The iFixit team has also noted that one of the two batteries is twice the size of the other, but that Microsoft has made them difficult to replace by using lots of glue and screws. Those batteries aren’t the only components that would be hard to replace, though: the team found that the only parts that wouldn’t be a pain to remove are the displays and the back glass covers.

You can check out iFixit’s full teardown if you need help deciding whether to buy the $1,400 device. As we mentioned in our review, it’s the best dual-screen hardware out there, but it’s still plagued by buggy software. iFixit has also highlighted the issue, revealing that it had to deal with crashes and flickering screens when it tried to load web pages on the device.

By most accounts, Samsung’s latest flagship phone, the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra, is a by the numbers release. It features all the latest hardware you would expect from a high-end phone in 2020, but doesn’t do a lot to change the Note formula. However, in tearing down the device, iFixit found one surprise that could represent a new design direction for Samsung and other manufacturers. Underneath the phone’s motherboard, the company discovered a multilayered graphite thermal pad. 

It’s an interesting design change for a company that has employed copper heat pipes to cool its phones. What makes it more intriguing is that not every Note 20 unit features it. In some teardowns, the Note 20 Ultra includes the same cooper cooling setup that Samsung has employed for years. At first, iFixit thought this might have been a difference between the Snapdragon and Exynos variants of the Note 20. For those who don’t know, Samsung sources the processors for the US versions of its high-end Galaxy phones from Qualcomm. 

As we continue to work and live during the coronavirus pandemic, interest in technology that might help fight the disease has spiked, and one of the clearest examples of that is Oura’s smart ring. Early in June, researchers revealed data showing that, as part of a protocol of surveying and data reporting, wearers of the Oura smart ring may be able to detect symptoms of a COVID-19 infection early.

Multiple tests that include having health professionals using wearable devices are ongoing with even more participants, but once the NBA announced it would use the devices during its restarted season in Orlando, it became the most visible testbed. As people wonder if the ring can live up to the hype — and if it’s trustworthy, as Los Angeles Laker Kyle Kuzma said it “looks like a tracking device” — the folks at iFixit have done what they do, diving in and taking one apart.

“More than anything, that 0.5 mm illustrates the sheer unnecessary-ness of the five painful years that Mac fans spent smashing on unresponsive butterfly keyboards,” iFixit writes. “Knowing that Apple’s thinnest-and-lightest notebook accommodates a scissor-switch keyboard so gracefully makes us wonder what it was all for.”

The keys also lack the silicon barrier that iFixit found in a previous MacBook Pro teardown. Apple first claimed that the barrier was meant to make the keys quieter, but internal documents later revealed that they were intended to “prevent debris from entering the butterfly mechanism.” By ditching the butterfly keyboard, it looks like Apple is able to get rid of the silicon barrier, too.

As far as repairability, the biggest change iFixit found is that the trackpad cables are no longer wedged beneath the logic board, so you can remove the trackpad without removing the board. The same goes for the battery, which is under those trackpad cables. This should make repairs and battery replacements easier and faster. (The battery still sits on stretchy pull tabs.)

Overall, iFixit gave the new MacBook Air a 4 out of 10 for repairability. While that’s not exactly a winning score, it is one point more than the previous generation received.

The disassembly also shows just how little space there is for the actual chipsets once you rule out the cameras and the giant 5,000mAh battery. The spider-like circuit boards are stuffed to the gills with components, including the Snapdragon 865 processor and X55 5G modem. That might partly explain why there’s no headphone jack, although that won’t be much consolation to fans of wired audio.

You probably won’t be fixing it yourself, at any rate. You’ll have to unglue the rear cover just to poke inside, while the display and battery are particularly difficult to replace. Samsung built the S20 Ultra to make the most use of its cavernous dimensions, and repair definitely wasn’t the highest priority.

Unsurprisingly, whatever Samsung learned across two versions of the Galaxy Fold appears to have been valuable in making the Z Flip. While there’s still a lot of parts inside and quite a bit of glue, it’s considerably more repairable, with many parts accessible simply by removing the back covers. The Galaxy Z Flip’s special “hideaway hinge” doesn’t reveal Samsung’s sweeper technology that uses microfibers to clear debris, but the video does show how it keeps the glass screen pulled flush to the case even while it’s bent — key for keeping particles out in the first place.

In fact, you’ll have to heat the back of the phone to loosen up the glue and pry it open with plastic implements before you can get to any of the device’s internal components. Then, once inside, you’ll have to contend with dozens of screws and cables. The display, which needs more TLC than a non-foldable screen, is the very last thing you’ll remove from the whole assembly. PBKreviews says the teardown was far from easy and “would probably even go as far as saying [that the phone isn’t] repairable at all by most people.”

Motorola released a “Caring for Razr” video in January, telling users that “bumps and lumps are normal” on the phone’s display. It suggests keeping it dry, not using screen protectors and closing the phone before tossing it in your pocket or purse to prevent accidents from happening. The good news is that it’ll only cost $299 to have the Razr’s screen repaired “for circumstances that fall outside of the warranty.” Sure, that’s no pocket change, but as Phone Arena notes, that’s only $20 more than a new Galaxy Note display. It’s also just a tiny fraction of the $1,500 you’d have to pay for a new Razr.

Beyond the revamped keyboard, the biggest changes in this 2019 model have to do with its thermal management system and the battery cells. The exhaust holes are bigger than those of the outgoing 15-inch model, while inside the new fans with bigger blades allow for more performance. Also, the batteries are similar to previous cells, except they’re each just a bit thicker, all contributing to an extra 16.2 Wh of energy capacity.

The bad news arrives for anyone hoping that this model would allow for easy servicing by anyone other than authorized Mac repair techs. Unlike the latest laptops and tablets from Microsoft, Apple has continued to avoid making its designs more modular or easily accessible. If that’s part of your purchasing decision then you’ll have to wait and see if it changes in a future revision, otherwise you can just find out what the inside of this laptop looks like simply by clicking through.

In case you forgot, the iPhone 11 and Apple Watch weren’t the only new hardware Apple showed off at its big event a couple of weeks ago, it also upgraded the base iPad line. Now in its seventh generation, the “most popular” iPad that Apple sells has grown from 9.7- to 10.2-inches, ships with iPadOS and added a connector to support the company’s still-pricey keyboard add-on.

The folks at iFixit attacked the new model with their assortment of tools, and found that despite the new size, inside it’s still very similar to the previous model. Unlike the iPhone 11 Pro Max, for example, which made room for a larger battery than ever before, this new iPad has a unit that’s the same size as its predecessor at 8,827mAh or 32.9 watt hours, and presumably relies on other tweaks to the hardware and software to achieve its extra hour of estimated battery life.

There’s some additional intrigue this time around, as some have insisted that Apple was trying to enable Galaxy S10-ish bilateral charging on its latest phones, only to disable the feature late in the process. Apple unequivocally told us that is not true, but iFixit is taking a peek anyway.

Upon opening the device, they did find a second battery connector that’s new, and didn’t duplicate features of the “main” charging cable seen in previous phones. The phone still worked without the second cable plugged in, and could charge via Lightning but not wirelessly. It could be an unrelated revision to the iPhone 11’s charging setup, or it could be something more — we don’t know for sure yet.

The teardown is still in process, and as usual iFixit is also keeping an eye on how easy it will be for the DIY-minded to perform repairs on their own. Stay tuned for more pictures and the final results.