S23 Ultra Teardown: Right to Repair Forcing Samsung Towards Repairable Design

Samsung's S23 Ultra is making waves. Apparently, the South Korean giant is catching up with Apple in both hardware and software. I’ll let the tech reviewers decide if that's true or not, I’m more interested in what’s new under the hood.

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[Gokul_Yt]

How Completely software locked phone getting 7/10 and a phone without any software locks getting 4/10 For using too much glue. And Samsung provides debugging software for everyone of their phones. Reparability score really needs to include software Not just the hardware.

[jaideepa.s]

Samsung is not catching up with the hardware with Apple, dude Samsung S8 received the best Smartphone design award years ago where Apple was just a slab of metal. The Fold, the flip, and the curved display is innovative. Apple just buys display from Samsung.

[YerpS]

LMFAO they give it a bad score based on how they can repair the device with their flawed tools, heat and IPA will remove that back glass faster than you could try to remove that front OLED from any iPhone without going the apple route. Admit it ifixit at this point your at apples mercy.

[mrdummy_nl]

You give it 4/10 but other repair channels give it 9/10...
So what is going on here? Why have you more trouble and negative view on it than others? Explain it.

Compared to iPhone14, it get much negative score and it's reported software locked. Then compared to others, iPhone 14 should have 2/10 score here.

[luca]

1:31 i don't agree at all on this pulltab. Your perception is IMHO influenced by the fact you tear down brand new phones, so the "stretchy adhesive trips" Apple uses work as intended on new iphones. But if you're replacing the battery after 3 years of ownership, all the heat cycles from charging and using the phone "destroy" that adhesive, meaning no matter how careful you are those stretchy stips are gonna break and you end up having to pry out, risking battery puncture.
This kind of "huge pulltab" Samsung has adopted (and was already in use by Huawei and One Plus i believe) might prove less convenient but it gives a consistent battery removal procedure even years down the line.
Also, this requires no additional tools, while the iPhone adhesive strips have to be grabbed with tweezers and almost always more extensive disassembly of the phone (taking out the taptic engine for example).

[ljessecusterl]

Samsung phones have always been repairable. The greater worry now is them lobbying to block aftermarket OLED panels being imported to the US.

[tylerhauk]

ok all the hands collectively pulling the battery out gave me a good laugh lol 1:50

[theprodigy]

I’m glad Samsung Google has partnered up with you guys to help people fix their devices. I wish Apple didn’t software lock all of their components to the motherboard. now, if we want to fix our Apple devices we have to read a long ass manual. i’m glad Google and Samsung just make it quick and easy.

[dhivydhimanth]

That's some pretty good news. After all these years of no pull tab at all, even a barely functional pull tab is a great first move (hopefully of many)

[PLPlolol]

batteries shouldnt be glued in to begin with

[jbryan]

Minimum 250 bucks on ebay for a screen + digitizer replacement kit... Sure they may have made it a bit easier to repair your device, but at the same time cracking down on accessibility to 3rd party oem parts, you are better off just going through your phone company still. This is 1 step forward and 2 step back.

[tomgjonaj]

How do you do a teardown video and not show off the new, larger, vapor chamber? No shots of the motherboard? Jesus.

[damienlobb]

Will you guys be doing a chip ID at all? There's definitely some pretty significant changes to the sound. I am curious to see if Samsung have upgraded the amplifiers to the newer higher powered Cirrus models that are in the ROG 5/6 phones or if they've just stuck with the older models, and only upgraded the speakers.

[nervenjere]

i disagree on the score. at least you can repair this device without the manufacturer.
even has an open bootloader.
I have a galaxy s5 to play arround and i'm still able to install new custom software. All about the options.

[RikAindow]

This video aged well. Sad to see Samsung resorting to poor tactics.

[kuchesezik]

meanwhile samsung: plotting to ban import of all oled screens

[avaviel]

Bahaha the three or four people on the pull tab was hilarious!

[parthsoni]

Cameras are getting bigger and motherboard is getting smaller...

[azneon]

Samsung "catching up" with Apple? Seriously?

[yvesparis]

Personally I am disappointed with your disassembly ...

You make no reference to the parts inside unfortunately,
except for the camera

Do we have LPDDR5X memory from there?

Have we Universal Flash Storage UFS 4.0 ?

You're not talking about the Qualcomm 8 G2 processor

The modem in a Smartphone surely not useful either you do not speak about it
X70

No inventory of parts that have actually been installed inside the Smartphone

You say, what interests you is under the hood
And you practically talk about there tab install to remove there battery

It's like opening the hood of a race car
And only watch there battery once the hood is open
And you won't watch the engine with the supercharge

Seriously, probably your worst disassembly since the existence of Ifixit