Samsung Flip 7 TEARDOWN - I thought it was impossible...

Well, the Samsung Z Flip 7 survived my durability test, but I highly doubt it will survive the teardown. It's time we expose what adamantium studded reinforcements Samsung has added to the inside, starting of course with the larger main screen. This means we'll need a fresh new mini razor blade. See, the reason the Z Flip 7 has bumpers around the exterior edge of that large 6.9 inch display is because the screen is made of layers, like an onion or an ogre. And if those layers don't have a wall keeping dirt and debris from coming in sideways, it'll destroy the display. And I kind of got to come in sideways to remove the folding screen, which means the bumper needs to be taken off. The bumper also keeps the two halves of the phone from touching each other while the device is closed, so is pulling double duty protection. It is very securely attached and won't ever be falling out on its own, that's for sure. With the plastic bumpers taken completely off, I'll swap to a fresh blade again and stab my way in from the side. I am trying my hardest to remove this flexible screen in one piece, which is a near impossible endeavor. Thankfully, Samsung has included a metal backplate behind the pixels, so if I can keep the removal pressure on the metal and make sure not to touch the edge of the soft plastic, we just might be successful. I'll add some heat to hopefully help soften any glue holding the metal sheet to the aluminum frame of the Flip 7, and I'm going to switch to a much longer and thinner pry tool since any crease or fold too abrupt will crack the pixels and the ultra thin glass that is included in one of the internal layers. Little jump scare there, I thought she was gone. We must be shorting something out, but so far everything still looks like it's working. The trick to removing these fragile folding screens, as someone who's done it successfully only once, is to remember that it can only fold in one direction at a time. As soon as you throw a multi-plane bend in there, it's curtains for the pixels. You can hot dog or hamburger, but not both at the same time. And it's dead. I was so focused on not hot dogging I forgot the ribbon cables along the lower edge. And that's kind of the problem with being the first person to take apart new devices. However, if my own device dies so that others might live, that's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. See, we know the top layer is plastic and the layer right beneath that is plastic as well, but under that there's an ultra thin glass layer. And Samsung, as far as I know, is the only company that's been able to perfect this ultra flexible glass. It is glass since, as you can clearly see, when I hot dog the hamburger it cracks and shatters. It's pretty impressive stuff, so thumbs up for that. And hopefully Samsung can make it thicker someday. Now that we have the folding screen out of the way, rest in peace, we can see that Samsung has added a little loincloth of sorts between the back side of the screen and the hinge. A quick peel reveals that quite a lot of dust has made it inside, so I would recommend keeping your pockets as clean as possible. Now for the exterior glass. This one is going to be almost just as hard as the folding screen. Even with my smaller knife, Samsung has inlaid the glass inside the armor aluminum with not even enough room to slip a razor blade between the two materials. However, if you still want to snag a mini jerry rig knife for yourself, I'll have them for $9.99 in the description. When I first started selling my knives online, I realized pretty quick that the normal shipping prices at the post office were astronomical compared to the negotiated backdoor prices that small businesses can get from my channel sponsor, Stamps.com. If you're a business owner, lawyer, or accountant, or just someone who ships a lot of stuff, Stamps.com has pre-negotiated massive discounts of up to 89% off USPS and UPS rates. Not to mention how nice it is to not stand in line at the post office since everything can be done at your home or your own office day or night with just a computer and a printer. Time is money and Stamps.com gives you your time back and lets you keep your money in your own wallet. You don't have to take my word for it though, more than 4 million other customers have relied on Stamps.com. I use these recycled paper mailers to ship my stuff just for fun. Go to Stamps.com slash jerry rig to get a special offer of free scale and of course no long term contracts. Let Stamps.com do what they do best so you have more time to do what you do best. And I'll get back to shipping my mini jerry rig knives right after this teardown. To keep the screen in one piece, I'm going to try all my tricks. First, dripping isopropyl alcohol into the non-existent seam. I don't think this is going to help too much. So second, I'm going to heat up all 4.1 inches of the exterior display until it starts melting my fingerprints off. We already lost one display today and I don't think I can bear it if we lose the second. Finally, I'm going to jam that uber thin pry tool between the glass and the metal and hopefully drizzle some more alcohol into the cracks to dissolve the adhesive holding that thin border of the glass to the phone frame. Alcohol dissolves adhesive because of science, and that's all I know. Apparently if you go slow enough and gently work your way around the entire