The Nexus 9 has begun shipping in the US and the guys over at iFixit have acquired one specifically for the purpose of tearing it open and showing us not only what makes it tick, but letting us know just how easy (or hard) it is to repair if things go wrong.
The bad news is the tablet didn’t score so well, with team giving the tablet a repairability score of 3 out of 10 (10 is easiest to repair). The low score is due to the delicate internal cabling held together by what they describe as a ‘maze of tape’ making it difficult to get into its component pieces and then put back together again. The LCD is also fused to the glass making replacing a cracked screen a costly and time consuming process especially with the display glass glued to the midframe.
There were some positives in that the rear panel can be easily removed, with just a couple of clips holding it in place. The battery is easy to get to for possible future replacements if necessary, but you’ll need a heat source to melt the glue to get it out.
One interesting tidbit on the teardown that they found is to do with the camera module which they advise :
A bit of Googling reveals that this is the same camera module used by the HTC Desire 610 smartphone.
It’s pretty cool to see these things torn apart, but even cooler once you have one in your hand, which apparently shouldn’t be too far away for Australian customers.
