Contemporary design tendencies force smartphone OEMs to move mountains in order to fit the best hardware in the slimmest of cases. Sony Xperia Z5 proves that few things can rival the sleek aspect of a unibody metallic design that shows power and performance.
Cramming high-end specs in a tightly enclosed chassis means that teardowns get tougher each day, and what was a couple of years ago a piece of cake repair might require serious engineering skills today. Sony Xperia Z5 reinforces this point since it is quite difficult to open up for fixing, although not as much as the profaned Nexus 6P.
A recent teardown guide devised by a third-party and hosted by iFixit takes you safely through the perils of opening up the Sony Xperia Z5.
First, it should be noted that Xperia Z5's non-unibody design helps the teardown process, albeit not by much. One has to arm oneself with a heat gun and a lot of patience to ease the adhesive. Having a few guitar picks and a suction cup at hand helps unmounts the cover, after a while.
A big plus is that the battery comes off rather easily. Just disconnect it from the main connector and pull out the adhesive strips. Even if it is a pain to get to it, replacing the battery is a breeze.
Most of the hardware components stay put due to (copious amounts of) adhesive and screws, which test the repairman's patience once more. The challenging part is that some parts are very closely intertwined, or simply located at unconventional spots. One good example is the fingerprint scanner that usually stays on the home button or at the rear of the handset. Sony got creative with the scanner's position and placed it on the side of the phone, under the power button. The teardown guide advises great care when you remove the main flex assembly.
Another nuisance is the substantial quantity of adhesive, some in plain sight, some camouflaged. The front camera and the bottom microphone are locked in by a hefty amount of glue.
It would have been nice to see the teardown working its way on the display assembly, but it did not happen. As the author of the Xperia Z5 evisceration was a third-party and not an iFixit member, there is no official repairability score.
An amateur estimation would rank the Xperia Z5 at a 6 or 7 because the handset does sport modular parts and common screws, but it also tests the patience by using a deluge of adhesive. That said, you can watch a video of the disassembly below to get a better idea.
