Can You Build a SAMSUNG Phone From AliExpress Parts?

Today we're answering the question, is it cheaper or even possible to build a Samsung Galaxy phone from scratch using only AliExpress? Inside these packages are every single component needed to assemble an S22 Ultra. I found the cheapest yet highest reviewed parts, so hopefully we don't have any issues, but you know, we might. What the hell, there's way too many parts here. So the reason we chose the S22 Ultra is because the average refurbished price is around $500, which is what we're trying to beat. But yeah, this was all really expensive, and I'll disclose to you guys how much we paid for at the end. First up, we have the rear cameras. So I don't know if these are actually original, they probably are, and they come with protection, which is great. These were pretty expensive in terms of the overall cost of everything, and I hope they work well. In this package, we have the S Pen. The S Pen is very cheap to buy, but this one says no blue, so it might mean that this doesn't have Bluetooth, which would absolutely suck. After that, we have the, what is this? Oh, it's the front camera. Also relatively cheap compared to everything else. We'll just leave this here. Next up, we have this guy, which is in a box, so it's probably pretty important. We'll remove that. And it's a Amook LCD, so obviously this is the display. We'll open it up and take a good look at this. These displays ranged from really cheap to really expensive, and I never want to cheap out on the display, so I went for something more expensive. But it obviously comes with the frame as well, the volume buttons, the power button, the S Pen chassis where the S Pen goes in, copper heat pipe, and we have adhesive already on the battery ready to go. Hopefully this is good, because this whole video kind of depends on the quality of the frame and the display. So Amook, please do me well, okay? Over here, we have the charging port. So with the S22 Ultra, the boards all have a certain code, and these phones all differ from region to region, so you have to make sure all the parts are the same as the board part. This obviously has the charging port, SIM reader, and there's also a microphone and a few other components over here. Just leave that there. Another important part is obviously the wireless charging module, the speakers as well. I got lucky and found an all-in-one kind of a deal on AliExpress where they included all three in one package for a bit cheaper than if you were to get them on their own. In this box, we have the most important thing for this entire video, and if this doesn't work, well, the whole thing is cooked. We can't do this. It's obviously the motherboard. This is the most expensive part, so my worst nightmare with these boards is whether they've done work on it or not. If it's just a pull from another phone and they just took it out and basically shipped it out to us, that's amazing, but if they've done motherboard repairs, it may work for a bit, but it might not last forever. Right off the bat, it doesn't look like they did. Everything here looks pretty good, and I'm hoping it works as good as it looks. There's only about two or three parts left, so bear with me. Over here, we have the battery. Let's check it out. That looks not amazing, but it is a battery. We'll put that over there. It also came with the seal and some iPhone pull tabs for some reason. Thanks, I guess. In this package, we have the three flex cables that we need to basically connect the subboard to the mainboard. In this package here, we have the back glass. Obviously, they covered the Samsung logo, so customs don't steal it, but yeah, this is a good-looking back glass. It looks almost OEM. That's pretty much everything we need to build this S22 Ultra. The first thing we're going to install now is probably the charging port, so we'll pull that out. This guy goes in like this, and you just kind of push it into place, and bam. The next thing we're going to install is the battery, so to install that, we obviously have to remove this peel. It's really nice that this comes with built-in adhesive. A lot of parts don't. This is our battery. It looks kind of ghetto. Hopefully, it works well. We'll just press this in here like that, and the battery is now installed. The next thing we're going to install is the brains of the phone, the motherboard, but to do that, we have to remove some of these peels, so we'll remove this one, and we'll also remove the front camera peel up here. There we go. Now, we can pull out the motherboard. Before we install this, we typically have to attach the cameras to the board, so we're going to grab our cameras. It's always hard to remember which way the board goes in, so the cameras, I think, go like that. We're just going to click in every single camera. Leaving these covers on just allows me to put my fingers wherever and not have to worry about it, and I'm going to remove their ManAsia sticker because I don't want that on my phone. Okay, that's nice. It's a warranty void sticker, so we've just voided the warranty, apparently. I almost forgot. Before we can install the motherboard, we have to install the earpiece speaker, so this, for some reason, didn't come with the parts we ordered. We had to order it separately, so we'll have to add that to the final tally at the end of the video, but for now, let's put this right over here. These speakers also have weird screws. They're different from the rest of Samsung screws, but I couldn't get my hands on them because AliExpress only sells 100 packs of screws, so this is the shortest one we could find, and hopefully, this doesn't break anything. Take a screw out. So, because this isn't the right size, I'm not going to screw it in all the way. I'm just going to screw it in so it's nice and snug. That actually went pretty well. If you're wondering how the volume buttons and the power button connect to the motherboard, there's these contact pads here, and on the back of the motherboard, it has a few pins here, so if these are misaligned in any way, your power button and volume buttons won't work. Now, we'll place the motherboard inside, and it looks pretty good. It's fitting pretty well. Just to keep it nice and snug and make sure everything's in and not going to move out of place, we're going to connect some of the connectors, like the S-Pen connector, display connector, like that. With the board in, we can now install the front