Handset receives a 7 out of 10 for overall repairability
The Moto X has finally made its way out to store shelves (at least on AT&T), and right on time iFixIt has torn the device completely apart to see what's inside. First and foremost is the actual ease of taking the Moto X apart — iFixIt says that there's no major steps to be taken to get everything apart aside from loosening some glue and undoing clips and screws. But when the teardown is all said and done, they had a few things to say about how Motorola put the device together.
That "woven" back plate that is available in the white and black colors is actually a woven material, which you can even see through when held up to the light after being removed. Motorola has also pulled off a few interesting engineering tricks. Aside from the stepped battery design to boost capacity, the camera flash is completely separate from the camera and glued to the back plate, the headphone assembly is removable in one piece and the vibration motor is soldered onto the motherboard.
It might be a little bit of hyping, but iFixIt says that the Motorola engineers are paying attention to detail in ways they've only seen previously with Apple. They've made several design decisions inside the device that step away from standard construction of phones nowadays. To nerds like us that's almost as exciting as the exterior design.
You can browse through the entire teardown at the source link below. It's certainly one worth taking a look at.
Source: iFixIt
Reader comments
Moto X torn down, a few clever tricks found inside
Hmmm Nice. Did anyone order a Moto X?
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Waiting on Verizon, or that Android Central contest for a Verizon one. Whichever comes first...
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What contest??
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Droid-Life was going to do a contest but, ATT will only sell the phone right now as a device upgrade on a personal contract, and will not sell the phone at full price right now for moto maker and to get the card to activate design. No reason why, but the computers in the store will not allow full retail and without a contract for a purchase.
What I wanna know is how hard is it going to be to replace the back plate when custom colors start becoming available on amazon? You know it's coming. But the fact that the flash is attached to the plate makes me think this will not be something easy to replace whenever you are ready for a new look.
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I would guess that replacement back plates would be sold with the flash.
I know i know MotoX is awesome
A lot of reports are saying the battery life is terrible almost as bad as the Galaxy Nexus with LTE. Site's that review the Moto X are not even including the Battery life in the Reviews like Android Central. AC left out any information to the Battery life in their review.
not true...go and read some more
Uhhhh... http://www.androidcentral.com/moto-x-review#battery
My bad, they do, i've read so many sites reviews that a lot skip over the battery life and seems most sites don't want to say how bad the battery is. I reread and they do a decent job, but compared to the Phones like the GS4 or note the battery is no wear near par, especially if you stream media a lot through the device. I wanted to like this phone so much but not going to go through another GNex debacle with poor batteries that arent going to get through 4-6 hours of heavy use.
Reading is pretty fundamental.
You seem to first missed that part of the review altogether, then either did not understand or just dismissed what was said.
I have no doubt that the battery is as good as the SGS4, Note 2, and the iPhone. There is no way in hades that it is as bad as the Gnex (which was Samsung in case you missed that as well)
I was able to spend about two hours at my local ATT store playing with the new one mini, galaxy mega and Moto X. Loved the Moto X.
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Two hours? Careful, they'll throw you out for loitering:)
Motorola engineers "is" paying attention to detail in ways that AC writers aren't. ;)
Hah nice catch ;)
Wow spending two hours looking at phones is ridiculous. That's like going to a store asking a sales person about specs on a computer and doing your research in front of the sales person wasting their time. The internet is also called “The Information Super Highway its called that for a reason.
You can see through the woven back. 0_o That sounds good if you spill a dab of water on the back of it.
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Thebluefox, it has the same nano water resistant coating that the Razr has.
The main question is how tough it is to replace the screen. That's the part that is most likely to get broken. Is it homebrew fixable?
The main answer is, why not take a look at the linked article which details the teardown?
I picked mine up at lunch . the form factor is legit I don't think i could or wasn't too go back to a bigger phone. And even though it's on 4.2.2 and not 4.3 its as close to nexus as it gets. I love it. A very well thought out design
Having the vibration motor solder to the motherboard sounds like a really bad idea to me.
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I guess it prevents the motor from from "rattling", and probably gives a more distinct vibration to the phone as well.
Soldering directly to the main board is (when done properly) stronger than just gluing it to the inside of the case. It would, however, mean that if the motor ever died (does that happen?), you would have to replace the entire main board of the device.