The new OnePlus 7T. This guy has some battle scars from our last video, but it's still
currently functioning. Today we're going to see what holds this 7T together and see what
it looks like from the inside.
Let's get started.
[Intro]
Taking apart a glass back phone is already pretty difficult. But with a strong enough
suction cup and a lot of heat, it's doable. If the back panel has cracks, it does make
it hard for the suction cup to get any suction. Since air can use those cracks to get underneath
the suction cup, which inhibits the suckage. I had better luck putting my suction cup on
the uncracked portion of the glass. But if you ever encounter a totally shattered back,
putting some clear packing tape on the panel to cover those cracks and sucking the suction
cup to the top of the tape also works pretty well.
Now that the adhesive is sliced away from underneath the glass, and I still have all
my fingers, it's time to see what's under this Oreo, I mean, camera hole. The inside
of the phone is a stealthy black design. Black plastics, black battery, with a red battery
pull tab, and 11 screws holding down the top plastics. Once those screws are removed, the
top plastics can pull away from the phone. Attached to these plastics are the NFC coils
and the rear dual LED flash that circles around to the under side of those plastics and has
it's own gold contact pads. These communicated with the motherboard. The large circular cutout
that makes up the exterior camera lens is mostly for aesthetics. Much of the circle
inside of the phone is just empty space since the triple camera unit is still inside a rectangular
metal housing. The large circle does make the phone design stand out though. Which is
probably what OnePlus was after. I'll unsnap the battery connector like a little Lego,
along with the 4 other ribbons running down along the bottom of the motherboard. Each
of these ribbon connections is surrounded by a red rubber gasket, which helps out considerably
with water resistance.
The bottom plastics have seven screws holding them in place – all Phillips head just like
the top. Pulling off the plastics we see it also contains the loudspeaker. The loudspeaker
does have two circle stickers in each of the corners. We can peel up these stickers to
see if it has any of those little white foam balls. And would you look at that – it does.
Same as the iPhone and newer Samsung phones. The little foam ball baffle technology exists
as well here in the OnePlus 7T. The little balls kind of break up the air inside of the
speaker to allow it to sound bigger than it actually is. The other little circular sticker
covers up a much smaller hole which probably allowed the air inside the speaker to escape
as they were filling it up with foam. I'll put the stickers back into place and let's
go deeper into the phone.
There is a long extension ribbon going from the motherboard to the bottom board. I'll
remove that and set it down off to the side. Before we get too deep though, here's a fun
little background image for you. Crank up the resolution on the YouTube video, screenshot
this and crop it to match your phone background. That way you can appreciate the inside of
your phone while it's still safely remaining in one piece. Lucky for us, the black battery
does have it's own pull tab.
[Un-sticking sounds]
Thumbs up for that. And look at this, apparently I've made a huge mistake. It says right here
that the battery is not removable and I went ahead and already removed it. I guess that's
what I get for not reading the instructions first. I've gone and done the impossible.
Ain't nobody gonna tell me how to live my life. This is a 3,800 milliamp hour capacity.
I'll set it down off to the side. We can pretend that I never removed it after I reassemble
the phone again.
One thing that's super cool about this OnePlus 7T is that OnePlus obviously put a lot of
thought into how the internals look, with red rubber accents everywhere, including on
the inside of their dual SIM card tray. The phone looks good from the inside, and definitely
has water resistance.
I'll unsnap 3 more of the little ribbon cables down here at the bottom, and then pop the
little board out from inside the phone. This little board is mostly the SIM card tray and
one of the bottom microphones. The USB-C charging port is it's own little unit, and also has
a red rubber ring accent to spice things up. The OnePlus 7T can charge at an impressive
30 watts. Going back to the water resistance, we can see that the loudspeaker port is protected
by the water resistant mesh. There is of course no water resistant rating on the OnePlus 7T,
but it has all the characteristics of a phone that should have an IP rating.
There is an underscreen camera down here as well. This is for the in-screen optical fingerprint
sensor, along with a white square next to the SIM card tray. This is a water damage
indicator that turns pink when it gets wet. Now for the top of the phone. This OnePlus
7T has two more Phillips head screws holding in the motherboard, with another white water
damage indicator next to the volume rocker. The front facing camera is here in the center
of the phone. It hides up inside the teardrop notch and is 16 megapixels, films video in
1080p and has no optical image stabilization.
Pulling the motherboard out reveals a whole lot more blue inside of the phone. The metal
anodizing process that colors the phone is done to the entire frame before the internal
hardware is added. This adds the color to the inside before the phone's even assembled.
There is quite a bit of thermal paste on the back. And a super long metal bracket that's
holding down the Lego-style camera connectors. I'll remove the rubber stopper holding the
metal bracket in place, and then unlatch the bracket so we can get the cameras out.
More red rubber gaskets around each of the connectors. Once those are unclipped we get
our first close up look at the 3 cameras. The camera module is flipped right now so
the 12 megapixel 2x optical zoom is over here on the left. The 48 megapixel main camera
is in the center, and the 16 megapixel wide-angle lens is over on the right side. Only that
center camera has optical image stabilization. But also remember that this camera contraption
can take close up macro pictures of things that are 2.5 centimeters away from the lens.
Most smartphones cannot do that.
There is an abundance of thermal paste underneath the motherboard. OnePlus is again using the
aluminum frame of the phone as a heatsink, which is fine. There is a small circular vibrator
motor up at the top. The unusual thing about the 7T though are the dual speakers up here
at the top of the phone. Sometimes when a phone manufacturer claims to have stereo speakers
in their phone, they just bump up the volume on the tiny earpiece and call it a day. Iphones
and Samsungs both do this. But OnePlus has actually added a whole different larger speaker
up here at the top, bringing our total number of speakers inside this OnePlus 7T to 3. It's
pretty safe to say that a larger speaker has better sound quality than a smaller speaker,
so it's cool that OnePlus has done this, but also weird that they aren't bragging more
about it. Once I get the speaker and it's rear magnet out of the phone, we can see that
the top loudspeaker is directly channeled out the front of the phone. On the opposite
side of the grill from the regular earpiece speaker.
Because of that larger speaker now at the top and the bottom, this 7T should theoretically
sound better at loud volumes than most other smartphones claiming to have stereo speakers.
Inside the speaker the surround is made from rubber meaning that it will survive a bit
of moisture as well. And of course the magnet on the back is what makes the whole thing
work. Overall it's a pretty sleek little phone. The screen is still glued into the frame of
course, like normal, so screen replacements would still be pretty difficult.
But other than the back glass cracking during the bend test, it seems to be a good little
phone. There has been a lot of attention to detail on the inside, with plenty of water
resistance and that extra loudspeaker. There are so many good smartphones out there these
days, it's kind of hard to choose a bad one. It's mostly all about finding a smartphone
with the features that line up with what you need. And most importantly, just make sure
you get a case.
Let me know what you think down in the comments. Do you like this new Oreo design? Come hang
out with me on Instagram and Twitter. And thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.