camera, so we're just going to remove the protector here and smack that in. Samsung usually uses some pretty strong glue to keep it down, but we're not going to do that this time. Believe it or not, we're actually almost done building this Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra. We just have a few more components, so some of the most important components are these flex cables here. This basically connects the top side to the bottom side and vice versa. We're just going to connect that, and you know which side is which because it says, subscribe to the channel, and it also says main, which is main board. Connect that, and we'll connect the other flex cables. So, you might notice that there's two connectors on each side of the board. There's one here and one here. Those are actually for the 5G antennas, but in Canada, we don't get them anyway, so I didn't bother buying them. Next up, we'll put in the bottom speaker. So, the bottom speaker connects the same way as the volume and power button. You can just kind of put that on like a chiropractor. Oh, that feels great! Because I didn't use any adhesive, this is our solution. So, this guy has a little bit of a cutout here that'll keep the camera in place. We'll put that on. This also just clicks in, and then the screws obviously help it stay in later. We'll connect that right now. If you're wondering what this is, it's basically laser focus, so when the cameras are pointing at something, this tells them how far the thing is so they know how to focus. One of the last things we need to install is this. It's the wireless charger, and I also believe it has a temperature sensor in here, but before we do that, we actually have to connect the battery because this plate will cover the battery connector. So, we have to fold the connector here, and then just press, and now the battery is connected. So, we can go ahead and put this on. To be honest, this has gone very smoothly for a phone with AliExpress parts, but I still have absolutely no idea if this thing will even turn on. There's so many components in here that could fail or that might just not work at all. The screws that I bought only came in a few sizes, and just to be safe, I'm only going to be using the shorter ones. The longer ones could seriously damage something. There are a ton of screws inside Samsung phones, but it's really nice that they're all Phillips and mostly the same length, and that is the final screw. So, now we can remove these protectors off the cameras. We'll get rid of them one by one. Kind of looks smudged up a little bit, and there's a piece of dust on there already. The last thing we need to install is the back glass, and I'm so happy that this comes with the pre-installed adhesive because it makes my life a lot easier. We're going to just peel this guy off like that. It's already coming off a little bit, but that's fine, and now we're going to complete this AliExpress S22 Ultra. This looks pretty good so far, and I almost forgot we have to put the S Pen in. As for the SIM tray, I thought it would come with some other parts, but it didn't. This phone was really annoying in that regard. I really thought parts would come with other parts, but they kind of cheaped out on us, and now for the moment of truth. Will the AliExpress built Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra work? Not going to lie, guys. I'm really stressing right now. I really hope this works, and right away, we reveal a very ugly screen. What the hell is that? Look at the bezels on this thing. It's disgusting. We'll go ahead and press the power button. Press and hold. No way, and we're at the home screen. You know this is from China because the weather literally says Beijing, but the phone looks like it's working despite this very ugly screen. We have to go through and test out everything and make sure it is fully working, but so far, so good. To test out the phone, we're going to be using Samsung's device care app. This tests out basically all the functions of the phone and is very thorough. The results of the tests are in, so we have 22 things that are normal and two things that are not normal, which I don't know if I'm surprised by. The first thing that isn't normal is, of course, the vibration. This phone doesn't vibrate. The vibration motor is supposed to be in the bottom loudspeaker that we installed, but apparently, it's just not working, which really sucks. The next thing that is not normal is the S Pen. The S Pen has no Bluetooth, so it's just basically a glorified stylus. It still works. You can still use it. You just don't have Bluetooth, so you can't use air actions or anything, but if you want to, you can buy one with Bluetooth. This phone has a lot of fake parts, but what isn't fake is the protection. This is the Torus Q3 Air, and yes, it survived those drops thanks to its built-in airbags. As someone who fixes phones every day, I've seen what real damage looks like, and this case can actually prevent that, and no, these don't pop. On the back, it has a single built-in MagSafe ring that acts as a stand and can lock into any angle, which is very satisfying. It's perfect for vertical recording, clipping onto your bag, or sticking to anything magnetic while you work. The buttons are fully replaceable and come in different colors, so you can swap them to match your phone or your preference. There's textured grips on the sides which prevent drops and slips, and after dropping my phone a million times in this case, it's now my absolute favorite. The thing I like the most though, this. Yeah, I do this a lot. Click the link in the description and grab your own. Finding the parts on AliExpress to build this phone was difficult and very expensive. The motherboard alone cost $174 Canadian, while the screen and entire housing cost $96. The rest of the parts were fairly inexpensive, and after adding many coupons and trying many things to get the overall price down, the cost of this AliExpress built S22 Ultra was $402.72, which is actually about $100 cheaper than the average refurbished S22 Ultra, so all in all, I'd say this was a success, if you can get past the bezels on the screen and the few other issues we had. Anyway guys, thank you so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. Be sure to leave a like, subscribe, hit that bell button, and I'll put the links to everything I bought in this video in the description, so if you want to do this yourself, you can. Peace.