as the other OnePlus phones.
Finally, the little board that contains the bottom microphone and the screen ribbon can
come away from the phone, which gives us access to the long charging port ribbon. The charging
port shows us even more red rubber around the USB-C. Then the optical underscreen fingerprint
scanner. This super tiny little guy here can also come out. The underscreen fingerprint
scanner is optical. A super tiny little guy. It can take pictures of your fingerprint through
the screen. I'll plop him back into position so we can start removing the display. The
screen is controlled by this little ribbon here.
There actually is metal inside of the OnePlus Nord, but not the normal CNC'd aluminum that
we see in most flagships. This is more of a thin lightweight cast alloy that's actually
rather soft...which doesn't end up helping out the structure too much. The easiest way
to separate the screen from the phone is with a little bit of heat, and then slicing between
the plastic edge of the display and the plastic edge of the phone. This usually kills the
screen, but mine's already dead so I'm not too worried. Once I get a new screen, the
rest of this phone can be reassembled and it'll probably continue to work just fine.
Now that the screen is off, it's interesting to see that OnePlus has a square cutout for
the fingerprint scanner instead of a circle. We haven't seen that before on an optical
scanner. There is a large layer of graphite tape which is another layer of cooling inside
the phone. So we'll have to keep digging for that copper. The reason that OnePlus puts
the copper heat system right up against the screen is because of how thin the screen is.
It's the easiest place to get rid of the heat from inside the phone. A lot of phone manufacturers
do this. Even the main camera on the OnePlus Nord has its own cutout so the sensor itself
can dissipate its own heat away through the screen.
Scraping away the tape residue from the top of the copper, we finally get a good look
at its true size. And for a non-flagship smartphone it's rather impressive. Slicing open the heat
pipe reveals that there's not any visible liquid inside, but the copper will still conduct
heat regardless of liquid. It might have already evaporated. It does still have it's copper
wick inside. The OnePlus Nord has a lot of great things going for it, but it is pretty
obvious where corners were cut structurally to bring that price down. It's weak in the
same area that we saw in the Nexus 6P back in the day – the area between the battery
and the motherboard, along with the weak points in the frame with those side buttons. But
this phone is not a flagship and costs hundreds of dollars less than the other OnePlus phones.
If it was a flagship I would be quite a bit more harsh.
I would like to see future Nord phones be designed much stronger though. Other companies
have done it, like the Galaxy A50 from last year, so we'll keep an eye on this Nord line
of OnePlus phones.
Hit that subscribe button so you don't miss any future videos. And don't forget I still
have this new, unscratched, unbroken OnePlus Nord to give away to a random person on Twitter.
So come hang out with me over there. And let me know down in the comments, is durability
enough of a factor for you that you'll skip this phone entirely? Or will you just be more
cautious now that you know it's limits? I'm curious.
Thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.