It’s time to tear down the HTC U Ultra and
see how much space inside is actually wasted. Is this newest phone from HTC a 'poor use of space'? Only one way to find out. [Intro] Easiest step first; removing the SIM and SD
card tray. One thing I do like about the HTC phone is
the expandable memory. Now onto the back glass panel. I’m using a heat gun to soften the adhesive
under the back glass so I can lift if off. Keep in mind the only reason the back is cracked
right now is because I took my level 9 pick to it. I’ve dealt with plenty of cracked glass
phones on my channel, but there’s something different about this device. I’ve never complained about getting glass
in my fingers because normally all the glass shards are still glued into place even if
the glass is cracked. But with this phone the glass is not glued
into the phone, and if the glass breaks, the glass chunks fall off of the device easier
than I’ve ever seen before…which is kind of dangerous. Normally the goal of repair is to remove the
glass in one piece without cracking it. So if you want to see a successful glass removal,
check out my LG G6 teardown video since this one’s already destroyed. It is interesting comparing the back glass
to the LG G6 though. After I remove that back glass panel, I did
intentionally break it and it still held together just fine; no glass in my fingers and no glass
chunks falling off. I have to say the lamination process on the
LG G6 is much safer than the lamination on the new Ultra. But as long as you never break your phone,
you shouldn’t have to deal with any of those problems. There are 16 screws along that back side. These are all T5 screws, and if any of you
are actually attempting this repair yourself, I’ll include a good tool kit in the video
description as well. After the screws are removed, the back plastic
panel can lift up. This top plastic panel is normally where we
find the wireless charging, but HTC U doesn’t have wireless charging so this flap is just
for decoration. I guess this is our first example of a poor
use of space. This plastic panel was actually designed for
wireless charging but HTC just didn’t include it in the final version of the phone. They literally stuck in a place holder. Hopefully they’re just practicing for the
HTC 11. The bottom plastic shield also lifts off but
before I unplug anything electrical on this phone, I’m going to disconnect the battery. This has two screw holes directly in the plug
which is interesting. Normally there is a thicker metal bracket
over the top to keep it attached so if you accidentally drop your phone it won’t unplug
by itself. But this method looks like it will work just
fine. The loud speaker at the bottom of the phone
has its own ribbon connecter. I call these Lego connectors because they
literally snap on and off like little Legos; you’ll feel them click into place. There’s one more Lego connector at the top
of the battery for the screen, and then one at the base of the motherboard under this
silver metallic tape. This phone is actually incredibly simple to
work on when compared to the HTC 10. The HTC 10 was way overly complicated with
tons of ribbons, so I’m glad that HTC simplified this version of the phone. There are 2 more screws holding down the motherboard. These are your normal Philips head screws. I’ll pop off some of the little signal wires
and then the motherboard can be lifted up. Be careful with the other signal wires though,
I left them connected because they’re on the same board, but they can still rip at
this point so slow and gentle is a good thing. There’s one more ribbon cable on the underside
of the main board. We’ve seen this same design on some of the
Samsung phones so no surprises here. And here is the motherboard. Cramming useful things into small spaces is
essentially what technology is all about. The only reason a company would exclude components
like wireless charging or headphone jacks is because of cost, not space. If you keep the price high, but exclude the
wireless charging headphone jacks and waterproofing, the profit margins on your new phones just
skyrocketed. Any average non-tech enthusiast will walk
into a cell phone store, see a shiny new phone and buy it full flagship price, not knowing
or caring about the loss of extra features. So if you are watching this video and actually
care about technology, you’re probably not the target market for this phone. The U Ultra has two cameras. The rear camera is 12 megapixels and the front
facing camera is 16 megapixels. I think that last year’s HTC 10 was better
built for tech enthusiasts. It even had optical image stabilization on
both the front facing and rear facing cameras; where now on this U Ultra, the optical stabilization
can only be found on the rear camera. The front camera has no visible hardware stabilizing. Just another feature that got cut with this
Ultra phone. I’m pretty sure these two little ribbon
cables at the bottom are for the front capacitive buttons under the front glass. I’ll unsnap these from the little board
and once those are disconnected, the charging port can pull out from inside the hole in
the frame. And here it is, the USBC charging port. I’ll talk about potential headphone jack
placement in just a second. The little circular thing you see dangling
off to the side is the vibration motor. I’ll also talk about this in a second too,
so remember it. If you are attempting a screen replacement,
the metal frame is the next thing to go. There are 11 normal Philips head screws holding
this onto the screen. I kind of like this design because if your
frame ever gets damaged or dinged up during drops or wearing out with time, it can be
pretty easily swapped out. You can even mod this thing pretty easy too
if the phone was worth buying. The battery’s the next thing to go. No magic pull tabs on this thing, just straight
leverage – taking special care not to puncture anything. I can lift it out of the frame with the flat
end of my metal pry tool. This little guy is 3000 milliamp hours. One thing I really do like about HTC is that
replacement parts are relatively cheap. The HTC 10 was released about a year ago and
the replacement screens can be found right now for about 60 to 80 dollars. HTC even has Uh-Oh protection which is very
respectful for a company because accidents happen and it’s nice for HTC to take care
of their customers. This is what your replacement screen would
