Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G teardown shows Samsung taking a page from Apple
The iPhone-inspired design comes into view as iFixit dismantles the phone.
Samsung went with stacked motherboards in the Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G to save space.
Samsung's Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G comes out on Friday, and tech repair site iFixit has already revealed the inner workings of the new flagship phone in its latest teardown. While most of the components are the standard fare for a phone, the Korean tech company made some interesting design changes with this 5G phone, including one alteration that takes a page from the iPhone X.
The first noticeable change in iFixit's Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G teardown, published Thursday, is that the entire motherboard is located at the top half of the phone. This is different than in previous phones such as the Galaxy Note 9, according to iFixit, where there's a segment of the motherboard on the side that spans the full length of the phone. Keeping the motherboard to half the phone allows for the addition of an even bigger battery, which in the case of the Note 10 Plus is 4,300-mAh.
Samsung crammed the Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G motherboard to the top of the case, unlike previous phones.
Samsung stacked the motherboard to save the space. ( Apple used this method with the iPhone X.) On the motherboard with the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, 12GB of RAM and 256GB of flash storage is the key to making 5G work: the Qualcomm X50 5G modem. This is what will get the ridiculous download speeds if the phone is in a 5G area.
With so much power and components literally on top of each other, you need a way to keep things cool -- in this case, a vapor chamber. Samsung made use of this cooling system in the Galaxy S10 Plus, but it gave the cooler an update to help the phone from overheating, which is a potential issue with Galaxy S10 5G.
You may be wondering where the speaker grille is located, as the Galaxy Note 10 Plus 5G has only the hole-punch selfie cam in the front. iFixit found where the sound from the internal speaker comes from -- it's through a grille located at the very top part of the case.
There is a tiny grille at the top of the case for the earpiece speaker.
