Today we're going to be taking apart a sapphire covered smartphone. Sapphire is a super rare,
almost scratch proof material, with a hardness level right up there next to
diamonds. And as you can tell, this is real sapphire. You could say it's ice.
Sheeeeeeeeeeeesh
Quick tip: you've probably seen one of these diamond testers on Tik Tok,
and while they are really good at testing for gemstones and diamonds, they are very
easy to manipulate. For example, if you see someone with their finger on the dial while they
are testing something, there's a good chance that what they're testing is fake. My own smartphone
does not have a sapphire screen and if I test it, the sensor doesn't beep, it doesn't do anything.
But if I put my finger on the dial and adjust the sensitivity while it's not touching anything,
it might seem as if my own smartphone has sapphire. And this works with gemstones and other
precious diamonds and stuff. But if we go back to the Kyocera and my finger's not on the dial,
and we can tell this is indeed the real deal. Now you can protect yourself from any funny business.
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With how rugged this Duraforce Ultra is, it should be difficult to take apart,
but will also be different than anything we've ever seen. Let's get started.
[Intro]
It's kind of refreshing to have a super rugged phone on the table,
especially after having three phones break in half this year. But being ultra rugged might make it
more difficult to open up. The sapphire on top is basically unscratchable which is bussin. And
the phone itself is water resistant to 2 meters and has water damage covered under warranty,
which pretty much no other smartphone brand does. Kyocera even calls it waterproof in their
advertising instead of water resistant, which is something else no other manufacturer is doing.
With 2 screws removed and my razor blade pulling off the back middle panel,
we start seeing more internal silver screws. Twelve to be exact.
The bottom gold contact points are to attach other accessories and docks that Kyocera makes. With the
first round of screws removed we can start popping off the thick plastic and rubber side bumpers.
This is what protects the phone and the hard sapphire from drops,
like a built on case that's engineered to withstand 5 foot drops onto concrete.
Removing the side and end bumpers reveals a few things, like some pretty cool looking gold antenna
lines molded into the plastic, and 18 more screws. That's 32 screws total for people trying to keep
track back at home. But check this out, separating the two halves of the Duraforce Ultra 5G
reveals the most intense water protection that we've ever seen inside of a cell phone.
A sticky rubber gasket inlaid into a groove all around the edges. Kyocera isn't messing around.
The last time we saw something this intense was when we took apart an underwater drone
designed to film and operate 100 feet underwater. Apparently the sticky hand technology is useful
for more things than just getting stuck on the ceiling...it can also keep phones watertight.
The other half of the phone contains the electronics. We have the 5G antennas – one
at the top and either side of the phone. Then the wireless charger sitting on top of a hard battery.
It's plugged in just like a little Lego. Kyocera is using hard plastic for the battery,
which is something we haven't seen in a while,
probably because it's more durable than the thinner pouch-style batteries.
It also might have something to do with being certified non-incentive class 1 division 2
which is a requirement for jobs where explosive concentration of flammable gases might exist.
I do hope they pay extra for a job where using a regular phone might get you exploded.
The battery is 4500 milliamp hours and has the wireless charging permanently glued to the top.
We have two more screws holding down two massive speakers on the bottom of the phone.
I'll unplug each of their connections and lift it up and out of the phone with the USB-C charger.
These speakers are huge and they aren't even in boxes. No balls needed with woofers this large.
And then we have the charging port with it's own red rubber ring, which further assists
the ingress protection. Everything including the rear cameras still seem to be permanently
attached to the motherboard. So I'll pull out another 5 screws bringing our total up to 38.
Then we can unplug some latch-style connectors and remove the expandable
memory and SIM card tray so we can pull the whole motherboard up and out of the phone.
The cameras are tiny little guys and none of them have the optical image stabilization,
which is kind of strange. You would think someone working underneath an active SpaceX launch would
want some pictures. Everything else is pretty chill. The sapphire screen is embedded into
the plastic frame, like we see most other phones doing with their glass screens, just Kyocera has
some next level robustness. The little latches protecting the headphone jack and charging port
just have little plastic tails held in place with the stopper. The Duraforce Ultra 5G definitely
isn't the thinnest or the sleekest looking phone on the market, but it's built for a job. And from
my perspective, it looks like it's very proficient at the job it was built for. And the repairability
isn't that bad either. Everything is just held in place by screws like it was back in the good
old days before heat guns were required. Since mine has been taken apart, I wouldn't consider
it waterproof anymore and I'll probably never get this sticky hand of a gasket back into its correct
location, but it's still a pretty cool system that Kyocera has implemented in their phone.
One last little tidbit, most phones have super fine threads on their itty bitty screws
like the one on the right from inside the carbon fiber phone.
But Kyocera is over here using some very aggressive coarse thread.
This allows for more plastic to sit in between the threads and gives us less of a probability
for the tiny screw to strip out of its hole. And well, there are 30 of them back here. So combine
the 30 screws with the coarse thread and I think things are pretty well held together.
With the bottom, sides, and top body armor pieces back on the phone,
we can get the back plate situated and it's time to turn things on. And everything works. This guy
is basically scratch-proof, drop proof, water proof, and explosion resistant. If every phone
was built like this it would probably put me out of a job. Nice work, Kyocera. Let me know down in
the comments which of these features you'd like to see implemented in your own phone.
Share this video with someone who's always breaking their device, and then come hang out
with me on Instagram and Twitter. Thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.