iFixit tears down the Moto X; Finds the internal design choices unique

BY Rajesh Pandey

Published 24 Aug 2013

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The Moto X went on sale in the United States yesterday, and the folks over at iFixit have already done a teardown of the handset. The iFixit came across some interesting and unique internal design choices on the Moto X, which makes this teardown more interesting than others. 

The first thing that the iFixit folks noted was that the rear panel, unexpectedly, was not only clipped to the device chassis, but also adhered to it. The NFC antenna was the first to provide its glimpse, followed by the 2200mAh battery. The team also applauded the fact that the Moto X is a design innovation, and the company spent considerable time on the internal design of the device.

The motherboard is filled with interesting ICs including a 16GB emMC NAND flash from Toshiba, Hynix RAM, a PM8921 Qualcomm Power Management IC, the Qualcomm S4 Pro, a Texas Instruments micro controller, audio codecs and more. The interesting part? Not a single part inside the Moto X is manufactured by Samsung. Other unique features of the Moto X include a vibrator motor that is soldered right to the motherboard and the mid-frame being held by pins protruding from the edges of the display assembly panel.

In the end, iFixit gave the Moto X a repairability score of 7 out of 10, and noted that the pressure contacts and cable connections make the modular components like cameras, buttons, and headphones very easy to replace. Head over to iFixit’s teardown of the Moto X for some very interesting details and insight about the phone’s internals.