If you’re wondering what all Apple managed to pack inside its iPhone 12, repair site iFixit is currently hosting a live teardown of one of Apple’s latest smartphone on its YouTube channel.
The review started at roughly 1:20pm ET, but it’s still going on and is available to watch from the beginning if you’d prefer to take it all in. If iFixit comes across any interesting surprises, we’ll summarize them in an update to this article.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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Image credits: Images (and excerpts) shared with kind permission from Roger and the Lensental team.
Canon’s new RF 70-200mm lens is one of the most interesting lenses we’ve come across in recent memory—so much so we deemed it a ‘modern marvel’ in our sample gallery and crowned it the ‘Zoom Lens Winner of the Year’ award.
While we’ve shared our thoughts on the image quality and overall performance of the lens, we haven’t taken too deep a look into the construction of the lens. Thankfully, Roger and his team over at Lensrentalss have done a complete teardown of the Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8 lens to show off just what Canon has put into this compact lens that’s part of the ‘holy trinity’ in the photo world.
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| A look at the PCB in the rear of the lens. |
To start off the teardown, Roger recounts a little anecdote wherein a Canon engineer tossed a box on his workbench and pulled out a mock-up version of the RF 70-200mm F2.8 lens. Roger admits he isn’t easily impressed, but when he laid eyes on the mockup, he said his jaw dropped and the only words to leave his mouth were ‘that’s going to sell you a lot of cameras.’ Now, a good while later, a full-functioning version of the lens was sitting on his workbench once again; and this time it wasn’t leaving without going through a little operation.
Before cracking open the lens, Roger first addresses the redesigned optics of the lens, pointing out the dual focus group design and the extending lens barrel, addressing the latter by saying:
‘Some of you HATE extending barrel lenses. That’s cool; don’t get one. Some of you like to call them dust pumps. That’s cool, too, although it’s incorrect. (We take care of over 20,000 lenses. The most common ‘dusters’ among current lenses all happen to be primes that don’t zoom at all.)’
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| The breathable filter (which lets in air, but keeps out dirt and dust) around the lens barrel. |
From there, it’s onto the teardown, which starts with the hinged tripod ring. He notes it’s not the most robust tripod ring he’s come across, but when attached to the camera, it’s ‘quite sturdy.’ With the tripod collar off, it was onto the front of the barrel, which came off with a few external screws. Upon looking over the front ring, Roger discovered a foam sealing between the filter barrel and front element, as well as a new breathable filter, that will allow air to pass through the front of the lens without allowing particles to get in.
The front lens element was then removed with ease, which lead to the ‘reasonably large IS unit,’ which stopped the team in their tracks and lead them to turning the lens over and tearing it down from the back.
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| A close-up of the ‘reasonably large’ IS unit. |
The rear lens mount proved fairly standard as far as Canon’s RF lenses go. It was packed tight with the PCB and ribbon cables, as well as a few springs to add the tactile feedback to Canon’s programmable ‘Control Ring.’
Eventually, Roger hit a point where the ribbon cables looked too fragile to continue, but he and Aaron persisted and eventually removed the rear lens barrel after carefully threading each ribbon cable through the maze of pieces.
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| A close-up of the meticulously-placed ribbon cables and sensors. |
It was at this point Roger paused to ‘salute Canon’s engineers,’ saying:
‘The flexes are all beautifully laid out and organized, going directly to their appointed place with no wandering about allowed. Notice how all the switches just take up one small flex; there’s not a lot of electron transfer needed to signal ‘on’ or ‘off’ compared to the amount of information that IS or focusing requires.’
After composing himself, he and Aaron continued to the inner workings of the lens. Specifically, he draws attention to the elements Canon uses to secure the extending lens barrel. Roger says the Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8 ‘has about the most robust extending barrel mechanism I’ve ever seen […] There aren’t the usual three cams sliding about to move this barrel, there are three pairs of them, and each is very large and robust.’
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| A look at the components used to secure the extending lens barrel. |
Roger and Aaron eventually strip the outer barrel of the lens and dig further into the most intricate components, including both focus assemblies and the image stabilization unit. Roger notes the focus assembly (motors and optics) will likely be replaced as a whole if any component breaks, so any issue on that front will likely prove to be an expensive fix. However, he does not that he ‘doubt it’s a part that will really ever need replacing’ as the lens ‘is SLB (Strong, Like Bull) engineering, and the area is well protected.’
