*pen click*
*writing sounds - pen on paper*
Some things are more important than technology. Today we're going to be taking apart the new
Pocophone F2 Pro. The camera has totally stopped motoring up and down – it's just broken...you
know...kind of like the United States right now. We'll have to see what's causing the
problem from the inside. Let's get started.
[Intro]
The Pocophone F2 Pro doesn't have a water resistance rating, but it does have adhesive
holding down the back glass panel – just like we see on every glass sandwich design.
Poco has said they have a vapor chamber inside that coves 28% of the phone. So it should
be interesting to uncover that as well. Once the adhesive is sliced all the way around
the outside, I can start to twist the back panel off. The camera units do have adhesive
on them as well, which is outside of the norm. This phone looks pretty darn good inside with
the quad camera array and the orange battery pull tab.
Up here at the top we can see that the pop up camera still won't press down inside of
the phone. It's very securely sprung up into place. We'll have to remove these 17 screws
holding down the plastics, and once those are unscrewed the plastic protection can pull
away exposing the stepper motor in charge of moving the camera. The camera contraption
is still very much stuck. Interesting that it's got a red rubber ring around the motor
housing. I'll disconnect the battery and the two other ribbon cables down along the bottom
of the motherboard...just like little Lego's.
The camera mechanism itself is mounted underneath the motherboard, so I'll pop off 2 more screws,
once of which is a large silver standoff, you know, one of those screws within a screw.
I'll use a flathead screwdriver to twist this around at an angle. Once it's gone I can pop
off the large camera ribbon and the earpiece ribbon and very carefully start maneuvering
the motherboard out of the phone. We can see now that the camera has a built-in spring
probably for safety to help keep the motor from getting damaged. Or to protect the internal
shaft of the motor from getting bent if the camera accidentally hits anything while protruded.
Removing the motor shows that this is definitely the component that's causing all the issues.
It's totally seized up. Normally we can manually slide this mounting point up and down the
threaded screw cuz the motor usually rotates freely. But this time it's very much stuck.
Even my large channel locks can't get it to budge. It's strange that one little component
can cause so much frustration. I thought we might be able to swap the motors with another
phone. So I grabbed a K20 Pro from last year which has the exact same motor size and shape
as the Pocophone F2 Pro, but it turns out after opening up the entire phone that the
contact points for this motor are in different spots, which makes them impossible to interchange.
Rather unfortunate. We'll just have to see if the selfie camera will still work without
the motor installed when I turn it back on.
The camera does slide up and down freely...it just won't motor anymore. Now we know that
we shouldn't be pile-driving fragile moving parts. Learn something new every day.
Xiaomi has made the battery easy to remove with these pull tabs. The adhesive is still
pretty strong underneath though. Strong enough to break the pull tabs. But even if it does
break, at least the glue isn't permanent. I can still pry it out with a pry tool easy
enough. This 4700 milliamp hour battery can charge up at 30 watts. The bottom loudspeaker
can pop off next. This guy does have water-resistant mesh. It's good to see some layers of protection,
but there are no sound dampening balls inside. I'll remove the two wire cables and unplug
the optical underscreen fingerprint scanner. And of course, take out the SIM card tray.
Finally, the USB-C charging port can lift up and away from the phone.
The dual SIM card slot is actually pretty cool. It has pins on both sides of the metal
housing so it can read from more than one SIM card at a time if they're both inserted.
This is more common on international phones for people who travel between countries or
have more than one phone number. The small circular vibrator is here right in the center
of the phone. And the underscreen fingerprint scanner is actually sitting between the metal
frame of the phone and the screen, and definitely not accessible without removing the display.
It's interesting to note however that the vapor chamber of the Poco F2 Pro is strangely
not made from copper. It is massive but it's made from aluminum...still metal conductive
and efficient at removing heat, but not copper like we see on most other phones. It's placement
though is pretty brilliant. Instead of the vapor chamber being sandwiched between the
processor and the frame of the phone, this F2 Pro has the entire vapor chamber right
underneath the screen so it can dissipate the heat more quickly and efficiently through
the screen without having to go through extra layers of foam, since each of those internal
layers acts as a little blanket keeping the heat inside. Plus, if you look closely, there
is copper inside of the chamber, along with liquid that you can see quickly evaporating
as it's exposed to the air. It uses that internal copper mesh to wick its way between the hot
and cold areas inside of the chamber. Pretty darn cool. Thumbs up for that.
The size and location might make this the best implementation of a vapor chamber that
we've ever seen. I'll get the charging port board put back into place. It's time to see
if the camera will still work without the camera motor.
Now, you might be thinking, 'Hey Jerry, isn't it like super dangerous to put that lithium
battery back on top of the sharp slices of exposed metal?' And the answer is to that
is yeah. Lately some people respond to dangerous situations by closing their eyes, saying fake
news, rolling out the military, and hoping the problem just disappears. So we're going
to try that method here with this dangerous situation. You know, just trying to avoid
it like a child would.
The phone might work for a second, but yeah, eventually it's going to blow up because facts,
just like humans, really do matter. There is quite a bit of copper on the back side
of the motherboard. This is what comes in contact with that vapor chamber. The depth
sensor, wide angle and 64 megapixel main camera, along with the 5 megapixel telephoto camera
all do not have optical image stabilization. So that would be something to consider if
planning on buying this phone. OIS is kind of important.
I'll get the motherboard situated down into place over top of where that camera motor
used to be. And I can gently clip in the front facing camera sensor along with the earpiece,
long extension ribbon, loudspeaker, and finally the last thing I plug in is the battery connector.
I'll get the top plastics in place, and lucky for us the whole thing still turns on and
functions just like normal. I'll open up the camera app. It does tell me that the selfie
camera can't open, which is kind of to be expected since the motor is literally sitting
outside of the phone. And if I poke the Pocophone's top camera just right with my razor blade,
I can still pry it up and take pictures with it. Rather impressive actually. I'm impressed
that the Poco F2 Pro survived all of this, even if I do now have to use a razor blade
to take a selfie.
I've got a massive international giveaway coming up with an absurd amount of phones.
So make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss it. Gotta spread some joy during these
unique times. If you want to see the inside of your own phone without all the risks of
taking it apart, I'll leave a link for my Teardown Skin in the video description. We
cover basically most every major smartphone, but most importantly, let's all be nice to
each other. Protest peacefully. Vote. And good things will happen.
Come hang out with me on Instagram and Twitter. And thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you
around.