Samsung Galaxy S9 teardown reveals dual aperture tricks and tough repairability

The good folks over at iFixit have been ripping apart a Samsung Galaxy S9 and a Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus, revealing a few hidden secrets about the brand new flagship phones. For a start, if you're planning on repairing these phones yourself at home, you've got a tough challenge on your hands.

Both phones get a repairability score of 4 out of 10, with 10 meaning an easy repair. The special Infinity Display glass on the S9 and S9 Plus makes it particularly hard to get these devices opened up and put back together again without something breaking, iFixit says.

While battery replacement is "technically possible", as per the teardowns, Samsung has made it harder than it needs to be. In short, unless you really feel confident in your handiness with a phone repair kit, you should be sending these phones back to Samsung or a reputable repair shop if something bad happens to them.

Nice dual aperture you've got there

The teardowns also reveal the trick used to create the special dual aperture trick on board the S9 and S9 Plus: two rotating, ring-like blades for two possible aperture settings. Standard camera lenses use more blades for more aperture positions, but this setup is much more compact, as befits a phone.

Elsewhere there are similarities to the Galaxy S8 models that preceded these two handsets, including the batteries and front-facing camera tech – that means the AR Emoji feature Samsung introduced with the S9 is largely down to software upgrades.

Head over to the full teardowns for the Galaxy S9 and the Galaxy S9 Plus if you want all the details on what's inside these phones and just how difficult it's going to be for you to open them up and fix them. In comparison, the iPhone X bagged a repairability score of 6/10.