Hold your horses! The game-changing Samsung Galaxy S8 has just undergone a major teardown and it looks like it's just the old Galaxy Note 7 masquerading as a new device, at least in one major aspect.
The first thing iFixit noted with its latest project is that the Galaxy S8 and its bigger brother, the Galaxy S8 Plus, are "fairly identical". It also said that the new flagship is "a safe evolution on the S7 Edge".
The iFixit team quickly encountered some difficulty in taking the front and back panels apart. They had to heat up the adhesive first before they could pry the Galaxy S8 open. That's easier said than done. The curved glass panel has a high risk of cracking so extreme care was observed. iFixit noted that Samsung made it pretty hard to open the device for repairs.
Once the team got inside, they noticed that the fingerprint sensor is embedded inside the rear panel. It connects to the motherboard via a short cable that can be safely pulled free with the rear panel. The sensor is also modular and can be replaced if it gets broken.
The most concerning part of the teardown, as Mashable learned, is that the Galaxy S8 sports almost the same battery as the ill-fated Galaxy Note 7. The battery of the Galaxy S8 Plus has capacity exactly the same as that of the Note 7. Both comes with a 3,500 mAh battery at 3.85 V and 13.8 Wh. Furthermore, the battery is pretty hard to remove as it is glued to the device.
To find out more about the Samsung Galaxy S8 teardown, go here. iFixit explained every step the team took and discussed the repairability of the Galaxy S8's main components.
The new flagship smartphones from the Korean conglomerate scored a low 4 out of 10 repairability score from iFixit. While this is certainly bad news for the Samsung Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus, they are not alone. This is not the first time a major device has been outed by iFixit. Other popular products got low repairability scores from the "community of repairpersons". In fact, Apple AirPods got zero while the Microsoft Surface Studio has been described as almost impossible to repair.
