There are those that like using smartphones and there are those that like taking them apart! The iFixit team falls into the latter category and this time they have the HTC One in their sights. It seems that prying the HTC One apart isn’t easy and iFixit has given the HTC One a repairability score of 1 out of 10 (where 10 is easiest to repair). According to the experts the HTC One is very difficult to open without damaging the rear case. But there is some good news, not only does the HTC One look great on the outside, it is impressive on the inside too!
After struggling for over half an hour the 4.7 inch, full HD HTC One finally yielded and revealed its impressive aluminum unibody. HTC has said that it worked hard to create a phone with a zero gap construction, and the HTC One features a completely seamless body. To do this, the unibody is made using an electro-chemical etching process to achieve the perfect fit and finish!
OK, enough oozing over the unibody. The phone is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 quad-core 1.7 GHz CPU and has 2 GB of DDR2 RAM. The flash memory comes from Samsung and the 4G GSM/UMTS/LTE modem is made by Qualcomm. The final bit of comms magic comes from Broadcom in the form of a single-chip 5G W-Fi 802.11ac MAC/baseband/radio with Bluetooth 4.0+HS & FM receiver.
On the power front the HTC One uses a 3.8 V battery rated at 2300 mAh. For comparison, the Galaxy S III has a 3.8 V, 2100 mAh battery, while the iPhone 5 has a 3.8 V, 1440 mAh battery. The debate over sealed batteries versus user replaceable batteries is sure to continue especially since the HTC One battery is almost impossible to replace, even by skilled technicians!
Other things to note about the HTC One are its 2.1 MP front-facing camera; its f/2.0 UltraPixel camera powered by a 4 MP backside-illuminated sensor from ST Microelectronics; and its Beats Audio dual-speakers.
What do you think? Does its repairability worry you? Does the impressive unibody compensate for any repairability concerns?
