It's time to open up the elegant LG G7 ThinQ.
It's told me not to remove the battery several times for my phone's own safety or something,
which means, it's time to remove the battery and review this LG G7 from the inside.
Let's get started.
[Intro]
The funny thing is that removing the battery of a sealed shut phone is near impossible,
as you'll see in a second.
I'll link all the tools and stuff I'm using in the video description, but the average
Joe won't ever just pop the battery out on a whim.
Once the adhesive is warmed up, I'll slip my metal pry tool between the edge of the
glass and the metal frame and cut through that adhesive all around the outside of the
phone.
I keep warming up the adhesive about every 30 seconds or so since it will harden up and
not move.
As it gets colder, metal can damage the underside coloring on the glass, but I imagine if you're
opening up your phone, there are bigger hardware problems to worry about than just the aesthetics.
Finally the back glass panel pulls away from the phone and there's a lot going on in here.
This is going to be a fun one.
There's a thin ribbon going along the bottom of the battery that we've never seen before.
Sticking my metal tool in too far would have damaged this or torn it, so we got lucky.
We have the large wireless charging coil here in the center of the phone.
And over off on the back panel we have the fingerprint scanner without any ribbon cables.
All of it's communication is going through these golden contact pads, which is super
smart.
One less ribbon cable to worry about when opening up the phone.
Speaking of which, it's time to get under the plastics.
Seven Phillips head screws along the top of the motherboard, and another 7 screws holding
down the bottom black plastic segment.
Then the plastics can start to come away.
The whole top including the wireless charging comes off as one piece.
It's got the same gold contact pads that rest against the motherboard, just like that fingerprint
scanner.
And now I'll unplug the battery that the phone was so adamant that I don't remove.
We'll mosey on down and pop off the bottom plastics to see what this extra ribbon cable
over the battery is all about.
The loudspeaker is built into the plastics.
LG is calling this a boombox speaker with extra bass.
And I'd have to agree on this one.
When this thing is pounding, it vibrates the entire frame of the phone with it's power.
It's still a cellphone speaker of course, but it is big and louder than normal.
Under that speaker we get our first look at the wired gold cables lying on top of the
battery.
They unsnap from the motherboard, but not with a Lego connector, these are the wire
cables we normally see converted into a ribbon cable instead.
I'll unclip the screen from the motherboard and the
8 megapixel front camera up at the top.
These are the normal Lego style ribbon connectors.
And also the SIM card tray comes out.
Removing the motherboard is incredibly similar to the Galaxy S9 at this point, with the board
folding out and the charging port plugged into the underside of the board with a little
ribbon.
I'll unclip that plug, releasing the motherboard and exposing the dual dollops of thermal paste
on the back, along with the dual camera units.
I'll unplug the cameras.
One cool thing I want to point out with the SIM card tray housing is that the SIM card
tray can handle a SIM and SD card at the same time, which is pretty normal.
But if you leave out the SD card and orient a second SIM perpendicularly in its slot,
it becomes a dual SIM card tray.
Pretty smart.
Three different card orientations in 1 little slot.
Back to the camera lenses, LG has given us 2 lenses that accomplish different things.
The bottom camera is super side angle – 16 megapixels.
Kind of like a GoPro with no optical stabilization.
The top camera is the normal non-wide angle, 16 megapixel lens with optical image stabilization.
I'll plug those back into the motherboard.
And since the motherboard is out of the frame, we can finally get a look at the charging
port and get that, you know, battery out.
The headphone jack is it's own little unit with red rubber water proofing around the
tip.
I'll set that off to the side, and finally the charging port comes away from the phone
with its little plastic supports to keep it elevated from the middle.
This time we have blue rubber around the tip to help keep water out of this hole.
It's USB-C. And now we can get a closer look at what's normally those wire antennas that
are now turned into ribbon cables.
I'd be interested to know what sparked that decision and how different these perform over
the original wires.
The inside of this phone looks amazing.
The aluminum is all anodized at the same time so the inside of the phone is uniformly the
same color as the outside.
Thumbs up for that.
You can see the mill markings from the machine that carved this shape out of a solid metal
block.
The buttons are the normal clicky little guys, which are easily replaceable.
The volume button flex for last year's LG G6 currently costs only 6 dollars, which is
a refreshing change from HTC's non-replaceable buttons on the U12.
We have the front camera and the earpiece at the top.
And a few water resistant microphone holes.
And, of course, the circular coin style vibration motor.
And over here we have the copper heat pipe for thermal dissipation.
It's not quite as big as the Razer phone, but every little bit counts.
Now the battery – the thing our phone begged us not to remove from the moment we turned
it on - is the last thing to come out from inside this phone.
It was tucked up underneath those charging port signal ribbons, and it doesn't have any
magical pull tabs.
I did try warming it up since warm adhesive separates better than cold adhesive, but eventually
with a combination of metal and plastic pry tools, I was able to get it out of the phone.
The screen ribbon cable is tucked up under the bottom half of the battery, so avoid that
area if you need to reuse your screen.
One rip on that cable and your screen will stop functioning.
LG still says no dogs allowed, which is cool.
Everyone's entitled to their own opinion.
The screen is glued to the frame of the phone like we've seen on most other glass backed
phones these days.
Heat and prying is used to pull the display away from the metal frame.
The old screen won't survive the removal.
I'll link replacement parts in the description when they become available.
Let's get this think put back together and see if it still works.
It's nice that everything in here is pretty modular, but it's unfortunate that some of
the most common repairs, like a battery and screen replacement, require every component
to come out.
To get the motherboard back into place, I'll clip the charging port board into the bottom
first, and then gently lay it down into the frame making sure no wires like the battery
and front camera are caught underneath.
I do feel like as phones get harder to repair, less people attempt the project.
I think the moment a heat gun is required, a lot of people will give up.
What do you think?
At what point would you give up on a repair?
I got the bottom loudspeaker in place.
Then lastly I'll plug in the 3000 milliamp hour battery before putting on the top plastics
with that attached wireless charger.
I think the LG G7 is one of the most feature-rich phones of 2018, and is definitely a phone
worth taking a look at.
I'll get the 14 screws back into place to hold everything tight, and re-adhere the back
glass panel to the phone with double sided tape.
And check that out, everything still works.
I love that the “don't remove the battery” warning still pops up.
Sure ain't gonna fall out on it's own – I'll tell you that much.
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