Since I’m in Asia this week, it was a good time to stop by LG and meet the people behind the LG V20. We asked one of the LG Engineers working on this project to take a V20 apart to show us how it’s built and what’s inside.
We shot the video as he was doing it, so in the interest of time, we’ve accelerated some portions of it, especially at the beginning. The video does show some interesting things. First of all, the LG V20 seem to be very easy to take apart, although keep in mind he’s probably the most competent person in the world to do it (lol).
This means that the V20 is probably much easier to repair than phones that heavily use glue to keep everything together. That is because the V20 has a removable back cover and a replaceable battery, which makes accessing stuff super-easy. From there, there are 16 small screws to remove, and everything else can be pried open with simple tools. At times, it’s a little scary to put pressure on the thin plastic parts or board, but it all came apart without trouble.
We can see how the different camera modules look, along with the protecting glass protecting the whole camera module (referred as “Window” in the video, maybe a direct translation from Korean). The wide angle camera module is obviously much smaller than the main camera.
The video also shows the copper sheet (and thermal paste) used to cool down the Snapdragon 820 chip, which has some memory stacked on top of it.
Also of interest are the two pieces of polymer at the top and bottom of the phone. They act as bumpers for corner impact, but they are also where the antennas are located. Since radio signal is severely blocked by metal, that is the only possible location to place the antennas.
If you haven’t read it yet, check our LG V20 review.
