Google's Nexus 7 tablet gets iFixit teardown, scores well on repairability scale

The folks over at iFixit have posted another of their popular teardowns for adventurous tinkerers who like to take their gadgets apart and fix them when things go wrong. Their latest victim: Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet. The device is only a millimeter thicker than Apple’s iPad, but that makes all the difference in the world when it comes to repairability according to iFixit, which gave it a score of 7 out of 10.

By comparison, Apple's tablet received a repairability score of two out of 10 on the iFixit scale, while the Amazon Kindle Fire scored an eight and the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet got a six.

"That's the difference between being able to open a device and service all of its internals, and not. That's the negligible difference between extending the life of your device through repair, as opposed to tossing it in a landfill. And most of all, nobody will complain about that one millimeter difference in day-to-day use, but the user-serviceability it brings will make all the difference when the device breaks," iFixit said in its report.

Their teardowns are certainly informative for those of us who like to know about the hardware that power our gadgets, although I wonder how often tablet owners are actually in a position that they need or want to tear open their devices for repair. If that need arises, however, iFixit has you covered with the required tools.

In all it took 21 steps to take the Nexus 7 apart. Here are some of iFixit’s findings:

• The 7-inch, 1280x800 HD display is manufactured by Hydis and designated model HV070WX2. The LCD is fused to the Corning glass so it’s unclear if it uses Gorilla Glass or Gorilla Glass 2.
• The L-shaped motherboard is “littered with connectors and screws”. On one side you’ll find an Nvidia T30L Tegra 3 processor, 1 GB of Hynix H5TC2G83CFR DDR3 RAM (same as Retina MacBook Pro), Max 77612A inverting switching regulator, AzureWave AW-NH665 wireless module, Broadcom BCM4751 integrated monolithic GPS receiver and Invensense MPU-6050 gyro and accelerometer.
• The back side of the motherboard holds the Kingston KE44B-26BN/8GB 8GB flash for storage.
• The 4326 mAh battery is easily replaceable without soldering or even a screwdriver.
• The official Nexus page stated there is one “speaker” in the back, but iFixit spotted a pair of drivers.

You can check out the full teardown of the Google Nexus 7 over at iFixit.