Sony Xperia XZ2 Teardown

Although the Sony Xperia XZ2 has already been launched on MWC this year, this phone has just been on sale in China recently. The biggest highlight of this phone is its full-screen design. Besides, the phone boasts of unique excellent appearance design with applying glass to both front plate and back cover. Today, we will start the teardown of the Sony XZ2 to show its internal design and workmanship.

1. Removing the display assembly

First of all, remove the SIM card tray. I find that this phone is compatible with TF card. However, current few smartphones adopt TF card. In my opinion, it is not necessary for the phone to use TF card.

I try to utilize hot air gun to heat up back cover, and then remove the back cover with a sucker. However, it doesn’t work. The back cover fails to be separated from the phone body.

Therefore, I intend to separate the front screen from the phone body. I heat up the edges of the smartphone.

After uncovering the screen module, we can see that the edges of the screen have been thickened to resist impact. The screen is separated from other electronic components by a layer of stainless steel plate. Lots of graphite stickers have been designed on the motherboard to help heat dissipation.

2. Removing the stainless steel plate

The method that the cover plate is fixed on the display cable is quite interesting. We need to push one side of the cover plate, and then the plate can be removed.

We can see that front camera has occupied the top bezel except for rubber ring. The bezel at the bottom keeps the same length as the top bezel has. From that, we can infer that Sony has kept the chin and forehead as narrow as possible, but the LCD occupies a large area.

Its battery is covered by a stainless steel plate. The top of the motherboard is also almost covered by the stainless steel plate. This smartphone uses the same blue motherboard that the Samsung Galaxy S9 features. Half of the bare linear vibrator can be seen at the bottom.

After removing all the screws used to fix the stainless steel plate, we can easily take out the stainless steel cover plate.

3. Removing the battery

The motherboard occupies a large area of the phone’s internal space. It is obvious that the motherboard has low space integration. In fact, the Sony XZ P’ motherboard also has low integration. Many manufacturers including Huawei and Apple have improved their motherboards’ space integration to make the battery with bigger capacity.

The square module on the left of the bottom is Sony’s linear vibrator. This vibrator has a smaller volume than the iPhone’s and its volume is basically the same size as the Meizu 15’s.

Taking out the battery is really easy.  A metal tray is placed at the bottom of the battery. The battery is fixed on the metal tray by two easy pull glue tape while the metal tray is fixed on the phone body by screws. The battery fails to be directly fixed on the phone body because of cable at the bottom.

4. Removing the front camera

Take out front camera module. The phone comes with a 5MP front camera with the F/2.2 aperture whose minimum ISO reaches 1600. The camera supports SteadyShot mode.

Successfully take out the main camera. The components on the back of the motherboard can be clearly seen. Two large shield covers protect internal chips and the covers have a flat surface.

After tear down the main camera, we can get five parts. The small CPB mainly deal with data processing and data-driven of sensor and flash.

Uncover the shield cover on the PCB, the chip 55303 from NXP can be seen inside.

5. Chips

After removing the silicone, 6GB (K3UH6H6) LPDDR4 memory and 64GB UFS2.1 flash (KLUCG4J1ED) coming from Samsung can be seen. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 845 chip is sealed under the memory chip. Its power management IC is PMI8998.

Qualcomm’s RF solutions have been applied to the motherboard to a large degree. We can see Qualcomm QPM2621, QPM2632,  QPM2643, QDM3620, QDM3630, PM845, SDR845 and QDM3640.

In the same, we have got the whole sensor module on the top. This module consists of earphone, noise reduction microphone, light distance sensor and breathing light. From that, we can see that the module has high integration. However, such design has increased maintenance cost.

Next, tear down the module at the bottom. Take out the screws near the linear vibrator.

6. Removing the loudspeaker and wireless charging module

This PCB is provided by UMT. Take out the loudspeaker at the bottom easily. The sound chamber’s volume has been increased. The large sound chamber can bring better sound quality. Take out wireless charging module.

Summary

In general, the teardown process is not easy. The Sony Xperia XZ2 can satisfy all the requirements from its fans. With the unique appearance, good waterproof function, linear motor and high technology, this smartphone can bring you excellent user experience. In addition, it has good quality. However, the XZ2 lacks portability and it has short battery life.