look like though. You might need to separate your LCD from the
frame and reuse the frame. It just kind of depends on how they are sold. I will link them in the video description
when they become available. Now let’s jump into some comparisons. This is an HTC m9 from my Shelf of Shame a
few years ago. Both of these phones have stereo speakers. One is down here at the bottom, and the other
is up here at the top. The funny thing is that when I set the speaker
for the HTC U on top of the speaker from the m9, we can see that the speakers are pretty
much the exact same size, even though the older HTC m9 was a much smaller phone. You would think that since the U Ultra has
more space to work with, they would include much bigger speakers for better audio, but
that doesn’t seem to be the case. The Ultra doesn’t seem super Ultra at this
point. The m9 even had a headphone jack down here
at the bottom. Pay attention to the area down here as well. With very little effort, HTC would have had
room for the headphone jack. On the U Ultra they used that circular vibrator
called a linear resident actuator. It is more efficient than the eccentric rotating
mass motor that we have in the m9, but that circular form factor leaves wasted space. I’ll cover vibrators in a separate video. Long story short, if you remove that circular
vibrator, you’ll have room for both a headphone jack and a rectangular rotating mass vibrator
– and that’s without even trying. With even a small amount of board level changes,
HTC could have stuck the headphone jack anywhere they wanted very easily. Remember, space is never the issue; money
is the issue. If you remove features and keep the price
the same, you make more profit. And there are plenty of people who don’t
really care about tech but still want a good looking phone, and this device was built for
them. Let’s look at a few more things. I’ll set the battery back into place. We’re using the same adhesive from before. And then I’ll screw down that outer aluminum
frame with those 11 Phillips head screws. The charging port gets tucked back into the
frame and pressed down into place. Connecting the capacitive ribbons again at
the top of the charging port board. Before putting the motherboard back down,
let’s see if HTC is hiding any extra space under these metal brackets. These metal boxes are here to help protect
the important circuits inside of the phone like the processor. There is nothing replaceable under here so
I normally don’t remove these coverings. It looks like HTC did fill it up pretty well. There’s no thermal paste or heat pipes though
like we saw in the LG G6. So this phone isn’t made for any super heavy
lifting. I’ll press the shields back into place,
and it’s good as new. Remember that ribbon cable at the base of
the motherboard. I’ll clip that in like a little Lego and
then set the motherboard down. Then I’ll get that screen ribbon above the
battery plugged in. And the charging port ribbon with it’s silver
tape. And finally the loud speaker with its little
tiny Lego connection. There are 2 signal wires leading up from the
charging port board that need to be plugged in. The little circular head on these things is
pretty fragile, so be careful. You don’t want to bend it or snap it off. Speaking of signal wires, anyone who has ever
done car audio before will know that if you run your power wire next to your signal wire,
even if they are shielded, you’ll get some major interference. So it’s definitely an interesting design
choice when HTC put the battery power connection laying right over the top of the signal wires. It’ll be interesting to see if that contributes
to signal loss over time. After getting the two screws over the battery
and the two screws on the far side of the motherboard, you can set the protective plastics
back into place. Once the 16 screws are in and securing the
components, I’ll do a test turn on and surprisingly enough the thing still works. In summary it’s important to remember who
this phone was made for. Not everyone researches phones before they
buy them. I’d say the vast majority of people don’t
even utilize all the gizmos in their phone in the first place. So to those non-tech oriented people who purchase
this phone, as long as you don’t sit on it, or care about wireless charging, or loud
speakers, or headphone jack or waterproofing, it’s probably a decent phone. The main problem I have is that HTC put Lamborghini
pricing on this Honda Civic of a device. If the pricing matched the specs, it would
be much more worth it. But hey, at least it looks cool. Hopefully the Ultra is just practice for amazing
HCT 11 in the near future. Twitter and Instagram are where I’m active
the most. Come hang out with us over there if you haven’t
already. And thanks for watching. I’ll see you around.
So to sum up:
Poorly done glass back.
Much cleaner design than the 10.
Have space for headphone jack and wireless charger but decided not to.
Questionable position of power and wireless cables (watch out for poor signal reception over time)
This is unsurprising, but depressing. I'm not part of the bezel hating bandwagon at all, but HTC is notorious for awful space efficiency. Even with the 10, their competitors blew them out of the water in that regard.
And if the Pixels are any indication, it's an issue with design and cost, not manufacturing.
why?
the bottom right corner has nothing except ribbon cables, surely they can elongate the board and occupy that space instead
Is this the worst newly released flagship of all time?
Honestly, it looks like it was put together in a hurry. I saw some posts mentioning that the real HTC flagship was turned into the Pixel when the relationship between Google and Huawei turned sour over design credits. If this was any other company, I'd say that's definitely the case, but HTC has a history of poorly designed internals. It looks like it was put together by a team of interns and looks downright bad when compared to other phones.
If you look at an iPhone interior the comparison is night and day, but we dont need to look at Apple. The Pixel, built by HTC, is miles ahead.
For curiosity sake, I compared with a large phone that doesn't waste space, a Mate 9, and the contrast continues to be alarming. The differences in the mainboard alone are huge.
In the end, MKBHD was dead-on: poor use of space.
MKBHD wet now.
Might be the worst phone of 2017
This phone made my NextBit Robin look and feel like a flagship phone.