Honor Note 10 Teardown

There is no doubt that the Honor Note 10 is the smartphone that has received the most public attention among the recently launched phones. As the Honor large-screen flagship that the company has been preparing for two years, the Note 10 has been improved overall. This device is also Honor’s first mobile phone to apply liquid cooling technology. Today, I will tear down the phone and explore its internal structure.

First, power it off and remove the SIM card tray. Then heat the back cover and use a suction cup to create a gap between the back cover and the phone body. Next, use a plastic tool to separate the back cover from the body. Since the fingerprint module is connected to the back cover, be careful not to damage the fingerprint cable during this process. After removing the back cover, you will see a graphite sheet attached to the back cover.

Now, use a screwdriver to remove the screws securing the metal plate holding the fingerprint flex cable. At this point, the back cover can be separated from the body. Next, remove the metal plate that secures the battery cable. Before removing the motherboard, disconnect the battery cable and all cables from the motherboard. After removing all screws, the speaker unit in the top-right corner can be removed directly. The speaker is made by ACC.

Next, I will start removing the protective cover of the camera area. After disconnecting the rear camera flex cable from the motherboard, use tweezers to remove the rear camera.

This is the rear camera setup, which consists of a 16MP main camera and a 20MP secondary monochrome camera. Both cameras feature an F/1.8 aperture. After removing the metal cover from the camera area, the metal cover and the tape securing the front camera are visible. Lifting the tape reveals the front camera connector. Use a plastic pry tool to disconnect the front camera cable from the motherboard. At this point, the motherboard can be removed, and part of the copper tubing is also visible. The area where the copper tubing contacts the motherboard is coated with thermal grease, and the main heat-generating component in this area is the SoC.

After removing the metal shield, the memory chip is visible. The red area is the 6GB RAM chip, and below it is the Kirin 970 chip. In the second picture, the red area is the 128GB ROM storage chip. After taking out the motherboard, I start removing the front camera. Now, remove the screws on the cover and the metal cover on the front camera. The front camera can be taken out.

Remove the screws from the sub-board and take off the cover. This cover is integrated with the speaker. After removing the cover, the sub-board is visible. A rubber ring is designed at the Type-C port to achieve waterproof and dustproof functionality.

 

Disconnect the ribbon cables and antennas from the motherboard to remove the sub-board. Now, start removing the battery. The battery surface is marked with removal instructions: peel off the two tapes on both sides, then remove the tape in the middle to remove the battery. After removing the battery, you can see the connecting cables between the motherboard and the sub-board. If you remove the cable between the motherboard and the sub-board, you can see the screen cable.

Until now, I still have not found the copper pipe. Undoubtedly, the copper pipe is positioned between the screen and the mid-frame. Therefore, I need to heat the screen, use a metal sheet to pry a gap between the screen and the mid-frame, and then use a thin plastic card to separate the screen from the mid-frame. Once the screen is removed, a large number of graphite sheets can be seen on its back. Lifting the graphite sheets reveals the copper pipe. This copper pipe is 113 mm long and 5 mm in diameter. In general, the Huawei Honor Note 10 has a reasonable and aesthetic internal design. Thanks to its liquid cooling technology, this phone delivers exceptional thermal performance.