Vivo Nex S Teardown - Battle of the Pop Up Cameras! By JerryRigEverything

Two phones – the first flagships of their kind with hidden motorized cameras. One that survived my durability test, and one that, well... one that didn't. Today we'll be tearing down the survivor, the Vivo Nex S, and reviewing it from the inside. And comparing the internal camera motor against it's fallen comrade: the Oppo Find X. This is seriously one of the coolest and unique phones that I have ever opened up.

Vivo is taking hardware to the next level and the only place to see it from the inside is here. Let's get started. I've already turned this phone clear by removing that psychedelic back coating under the glass, which allowed us a tiny glimpse or preview of some of the internal hardware. It'll be a little easier to remove the back glass adhesive this time around since it's already been done. But of course, the first step in any dissection is putting the patient to sleep.

We don't want his waking up during what happens next. I'm fairly confident he'll survive the operation... mostly. Cross your fingers just in case. Heat is still important and then the whole back glass panel should pull up and away from the phone body in one piece.

Now we can access the metal plate covering the motherboard and see parts of the camera motor mechanism. After removing all of the screws we can start accessing the good stuff. I'll unplug the battery first, which is actually pretty unique. We'll unbury the battery more in a second. The side button ribbons unplug, and then the two super long extension ribbons unclip like little Legos.

The black, blue, and white ribbons unsnap from their circular connectors. And the front sensors up at the top also unplug. The dual rear cameras along with that vibrating piezoelectric earpiece unclip as well. The earpiece is still under the motherboard, but we'll get to see it in just a second. The motherboard, unfortunately, is still rather intertwined with that front camera mechanism.

So I'll remove the two screws holding down the silver plate over that camera ribbon. One of the screws though, is the super tricky stand-off screw that we've seen in some of the iPhones. A screw within a screw. A little trick to solving this is to take a thin flathead and put it between the notches on the stand-off and twist it off axis, allowing it to rotate and then I can move that metal plate and unclip the super long front facing camera ribbon cable, releasing the motherboard and I can pull it away from the phone body. Nothing cool to see on the motherboard itself, just the shape is definitely unique.

Everything else interesting is still in the frame, like these dual rear cameras. The 12 megapixel main camera has optical image stabilization, but the top 5 megapixel depth sensor does not have any hardware stabilizing. Remember that this phone doesn't actually have an earpiece speaker or an earpiece grille. Instead it uses a little contraption called a piezoelectric vibrator that literally turns the metal frame of the phone into a speaker. It sounds like everyone you call is on speakerphone all of the time, so I'm not the biggest fan.

But it is still cool and interesting technology. I showed an example of how it sounds during my Nex S durability test video if you want to go back and get a taste of that. It's interesting to see it now from the inside though. Getting the front facing camera rails and motor out was actually pretty complicated. There were a few hidden screws and little black plastic contraption to keep the motor from jamming too far down into the phone body.

But eventually I was able to pull out that stepper motor... but the camera was a different story. On the left side of the camera mechanism there's a little metal stopper screwed into the camera shaft. Once that stopper is removed, then the whole camera can pull up and out of the phone body from the top. It's super smart of Vivo to include hard physical stoppers at both ends of the camera track.

Now that the Vivo's disassembled, let's jump into the other mechanical camera smartphone for a second: the Oppo Find X, and we can compare the motors side by side. Remember, Vivo is just moving one camera in their phones. Oppo is moving 3 cameras and the whole top of the phone. This guy's had a rough couple days and didn't quite survive my durability test, so I can't exactly turn it off either at this point since the screen is shattered. So we'll just have to operate while the patient is still awake this time.

There are quite a few screws holding on the back plastic panel, but that's all we have to remove to find the motor inside the Find X. Surprisingly it's smaller than the motor inside of the Vivo Nex, which is interesting because the Find X payload, the whole top of the phone, is substantially larger and heavier than the singular pop-up 8 megapixel camera on top of the Nex S. Oppo has said their motor is good for 300,000 actuations, which, if you used your selfie camera 100 times a day, would last you about 8 years. The Nex S camera is rated by Vivo to get at least 50,000 lifts, which at the same 100 selfies a day, would last you 1.3 years. Each of these claims, of course, are made by the manufacturer, so take that how you want.

