[From Miroslav Djuric] RIM's BlackBerry PlayBook has been the topic of conversation of many geeks' dinners seemingly for ages -- and it's finally here! In true iFixit fashion, we donned our screwdrivers, prying tools, spudgers, and other mysterious-sounding tools to find out what kind of sauce they put inside this enchilada.
The PlayBook was well-received by our techs. It took us very little time to pop off the rear cover; delving further inside, we were able to remove everything without much hassle. We awarded the PlayBook a 7 out of 10 Repairability Score, with the 'Book being marked down for having a metal frame glued to the display glass, as well as for requiring the user to take out the motherboard and speaker assembly in order to replace the battery.
The teardown:
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Blackberry-PlayBook-Teardown/5265/1
Video analysis of the teardown:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYP_oTZ3tEk
Teardown highlights:
* Unlike the iPad 2, no heatgun is necessary to access the PlayBook's innards. All it took was a simple plastic opening tool and some prying.
* Once inside, we were a little surprised to see that the guts of the PlayBook were actually housed in the display assembly, not the rear case like most other tablets. That's unfortunate from a repairability standpoint, since simple repairs -- like replacing the battery -- require the motherboard to be removed.
* Thankfully, all screws holding the motherboard in place were of the good ol'fashioned Phillips #00 variety, so you won't need any hard-to-pronounce screwdriver to remove them.
* A small magnetic dock connector for charging on the bottom edge of the PlayBook is reminiscent of one of our favorite features of Apple's laptops -- the MagSafe connector.
* The PlayBook has a 20 watt-hour battery, which is a bit smaller than the iPad 2's 25 watt-hour unit. Of course, that doesn't mean the PlayBook will get worse battery life, considering it has a significantly smaller screen than the iPad 2.
* The cameras are pretty hefty: its 3 megapixel front-facing camera crushes the iPad 2's VGA camera, and the rear-facing camera has a 5 MP sensor which shoots 1080p video.
* One drawback is that the cameras and control buttons are all attached to one assembly, making replacing the power button or volume control pretty costly.
* We noticed that there are no less than 8 chips in the PlayBook belonging to Texas Instruments, which is sure to translate to a decent amount of dollars going to TI with every PlayBook purchase.
* Thanks to some great help from Chipworks, we were able to idenfity most of the large packages on PlayBook's motherboard. Here's some of the key players:
* Elpida B8064B2PB-8D-F 1GB DRAM & the TI OMAP4430 1GHz dual-core processor buried beneath
* SanDisk SDIN5C2-16G 16 GB NAND Flash
* Texas Instruments TWL6030 Power Management, WL1283 WLAN/Bluetooth/FM, LMV339 Comparators, and SN74AVCH4T245 4-Bit Dual-Supply Bus Transceiver (to name a few)
* STMicroelectronics XTV0987 5 MP mobile imaging processor
* Wolfson WM8994E audio codec
* TriQuint Semiconductor TQP6M9002 802.11a/b/g/n + BT front-end module
* Bosch Sensortec BMA150 Digital 3-axis accelerometer
* Invensense MPU-3050 3 axis gyroscope
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