We’ve shared our thoughts on the Motorola Atrix earlier, but now the folks at iFixIt have done their part and torn the gadget apart to analyse the insides. Among their discoveries? This Android phone is ridiculously easy to open, repair, and put right back together.
As always, iFixIt made it a point to share some highlights of the teardown:
* The LCD is not glued to the front panel glass — something we haven’t seen in quite a long time. So the ~85% of people who drop their Atrix and shatter just the glass won’t have to spend their money on also replacing a fully functional LCD!
* Aside from a sleek-looking carbon fibre finish, the back of the phone reminds you who made the phone, whose network you are calling on, and what quality video you can shoot.
* The Atrix’ back cover comes off easily, providing access to the user-serviceable battery and the microSD slot. There’s also instructions on the inside of the back cover showing how to remove the battery and reconnect the cover. We applaud Motorola’s drive to help its users with this procedure.
* We liked those directions, so we decided to follow them. Lo and behold, the battery came out very easily! The 34.7 gram, 1930 mAh Li-Ion battery will provide you up to 540 minutes while talking on CDMA, and only 530 minutes if you are talking on GSM. AT&T users get screwed once again.
* We didn’t encounter any VOID stickers or things of that sort while taking apart the Atrix, making it even more repair-friendly.
* A dual-LED flash flanks the 5 MP camera (which is capable of shooting 720p HD video). A software update to be released soon will reportedly allow for full 1080p video capture.
* Big players on the front of the board include:
* Elpida B8132B1PB. According to Chipworks, the Elpida contains 1 GB DDR2 RAM, but also covers the Nvidia Tegra 2 CPU/GPU residing underneath the package.
* ST Ericsson CPCAP 2.2TC22. We’re not sure what it does, but we’ll let you know once Chipworks analyzes the package.
* Qualcomm MDM6200 supporting HSPA+ up to 14.4 Mbps
* Toshiba 16GB NAND Flash
* Triquint TQM7M5013 Linear Power Amplifier
* Qualcomm PM8028 Power Management IC
* Kionix KXTF9 MEMS Motion Sensing Accelerometer
* Hynix H8BCSOQG0MMR 2-chip memory MCP
* Two ribbon cables to rule them all: the first cable connects to the front camera, earpiece speaker, power button assembly, and top microphone; the second attaches the rear camera, proximity sensor, ambient light sensor, pressure contacts for the headphone jack, and side volume buttons together. So you’ll have to replace ALL the components attached to that cable if just a single component fails.
* What a decade can do for cables. We pulled a Parallel ATA cable from an old Dell PC and compared it to one of the Atrix ribbon cables. The PATA cable is 0.66 mm thick, while Atrix’ camera cable measures 0.17 mm! And they’re routing several components through the same cable!
You can check out the full step-by-step teardown—complete with plenty of gadget gore photos—over at iFixIt. [iFixIt]