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Step 1 Samsung Galaxy S8 Teardown

Samsung seems to have gone all-out to provide the same smartphone experience regardless of your screen size preferences, and the Galaxy S8's specs bear that out. Any of this look familiar?

• 5.8-inch, dual-edge, Super AMOLED display with 2960 × 1440 resolution (570 ppi)

• Qualcomm Snapdragon 835 or Samsung Exynos 8895 processor, with 4 GB RAM

• 12-megapixel rear camera with dual pixel autofocus and 4K video capture; 8-megapixel selfie camera

• 64 GB internal storage, expandable via MicroSD card (up to 256 GB additional)

• IP68 water resistance rating

• Android 7.0 Nougat

Step 2

• Dimensions aside, the S8 fairly identically clones the look of the S8+. Features include:

• Speaker grille and microphone hole

• USB-C charging port and headphone jack (Apple: 0 Samsung: 1)

• Pulse reader/flash assembly

• Rear-facing camera

• Fingerprint reader

• The S8 is a safe evolution on the S7 Edge—proportions, camera and sensor package location, and size are all fairly on par.

Step 3

• The Galaxy once again rocks the glass-on-glass design, making our lives difficult. We heat the heck out of this panel and apply plenty of prying picks.

• Once we get an edge open, the iSclack helps us crank through the rest of the gnarly adhesive (which will need replacing upon reassembly—*groan*).

• And we're in—to an S8+? This guy looks pretty darn identical.

Step 4

• The fingerprint sensor lives in the rear case,somewhat controversially placed. Using the thing (with your right hand) requires blindly stretching and blotting out the camera...

• The good news is that this sensor is modular and can be popped right off its adhesive for replacement. All it takes is a little heat and a good push.

• No word (yet) whether software locks (à la iPhone 7) will prevent a replacement from functioning.

Step 5

• As with its S8+ sibling, the S8 employs some sweet hardware multitasking. The speaker/antenna array, and antenna/NFC coil assembly, do double duty as the phone's midframe.

• Also like the S8+, the NFC antenna presumably does an additional job, spoofing MST to use Samsung Pay at any card reading checkout location.

• We're almost running out of things to say here—the rest of the phone looks pretty much like the S8+ too, down to the wee pancake vibrator. It's like someone left the S8+ in their pocket on laundry day and it came out of the wash slightly shrunken, but no worse for wear.

Step 6

• You'd think that after Samsung's less than stellar battery record, they'd have a quick eject system for these little bombs packs. And yet, this cell is firmly (and we mean firmly) adhered.

• And it's not like it's especially hard to have a removable battery—it's done all over the phone world.

• The Samsung-branded battery clocks in at 11.55 Wh—comparable to the Google Pixel's 10.66 Wh, but dwarfing the (slightly smaller) iPhone 7's 7.45 Wh battery.

• The capacity comparison may look impressive, but reports seem to suggest that the actual performance is nothing to cheer about.

Step 7

• The I/O board connector is under the motherboard in these late-model Galaxy phones. Because why not make things harder?

• The motherboard itself pops out with relative ease, giving us a peep at that now-Samsung-standard heatpipe.

• The I/O daughterboard configuration matches the S8+ right down to the modular headphone jack.

• Since we've already gone through the camera shenanigans, let's get straight to the chips.

Step 8

We checked the genetics chips in the S8 to see if it is truly a smaller twin of the S8+:

• Samsung K3UH5H50MM-NGCJ 4 GB LPDDR4 RAM layered over the MSM8998 Snapdragon 835

• Toshiba THGBF7G9L4LBATR 64 GB UFS (NAND flash + controller)

• Qualcomm Aqstic WCD9341 audio codec

• Skyworks 78160-11

• Avago AFEM-9066

• NXP 80T71 NFC controller

• Silicon Mitus SM5720 Interface PMIC

Step 9

On the opposite side we find:

• Murata KM6D28040 Wi-Fi Module

• Qualcomm PM8998 (similar to PM8920)

• Qualcomm WTR5975 RF Transceiver

• Avago AFEM-9053

• IDT P9320S

• Maxim MAX77838 companion PMIC (similar to MAX77829)

Step 10

• That's it for the vanilla S8. If you haven't already guessed, we've got a more detailed breakdown of the S8+, so check it out if you haven't already.

• With that, let's give the Galaxy S8 its repairability score.

All info from: https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Samsung+Galaxy+S8+Teardown/87136

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