Recently, the famous foreign disassembly team made a visit to the Google Pixel C tablet computer equipped with Terga X1 SoC. The design style of the device is similar to that of Microsoft Surface Pro/Apple iPad Pro, and the design idea of tablet+combined keyboard is adopted. Google is unwilling to be left behind in the era of new form PC, and follows the pace of Microsoft and Apple to join the ranks of "2 in 1". Pixel C uses a 10.2 inch LTPS LCD screen with a resolution of 2560 × 1800. The PPI is 308, and the maximum brightness of the screen is 500 nits. The machine is equipped with Tegra X1 SoC, which is known as the second generation of nuclear bombs. The chip adopts a 20 nanometer process, the highest main frequency is 1.9 GHz, and the CPU part uses a combination of 4 × A57+4 × A53. Today we will take a look at the internal design of Pixel C.
10.2 inch LTPS screen has a resolution of 2560 X 1800 (308 PPI)
NVIDIA Tegra X1 64 bit quad core processor is equipped with 256 Maxwell core GPU processors
3 GB LPDDR4 running memory
32 or 64 GB built-in storage
USB Type-C interface
8 megapixel rear camera+2 megapixel front camera
Android 6.0 Marshmallow cotton candy system
Pixel C adopts an aluminum alloy one-piece body with stereo speakers, USB Type-C interface and volume buttons at the bottom.
The power button is located on the top of the machine body, and there are four noise reduction microphones in the middle. However, the machine does not support "OK, Google" wake-up when the screen is turned off.
The display panel and the body are glued and fixed, so the screen needs to be heated first.
After heating, slowly pry the screen up along the edge of the screen with a suction cup and a paddle.
Slowly separate the adhesive at the bottom of the whole screen along the screen. Note that the camera is connected to the motherboard through the flat cable, which needs to be removed before further disassembly.
Then the whole screen can be turned on. Note that there is a wide flat cable at the bottom of the screen. Pay attention when disassembling.
After the screen is removed, we first remove the front camera, which is different from the design of most mobile phones and tablets. The front camera is installed on the display panel through a snap.
The front camera is 2 million pixels, and there are front ambient light sensors and LED indicators beside the camera.
There is a small circuit board at the bottom of the display to control display&touch.
The first thing that comes into view is the large built-in battery. To ensure that the circuit will not be damaged during disassembly, we first remove the battery cable.
The battery flat cable is hidden under two black flat cables and adhesive tape, which can only be removed after they are removed first.
Then remove the built-in speaker and connect it with three flat cables.
There is also a speaker on the other side of the fuselage. The cable arrangement is relatively long, so you need to be careful when disassembling.
Then remove the USB Type-C module, and only one cross screwdriver is needed.
The USB Type-C interface adopts a modular design. After the screws are removed, the flat cable can be removed.
Then remove the rear camera and fix it with flat cable.
After the rear camera is removed, the module of power button and volume button can be removed.
Power switch, volume button and all components. The power button and volume button are simply fixed by screws, which is easy to remove and replace.
After the components are removed, we can remove the motherboard. The motherboard area is quite small and the integration is very high. The motherboard is stuck on the back cover by glue. We use a paddle to pry the motherboard off slowly along the edge of the motherboard. If it is difficult to disassemble, heat the motherboard with a hot air gun.
Now we can finally take out the motherboard. There is a large area of adhesive and insulating foam under the main board.
All chips are located on the front side of the motherboard, and the back side is very clean, with only solder joints. Let's see what chips are on the motherboard.
Red: Nvidia Tegra X1 64 bit quad core processor
Orange: Samsung KLMBG4GEND 32 GB eMMC flash memory chip
Yellow: Samsung K4F2E304HMMGCH 6 Gbit LPDDR4 RAM chip capacity is 1.5 GB × 2=3GB
Green: Broadcom BCM43540LKUBG 5G Wi Fi 802.11ac control chip
Light blue: Nuvoton NAU88L25 audio codec
Dark Blue: STM32F3x8 32-bit ARM Cortex-M4 microcontroller of STM32F3x8
Purple: Infineon SLB 9645 trusted platform module
After analyzing the motherboard, let's take a look at the keyboard charging coil located at the bottom of the fuselage.
On the back of the charging coil is a small circuit board that controls wireless charging. The circuit board should be a control module that is responsible for controlling the power supply of the coil to generate electromagnetic fields.
There is a 3.5mm headphone jack on the other side of the battery, which is connected to the motherboard through a rather slender flat cable.
We accidentally found a display panel full of LED lights under the audio cable. This should be the backlight panel of the indicator light. Through the reflection of the metal foil, the indicator light on the body surface glows.
Finally, there are four noise reducing microphones on the top of the fuselage.
The built-in battery of the machine is 34.2Wh, which is larger than 27.9Wh of 9.7-inch iPad Pro, but slightly lower than 38.2Wh of Surface Pro 4.
The glue on the back of the battery is very firm, which is difficult to disassemble. It is still very firm after being heated. This is the end of the disassembly of the fuselage.
Next, let's disassemble the matching Bluetooth keyboard. Start from the wrist bracket at the bottom of the keyboard, heat it with a hot-air gun, and then slowly separate it with a paddle.
After removing the wrist bracket, we can see multiple magnets and induction charging coils inside.
After removing the screws, use a hot-air gun to evenly heat them along the edge, and then use a paddle to slowly pry them up along the edge.
Then the keyboard can be separated from the base, and there is steel plate at the bottom of the keyboard to enhance the strength.
By analyzing the circuit and cable arrangement, we believe that the keyboard senses the tablet computer through the Hall effect sensor, and can start to use after recognizing the tablet.
Then we can remove the built-in lithium-ion battery and connect it to the circuit board through the flat cable.
The volume of the built-in battery is very small, and the capacity is not specified above. The keyboard is charged through the charging induction coil, but it can be charged when the keyboard is connected to the body.
Next, we will take out the charging induction coil and mainboard.
The coil is welded to the motherboard through wires. The core of the entire keyboard is Nordic semiconductor nRF51822 2.4 GHz Bluetooth module+32 bit ARM Cortex-M0 microcontroller. Well, the disassembly of the keyboard is complete here.
So far, our disassembly has been completed. The iFixit gave Pixel C a relatively low score of 4 points (out of 10 points) for its maintenance capability. Most of the internal parts of the machine body adopt modular design, such as USB Type-C interface, 3.5mm headphone jack and power volume switch, which can be easily replaced. However, some designs are difficult to disassemble and repair. For example, the motherboard is very firmly bonded to the body, and the battery uses very sticky glue, which makes it impossible for us to disassemble it smoothly. These designs undoubtedly increase the difficulty of maintenance.
