This Samsung Galaxy Note 7 Fan Edition teardown reveals unchanged internals and smaller battery

Samsung’s Galaxy Note Fan Edition has received the teardown treatment by iFixit, revealing what the device looks like on the inside and more importantly, revealing that the device is still a Galaxy Note 7 on the inside.With the teardown, iFixit answered a question which had many enthusiasts wondering — how much of a change did Samsung have to make to the Note 7 to launch a phone which did not explode. The answer to that is, "not much". The only noticeable difference, which is also the most crucial, is that the Fan Edition has a battery which, according to iFixit is roughly 9 percent smaller. According to a report by The Verge, this translates to a 12.32 Watt-hour of charge to the original Note 7’s 13.48 Wh battery.[caption id="attachment_389252" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Image: iFixit[/caption]The glass back panel, which iFixit reports to be equally difficult to remove as it was with the Note 7, shows that the new power cell is also marginally smaller physically despite the size being the same. The battery now weighs 2.3 grams less than the original Note 7's 47.7 g.The rest of the hardware is revealed to be exactly the same, from the Curved panel 5.7" Super AMOLED display with 2560×1440 resolution (518 ppi) and Gorilla Glass 5 to the Exynos 8890 Octa Core processor with 4 GB RAM coupled with the Mali-T880 MP12 GPU. The camera module on the Galaxy Note 7, which was a 12-megapixel, f/1.7 rear camera with Optical Image Stabilisation and dual pixel autofocus also sees a comeback with no other additions.[caption id="attachment_389253" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Image: iFixit[/caption]According to iFixit, the only other change in hardware noticed is a revamped antenna pattern, which is speculated to be primarily for compatibility with Korean networks since the refurbished phone is only available in South Korea.The Galaxy Note Fan Edition was launched in South Korea recently and Samsung is reportedly only going to manufacture 400,000 units of the phone. The phone is Samsung’s revival of the Galaxy Note 7, a device which it launched last September but had to pull out of production because of problems with the device overheating, and in many cases, exploding.