Today I’m going to show you how to take apart and fix most everything on your Galaxy
Note 7.
I will link all of the replacement parts and tools that you’ll need down in the video
description below as soon as they become available.
Hopefully you’ll never have to replace your screen with the new shatter resistant gorilla
glass 5 because taking apart this phone is not for the faint of heart.
It will require courage, bravery and at least 6 healthy Pokémon.
Remove the bottom S pin and the top SIM card tray.
And then with a heat gun you’ll need to heat up the back cover universally all around
the outside.
I heat it up until it’s too hot to touch with my fingers.
Then I can take a thin metal pry tool and slide it between the metal frame of the phone
and the back glass, being careful not to lift up too tall or else the glass will crack and
break and I want to reuse my back glass cover.
I will reheat the glass about every 30 seconds as I slide my tools around the edge.
Before going around that back curve I’ll stop with my metal tool and switch to a playing
card or business card, because the business card is flexible enough to wrap around that
curve without putting any extra stress on the glass.
It’s been about 30 seconds so I’m going to heat up the phone again until it’s too
hot to touch and then slide the second card around that second curve and slide it up,
slicing through the adhesive all the way around the outside.
I’m not going inside the phone too deep because there is the wireless charger and
the NFC pad that we don’t want to rip around the edge, as well as a little ribbon cable
right next to the power button.
So watch out for that.
I’ll slice through the remaining adhesive around the top edge and the back panel will
lift off away from the phone.
If you’re just replacing your back panel, they do sell replacements; usually they’re
around 20 or 30 bucks.
I will link these down in the video description.
They will come with their own adhesive so you can peel off the old adhesive and you’re
good to go.
There are 11 screws around that backside; remove all those and try to keep them in order.
Even though they appear to be the same size it’s always good to keep your screws organized.
The loud speaker comes off easily enough; set that off to the side.
And then the wireless charging and the NFC pad lift off as well.
You can see the gold contact points at the upper corner that just rest against the motherboard
and that’s how it charges the battery through the board.
Here’s the vibrator motor as well.
Now that we can see the guts of the phone we will unplug the battery, making sure that
there’s no electricity coursing through the board.
And we can unplug the S pin.
Removing the battery is relatively easy.
I am using my metal pry tool; just make sure that you do not puncture the battery at all.
I did slice my bottom edge a little bit, which shouldn’t be a big deal as there is no copper
exposed, but still, you want to be very very careful with the batteries.
I’m going to undo the screen ribbon right here on the left hand side.
And then we have the IR blaster next to the 5 megapixel front camera.
We’ll talk about those more in a second.
I’m going to disconnect the ear piece and the front sensor array, and then this other
ribbon cable on the side along with the power button.
All of these unsnap like a little Lego.
Down here we have some new ribbon cables.
Instead of a wire connection it’s now a ribbon.
We will disconnect the home button cable and then we have two screws before we can lift
off the motherboard.
I’m just going to fold it over because there is one more Lego-like connection at the bottom
where the charging port connects to the bottom of the motherboard.
It’s been the same way since the Note 5, and the Galaxy S7 and the Galaxy S6.
So we’ll just take my plastic non-marring pry tool and unsnap that from the motherboard.
Here is the rear 12 megapixel camera.
It does have a little bit of adhesive holding it onto the board.
You can see the OIS stabilizing feature.
The camera itself moves around inside of the housing to stabilize your image while you’re
holding your phone.
This works for pictures and for video.
We’ll set that back in its frame and line up the Legos so we can connect them again.
Here‘s the front array.
It has an infrared LED that supposedly helps with the iris scanner in low light situations
so it can find your pupils and scan it into the phone.
We’ll tack that back into place.
Here’s the iris scanner on the right.
And the front 5 megapixel camera on the left.
Cute little guys.
The iris scanner is what you use to unlock your phone with just your eyes.
We’ll put those back into place.
And here is the charging port.
There are three screws holding it down.
Remove all 3 screws and then you can disconnect the headphone jack.
A phone isn’t a phone without a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack.
The charging port is oddly shaped so be careful when you’re pulling it out and make sure
you have all the components and nothing rips, especially if you need to reuse it.
If you’re replacing it you probably don’t need to be so careful.
This charging port has the USB type C as well as these two signal wires up at the top.
Except they’re not wires anymore, they are ribbons, which is interesting.
