iFixit’s flagship autopsy finds glue. Lots of glue
iFixit – an organisation with a toddler-like proclivity for breaking phones – today published its teardown of Samsung’s latest and greatest: the Galaxy S21 Ultra. While the phone itself has managed to impress reviewers, things are less rosy from iFixit’s perspective and the right-to-repair outfit complained about the complexity of otherwise routine repairs. One of the biggest hurdles, it noted, was accessing the phone’s innards. The first step in any repair involves removing the Galaxy S21 Ultra’s glass backplate. This is firmly glued in place. Prying it off first requires a generous application of heat, as well as a delicate hand. Glass is fragile, after all, and even the Gorilla Glass Victus used here isn’t invulnerable. The phone’s massive camera bump made it more fiddly and forced iFixit to use a «lateral pick manoeuvre» to yank it free. With the backplate removed, iFixit was able to poke around the guts of the phone. Samsung won points for the modular design of the logic board, which is split into two components, camera apparatus residing on a separate daughterboard and another module for the lenses.