All we know for sure is that Vivo's motor is bigger, more secure, and is lifting less. So Oppo's claim of 300,000 might be a little generous. Either way, I'm not going to count to 50,000 to find out. I bet we could talk Linus into it though. Remember how the Vivo battery is silver? Turns out it is covered with a metal plate.

This phone has surprises around every corner. Down at the bottom of the phone we have 8 screws protecting our last bit of hardware. The black plastic comes up and it's physically attached to the loudspeaker. Nothing super surprising down here. That vibration motor though has got to be feeling pretty inferior next to the camera motor.

He's much smaller than we normally see in flagships. I know it might be embarrassing to have your bits exposed, but there is one more thing we need to look at: the in-screen fingerprint scanner. It's buried under that last remaining board which has 2 ribbon cables, and of course, the SIM card tray which comes out of the bottom. We'll set that off to the side. The charging port board has the SIM card tray and the USB-C charging port, which is all pretty normal.

The only other in-screen fingerprint scanning phone we've seen is the X20 Plus, also from Vivo, but the one on this Nex S is different. It's still glued against the glass, so removing it will be impossible without cracking the screen. But this time around it looks like it has an extra sensor under the screen. It looks like a light sensor or a camera. I'm not totally sure.

Either way, it's part of the in-screen fingerprint scanning technology and it has changed since last year's X20 Plus. It's does look like there's a little bit of ingress protection around the microphone hole. And a rubber ring around the charging port. So water-resistance wasn't thrown entirely out the window with this phone, but I still wouldn't trust it around water. Some protection is always better than no protection though.

Speaking of protection, the metal plate covering this battery has 6 screws of it's own, and once those are out, the whole thousand milliamp hour battery comes away from the phone body with zero adhesive holding it down. This is a pretty incredible phone from the inside as well as the outside. I'll get that charging port back into place. And believe it or not, the goal of my channel is to not destroy phones but actually keep them working as long as possible. I do have my doubts about this little guy coming back together in one piece though.

Our friend Nex might never wake up again. This guy is a little more complicated than normal. The fingerprint scanner and screen are clipped in, and then all of our little wire cable buddies get routed into their positions before the loudspeaker and it's 8 screws plop into place to protect the phone's bottom components and hide that itty bitty vibrator. Getting the camera contraption back into place is like playing one of those brain puzzles without any instructions, you've got to kind of just put everything back into place and hope you don't have any screws left over at the end. The important bit is that tiny top stopper though.

Once that little guy is secure, and as long as all the screws are still organized from the teardown, the reassembly process flows pretty smoothly. After the motor gizmo is tightened down, the motherboard can slip over top of the piezoelectric speaker and the rear camera modules, taking special care of course to not pinch any ribbon cables on the underside of that board. This time around everything plugs into the top of the motherboard, including that super long front facing camera ribbon which has this little silver metal plate keeping the ribbon from pinching itself or coming disconnected as the camera moves up and down. I'll plug in the front sensor ribbon along with the earpiece vibrator, both rear cameras and side buttons. And finally, the extension ribbons and the battery plug itself.

The metal motherboard plate with it's screws are set into place, and finally we can see if our buddy Nex wakes up from his full body operation. Surprisingly enough, he turns on, and even more impressive, the camera still works. Trust me, I'm just as surprised as you are. This phone is definitely not meant to be repaired. It's a premium, high-tech phone, not built for the masses, and really meant to not be taken apart or fixed, so be gentle with it.

I'll get my custom clear back glass panel in place. I still seriously think this is one of the coolest looking phones on the planet, even more so now that we've explored it from the inside. I know this video is a bit longer than normal, so thanks for sticking around all the way through it. Should I try to keep the video shorter from now on or are you okay with projects taking longer than a few minutes? Let me know in the comments. Hit that subscribe button if you haven't already, and thanks a ton for watching.

I'll see you around.

Source : JerryRigEverything