Huawei Honor 7C Teardown

As we all know, Huawei officially released the Huawei Honor 7C. Today, we will start disassembling the phone and exploring its internals.

First, remove the SIM card tray. The Honor 7C uses a SIM card tray, which can keep dual SIM cards and expansion cards working at the same time. This is good news for users who prefer to use memory cards.

Remove two screws from its back cover with a screwdriver.

Use a clip to separate the back cover from the phone body after the screws get removed. We find that the smartphone’s rear fingerprint scanner is fixed on the motherboard. There is no need to worry about breaking the cable during the back cover removal process.

The phone’s back cover adopts a three-stage design. Its top is made of metal, and the rest is injection molded to maintain good signal transmission.


We can see the phone’s internal structure with its back cover removed. Before taking out the fingerprint scanner module, we need to remove the metal covers that are used to fix the fingerprint scanner’s BTB connectors. BTB is stuck to the back of the metal shield.



After removing the fingerprint scanner button, we need to disconnect all connections, including the battery, camera, RF antenna, and others. The phone’s motherboard has a special design, which we will discuss later. The RF antenna is tightly fastened. The dual rear cameras are held in place by a separate metal cover.





The whole motherboard can’t be directly removed after disconnecting all the connections. Remove the screws, and then take out the loudspeaker. The phone uses a traditional micro USB port with its two sides fixed by screws. We need to remove the micro USB port.


After removing the loudspeaker, we understand why the motherboard can’t be removed directly. The phone uses a U-shaped motherboard, which means that its motherboard and vice board are designed as a whole part. That’s why we say that its motherboard has a special design. As a matter of fact, most smartphones adopt a three-stage design: motherboard on the top, the battery in the middle, and vice board at the bottom. Besides, its motherboard and vice board are connected by FPC, which is hidden under the battery.
The advantage of the U-shaped motherboard design is that it occupies more space, which enables it to provide more layout space while saving the cost of an FPC and two BTB connections. However, the motherboard also makes the battery occupy less space. The phone sports a 3,00mAh battery. There is no other component on the middle part of the motherboard.

Other components on the front of the motherboard are protected except for the fingerprint scanner. The huge card slot for three cards occupies much internal space on the back of the motherboard. We can also see the Qualcomm Snapdragon 450 chip and Hynix memory chip.

Here is the roll cage.

Summary
In general, the Huawei Honor 7C has both highlights and weaknesses. It depends on the user to judge whether it suits according to individual requirements.