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Nexus One Teardown

Teardown

Teardowns provide a look inside a device and should not be used as disassembly instructions.

Featured Guide

This guide has been found to be exceptionally cool by the iFixit staff.

Well, we went for it. After forking out a bank-account-devastating $530, we have the Superphone in hand! Keep your eyes peeled as we tear this baby apart.

After all was said and done, we made a video slideshow of it as well. Enjoy!

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Edit Step 1 — Nexus One Teardown ¶

The Nexus One, manufactured by HTC, is the latest and greatest Android phone. It sports:
- A 1 GHz Qualcomm (QCOM) Snapdragon processor.
- A 3.7" 480x800 widescreen WVGA AMOLED display.
- A 5MP digital camera w/ LED flash that also records .mp4 video.
- 802.11n wireless capability for when you can't depend on 3G.
- 7 hours of 3G talk time from a removable 3.7V, 1400 mAh lithium battery.
The box's color scheme kind of looks like Google's.
Pawning apps on the clear plastic protective sleeve? Guess the app store really is that desperate.

Edit Step 2 ¶

Droid, meet Nexus One. Anyone else see the transition from Terminator to T-1000?
iFixit's Android family. Darwin would agree that progress has been made.

Edit Step 3 ¶

The unbelievably easy task of removing the plastic rear cover gives access to the replaceable battery. Hey Apple, take notes!
Inside the battery compartment you can see:
- The 5MP camera lens
- LED flash bulb
- External speaker
- The warranty-killing VOID sticker

Edit Step 4 ¶

Warranty = VOID. No turning back now.
This phone is very nicely put together. After removing three screws and prying with a plastic opening tool, the battery tray comes right out.

Edit Step 5 ¶

The upper circuit board is held in place by another Phillips screw.
After removing the screw, maneuver the upper board past the two metal clips holding it in place and lift it out of the phone body.
The large black-coated foil section is the data connection between the two main circuit boards.

Edit Step 6 ¶

After some trying moments with a few tools of destruction, we figured out the bottom cover can simply be popped off with a plastic opening tool.
Guess what? We found more screws.
This phone uses many foil antennas attached to the several plastic internal frame pieces.

Edit Step 7 ¶

With a quick pry of the plastic opening tool, we found that the black plastic frame slightly envelops the lower side of the logic board.
And just like that, the plastic frame snaps off, revealing the lower logic board.
It's quite a colorful phone on the inside. We've got oranges, greens, yellows, dark grays, and all sorts of fun stuff!