Tablet

Google Nexus 10 Tablet Teardown Reveals Easy To Repair Device

Khurram Aziz

Teardowns have become the thing to do to smartphones and tablets, with geeks across the web clamoring to get a peek inside the internals of their beloved devices.

This time, the guys at PowerbookMedic, which normally visit their screwdrivers on Apple's offerings, went to town on Google's Nexus 10 and found it easy to disassemble and reassemble.The model they took apart was the 16GB Wi-Fi model.

"One thing that struck us about this disassembly was the complete ease of taking this tablet apart. Whereas Apple seems to be making it more and more difficult to repair devices by combining parts and using as much glue as possible, Google seems to be taking the complete opposite approach. The end result is a device that is extremely repairable," noted the group. 

"Go Google!" added PowerbookMedic.

After the disassembly was done, one of the most notable things they found was the number of components in the device manufactured by Samsung. The battery, processor, and flash memory are all made by Samsung, leaving them to wonder "Is this Google's way of capitalizing on the drift between Apple and Samsung?"

It could be that, or it could be because the Nexus 10, unlike the Nexus 7, is manufactured by Samsung under license from Google. The 10-inch tablet was released on Nov. 13 and is designed to compete directly with the iPad 4. It uses a Samsung Exynos 5250 chipset running a dual-core A15 CPU, clocked at 1.7GHZ and attached to 2GB RAM.

One of the most remarkable features of the tablet is a display boasting 2560 x 1600 pixels at 299ppi, which is equal and in some ways superior to, Apple's Retina displays on its 13-inch MacBook Pro.

PowerbookMedic notes that most parts can be removed with a Philips-head screwdriver, a flat tool, and suction cups, except the display and digitizer since the two are fused together.

The group has also taken apart the larger version of Amazon's Kindle Fire HD - the 8.9-inch tablet - which they say is externally very similar to the 7-inch version but internally "it's another beast entirely."

"It looks like Samsung is another winner in supplying parts for the Kindle fire as they are supplying both the RAM and flash memory as well as the display," said PowerbookMedic, adding that Texas Instruments is the supplier for the processor in this model.

Like the Nexus 4, Google Play has sold out of its 10-inch tablet, in both the 16GB and 32GB versions, with Google Play promising to ship the device in 2-3 weeks to customers still looking to buy now.

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