Though Samsung showed off specifications of its flagship Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge last month at the Mobile World Congress, it did not reveal all the components and systems inside the phones. So, Chipworks has disassembled the curvy Galaxy S7 Edge to offer an in-depth hardware analysis of the device. It is not the first teardown of the S7 Edge, but the previous one focused mainly on the concept of DIY repairing.
Samsung uses in-house touchscreen controller in Galaxy S7 Edge
Chipworks found that the 12MP camera module measures 12.1 x 12.1 x 5.4 mm. Previously, there were rumors that the new phones would use Sony’s IMX260 camera sensor. You can see a Sony logo on the module’s flex cable. The camera has 1.4 micron pixels and a Dual Pixel autofocus. Samsung uses STMicroelectronics K2G2IS gyroscope for optical image stabilization.
There was a 4GB of LPDDR4 SDRAM made by Hynix and Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor in the T-Mobile version of the Galaxy S7 Edge that Chipworks disassembled. Other batches of the phone may feature a Samsung-made memory. For the first time, Samsung has used its in-house S6SA552X touchscreen controller (TSC) in its flagship smartphones.
Samsung increases the solder bumps in the PoP
There are a variety of components from various manufacturers. The phone features a Knowles 9291S microphone, an STMicroelectronics LSM6DS3 6-axis IMU, an NXP 67T05 NFC controller, a Murata KM5D18098 Wi-Fi module, an LPS25HB barometer, and an IDT P9221 wireless power receiver. The teardown also revealed Samsung’s package-on-package (PoP) manufacturing process for putting together the Snapdragon 820 SoC and the Hynix LPDDR4 SDRAM.
Chipworks discovered that there was a significant increase in the interconnecting solder bumps between top and bottom parts of the PoP, most likely to facilitate heat dissipation or sustain a higher memory bandwidth. Both the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge will hit the store shelves on March 11, though some customers who had pre-ordered have already started receiving their phones.
