Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 4 teardown: Good luck repairing it yourself

Samsung released the Galaxy Z Flip 4 foldable earlier this month and now teardown expert PKBreviews reveals what’s behind those specs before fans receive their shipment. 

The Galaxy Z Flip 4 isn’t wildly different to the Z Flip 3. They share the same 6.7-inch AMOLED primary display and 1.9-inch secondary Super AMOLED cover display, have high-end Qualcomm Snapdragon processors, similar cameras, and ship with 8GB of RAM.

The Z Flip 4 is hitting stores and mailboxes on August 26, so the teardown is useful for those still weighing up whether to help the foldable category go mainstream or keep it on the fringe. Elsewhere, the conventional flagship Galaxy S22 Ultra is a tempting option right now: normally costing $1,199, it was heavily discounted with a trade-in this month in the US by Samsung, Verizon, T-Mobile, or AT&T.

SEE:  After Samsung Unpacked: What does the foldable phone market look like now?

One notable difference between the Flip 3 and Flip 4 is the battery capacity. The Flip 3 has a 3,300mAh battery while the Flip 4 has a 3,700mAh battery, which should give owners of the new device three more hours battery lifespan.

But PKBreviews’ teardown suggests it isn’t easy to get to the batteries, which are glued in place and buried beneath several flex chords, brackets and boards in each half of the foldable. One side houses a smaller 1,700mAh battery and on the other is a 2,630mAh battery.

The Galaxy Z Flip 4 probably isn’t for fans who like to repair their own hardware. PKBreviews gave it an overall repairability score of four out of 10. It scored 0.5 out of 2 for the screen replacement and 0.5 out of 2 for how easy it is to replace the battery. PKBreviews didn’t dare remove the Z Flip 4’s screen as there was a high chance of damaging the $999 device.

The good news with the Galaxy Z Flip 4 is that the Samsung Care Plus program reduces the cost of repairing a cracked screen to just $29. As The Verge has pointed out, replacing the screen on Z Fold 3 incurred a $249 deductible. If the Flip 3 was out of warranty and without Care Plus, you would have to pay $480, iFixit notes. Another notable characteristic is that the Galaxy Z Flip 4 is waterproof but not dust resistant (IPX8). The Z Flip 3 completely failed iFixit’s dust test.