edge of the glass several times, it does indeed lift up and away in one piece. Congrats to myself. The internal ribbon cable sits slightly inside the left edge of the screen and is long enough so that the whole edge to edge display can pull away from the Flip 7 body. Unfortunately though, I still don't see a way to turn off the phone from this exterior little screen, so we'll just have to continue the autopsy while the patient is awake. No complaints on my end. I'll remove the 8 Phillips head screws from the upper protective bracket. And since he's awake, we can also get an inside peek at how much travel the optical image stabilization on the main camera lens has. As I tip and shake the phone, you can see how steady that image remains while the tiny electromagnets inside the camera body physically stabilize the lens. With the screws gone, the back metal can pull away. It's still attached to the upper loudspeaker and earpiece. And if we look very closely, we can figure out which wire goes to the battery, which finally puts our Flip 7 to sleep. Then the exterior display unplugs just like a little Lego. Historically the bottom piece of glass has also been really hard to remove since it's equally embedded into the aluminum housing. But with copious amounts of heat and my new ultra thin pry tool, it's not too bad. I don't know if the isopropyl is doing anything with a gap this tight, but again, it definitely doesn't hurt. I'll remove two screws that pin down the extension ribbon. Then I can pop off the 15 watt wireless charging coil. This also has a 4.5 watt reverse wireless charging capability, so I can't complain too much about that. One plus though is knocking out 50 watt wireless charging, which is 3 times faster. But, you know, who's counting? Pulling up the lower plastics over the charging port board, this still has the loudspeaker attached to it, and at first glance there does not appear to be any balls inside. But cracking it open, they explode all over the place. They're definitely in here. Anyway, the lower charging port board has the 25 watt USB-C port and is surrounded by the circular coin style vibrator motor. I'll lift up the lower extension ribbons and grab the battery pull tabs. And thankfully, Samsung has been listening and has kept the removable battery. For years Samsung was the most egregious offender, permanently gluing in their batteries, but now it's not too bad. I'm glad they've learned and I'm glad they've changed. This 3075 milliamp hour battery does say it's a secondary battery, which is interesting. Maybe the other battery in the top half is the primary. Moving up the phone we have the SIM card tray near the motherboard, which with the screen off you can see how that little hole presses on a lever which pushes the SIM card tray up from the bottom. Kind of cool to see that for the first time. I'll unplug a few more ribbon cables just like little Legos. These go to the power buttons and lower half of the phone. The upper battery is definitely the smaller of the two, but pulls out just as easily. It's interesting though that both batteries say secondary. And if they both say secondary, then I assume Samsung is using the word secondary in the rechargeable sense. Since primary batteries can only be used once, like AA's or the battery inside my Casio F91W, which gets replaced once every 7 years. With the smaller battery's 1,225 milliamp hours, we get a total of 4,300. There's a large copper vapor chamber that we've revealed sitting under the battery and motherboard. And now that the battery is gone, we can pull up on the motherboard, clearing it from the flip 7 frame. You can see that it's a double stacked unit by the green motherboard on top and the blue motherboard on the bottom. The main 50 megapixel camera does have OIS, while the 12 megapixel ultra wide does not. There's also no thermal foam or thermal paste bridging the gap between the motherboard and the copper vapor chamber. I'm not sure why not since it would cost next to nothing to implement and only improve thermal performance. But maybe we'll find some in the Fold 7 when we take that apart. Finally, it's time for the hinge. Samsung has redesigned this thing again this year, this time calling it the Armor Flex Hinge. Samsung says it's more drop resistant than the previous design, while having a tighter folding radius and dual rail architecture. Removing the 4 screws along the spine and 8 screws along the upper half of the phone, I can pull the upper half away from the hinge. Assembling this in a factory has got to be a work of art. There are so many more moving parts and complex procedures than a normal smartphone. I'll remove 8 more screws holding the lower half of the phone to the hinge. The ribbon cable kind of looks like a little man who has his head buried in the folding mechanism. Anyway, since we removed the spinal screws earlier, the Samsung logo can fall away, revealing the new design. We still have springs and gears like we've historically seen, just this time around we have 4 sets of everything. 4 gears and 4 screens on the left side, and 4 gears and 4 springs on the right. Still slathered in dust though, but then again, I haven't gone through much effort to keep the dust out either. Like always, I have a teardown skin for this device as well. And if your business ships stuff regularly, check out Stamps.com. Link is down in the description. And thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.