It’s just as hard to repair, too
Samsung’s latest foldables finally hit store shelves this week, just in time to tempt potential buyers through the last few months of the year. While we were pretty impressed with some of the quality-of-life improvements the Galaxy Z Fold 4 brought to the table, it’s the Z Flip 4 that regular users likely have their eyes on. If you’ve been dying to know just repairable Samsung’s newest clamshell is, a new teardown video has the answers you’ve been waiting for.
YouTuber PBKreviews took his usual set of tools to the Galaxy Z Flip 4, and although it shouldn’t surprise our readers, the phone is just about as easy to disassemble and fix as last year’s unit — and that’s not a compliment. This year’s foldable doesn’t look all too different from last year’s on the outside of the device, and the same is true for the inside of the phone. If you were hoping Samsung’s recent interest in user-friendly repair kits would mean significant changes in its next-gen hardware, you were sorely mistaken.
As always, the biggest issues with repairing the company’s folding hardware come down to the battery and the display. The battery is split into two sections, each separated between the sides of the phone and requiring you to pull out your handy bottle of isopropyl alcohol to remove both sides. The larger portion of the battery is buried beneath several other components as well, forcing several steps before you can even reach it. As for the display, PBKreviews points viewers towards his Flip 3 teardown video to prevent any accidental damage to this new unit. Clearly, messing around with the internal screen is not something most of us should try.
In fact, it’s worth watching last year’s video back-to-back with this year’s upload, just to note how similar the two phones are to each other. As pointed out in the video, some of the differences are so minor — connectors switching sides, the battery now linked to the motherboard under the cameras — that they’d be impossible to notice without a keen eye and familiarity with the Z Flip 3. The most surprising moment, however, comes from the mmWave 5G antenna in the Z Flip 4. This year’s model only has one antenna, down from two in its predecessor. That said, the space in the frame for that second unit still exists — it simply goes unused.
Although this fact has been evident since the earliest leaks, it’s clear Samsung didn’t swing for the fences on reinvention this year, focusing on some modest improvements instead. You can expect our review of the Galaxy Z Flip 4 in the coming days.