Down here at the bottom of the charging port we can see the USB type C connection as well
as the microphone.
It has a little hole in the bottom that rests against the frame.
I’ll talk about the water proofing abilities of this phone in a future video.
So make sure you’re subscribed so you get the notification for that.
Now here is the heat pipe.
These things are always interesting to me.
Some manufacturers call them liquid cooling which I think is a bit of a stretch since
there’s not really any visible liquid inside of them; it’s more of a vapor tube or a
vapor chamber.
It’s more fair to call them a heat pipe instead of liquid cooling.
The little fibers you see here help transfer the heat up and down through the pipe as it
rests up against the processor.
We’ll fold the copper back down into place.
Pinch it down and it’s as good as new.
We’ll put the thermal pad back into place and move on to the screen replacement.
Now I was unsuccessful at removing this screen successfully.
I broke mine during the process as I imagine most everyone else will as well.
There is an extraordinary amount of adhesive holding this screen into place.
I imagine that has to do with the waterproofing that the Galaxy Note 7 has.
So far I’ve heated the screen up till it’s too hot to touch and I’ve slid a playing
card in through the little battery hole so it pokes out the side and this gives me a
starting point to slide another playing card around the edge to soften the adhesive.
Remember that there are multiple layers to the screen, like the digitizer and the AMOLED
layer, and if you accidentally separate those two layers, your phone will be broken.
Now I imagine if you’re trying to remove the screen, the screen’s already broken
anyway.
Samsung has industrial machines that can remove this screen really easily with heat and suction
and grabbing all the right points on the frame, but local repair shops like myself, without
those machines, it’s going to be a tough task.
Luckily there isn’t any reason to remove the screen unless it’s broken so you won’t
need to be as meticulous as me.
Just make sure not to damage the home button and menu buttons as it comes off during your
screen replacement.
You’ll see where those are at in a second.
I wonder if Samsung could develop some kind of adhesive pull tabs like what’s underneath
the iPhone batteries that helps it release a lot easier.
One little pull tab stuck somewhere inside of your phone and all of the adhesive would
come off.
It might add some slight thickness to the screen but it would make replacing things
a lot easier.
As you can see with a screen replacement it’s getting pretty ridiculous at this point.
I am heating it up about every 30 seconds and then sliding more playing cards in along
the side, making sure to avoid where the AMOLED screen starts on each of the corners.
Here’s where I made my first big mistake trying to slide my card in underneath this
ribbon cable.
I sliced right through it and I imagine they’re probably pretty important.
There are a few other points along the screen that I’ll mention in a second that you have
to watch out for; one is the other ribbon cable at the top along with the whole ribbon
that goes to the AMOLED screen.
And then at the bottom you have the two menu buttons and the home button itself.
So basically all around the whole edge of the phone is pretty fragile.
Now that all the adhesive is cut or loosened I can lift up the bottom and make sure that
I’m not ripping the menu buttons as I lift off the screen.
So I’ll tuck those back down into place, and the screen is off.
So this is the replacement screen.
This is what it will look like if you need to buy one for yourself.
Except for yours won’t be cut along the top ribbon and nothing will be sliced off
like I managed to do with mine.
It will have some adhesive on it that you can use to reattach to your old frame.
To remove the home button and the menu buttons they are slightly adhered down to the frame.
I’m going to lift those off and pull the ribbon through the frame hole and you are
set.
If you ever do need to replace your fingerprint scanner or menu buttons you do have to take
apart your entire phone to get to this point.
Remember I will link all the replacement parts down in the video description below.
I am going to wait until parts become available for this Note 7 before I put mine back together.
I will be replacing the screen and the faulty fingerprint scanner.
I say faulty because, well, it’s my fault that it’s damaged.
I want to admire this frame for one quick second.
You can see how thick the metal is all the way around the outside.
There is an extraordinary amount of metal in this phone; probably enough that you can
make two Nexus 6P’s from just one Note 7 frame.
Huawei should take a page out of Samsung’s book.
I hope you enjoyed this teardown.
I enjoyed making it.
If you have any questions, leave them down in the comments.
And please subscribe so you don’t miss my future teardown videos.
My next video will explain how the Galaxy Note 7 is water resistant.
Bonus points if you follow me on Twitter and Instagram.
And every now and then I’ll throw a snap story out with behind the scenes footage as
well.
Thanks a ton for watching!
Hope to see you around.