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| The aperture diaphragm inside the Canon RF 70-200mm F2.8 lens. |
In all, Roger concludes that a ‘LOT’ of engineering progress has been made in the RF 70-200mm F2.8 lens compared to the likes of the Canon EF 70-200mm F2.8 lens and the Sony 70-200mm F2.8 lens. He states clearly, ‘this lens was a new design from the ground up,’ adding:
‘There’s no ‘that’s the way we’ve always done it’ holdovers [compared to the iterative updates of past 70-200mm lenses]. That’s a lot more work for the designers, but the result is a beautifully engineered, fully modern lens. It’s clean, functional, and straightforward.’
Roger further addresses the build quality of the lens, saying:
‘It’s obviously very robustly engineered from a mechanical standpoint. The internal composites are strong as hell. There are double cams, rods, and posts everywhere. There’s no play in any moving parts. We can’t imagine there will ever be play in the moving parts unless you run over it with a truck. You could describe it as ruggedized, but I’m going to stick with Strong, Like Bull, and suggest we refer to this as the RF-SLB 70-200mm f/2.8 from now on.’
In the end, Roger summarizes the teardown with six simple (paraphrased) words: ‘This is how you do it.’
To view the full teardown in all its glory, head on over to the Lensrentalss blog.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
The Samsung Galaxy A80 is a Snapdragon 730-powered mid-range phone that would not stand out much from the crowd if it weren’t for its pretty unique camera swivel mechanism. Like the Asus ZenFone 6 and other swivel phones the A80 only has only one camera that can be used as both a main shooter and selfie camera.
Youtuber JerryRigEverything has now put the A80 through a detailed teardown process and discovered that the swivel mechanism is quite a complex piece of engineering that uses a stepper motor with a threaded shaft for raising and lowering the camera module.
At the peak of the extension the rotation of the camera is triggered through a clever gearing system. The camera ‘carriage’ is also running on rails at the side of the phone for smooth movement.
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The camera module itself features a 48 MP main camera with 1/2″ sensor, a 12mm-equivalent ultra-wide and a depth-sensing time-of-flight camera for bokeh simulation.
JerryRigEverything concludes that the A80 is one of the most over-engineered phones he has seen but that it’s quite difficult to take apart, and especially to put back together again, with many more screws to remove and reinsert than on more conventional devices.
No matter your opinion on the swivel design, it’s quite amazing to see how much engineering can be squeezed into the tiny body of a smartphone these days.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
As it does with nearly every Apple smartphone, tablet and computer that hits shelves, iFixit has torn down an iPhone 11 and iPhone 11 Pro Max to reveal what technological goodies are hidden within. The teardown didn’t reveal too many surprises, overall, but a few interesting things did pop up.
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| From left to right: the iPhones XR, XS Max and 11 Pro Max. |
Before cracking into any of the devices, iFixit teamed up with Creative Electron to X-ray the phones before they were opened up. As seen above, there’s not a millimeter of free space within the frames and although the same general layout was used, there are a few noticeable differences between the iPhone 11 models and the iPhone XS models. Considering the iPhone 11 Pro Max is the most interesting of the devices from a photography standpoint, that’s the teardown we’ll be focusing on here, although the full teardown of the iPhone 11 is available on iFixit.
Most notably, the iPhone 11 Pro Max uses a single-cell L-shaped battery, instead of two separate batteries found inside previous Plus/Max models. Apple also dropped down the logic board, presumably to make room for the much larger three-camera array.
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In ‘Step 6,’ iFixit gets to the camera modules. The team at iFixit also had X-rays performed on the camera modules, which revealed the optical image stabilization on the wide and telephoto camera modules. According to the teardown, iFixit plans on doing a more detailed analysis of the camera unit, so when that goes live we’ll be sure to cover accordingly.
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| The black bars in the two larger camera modules are the OIS units. |
Moving on, the iFixit team digs into the nitty-gritty details of the logic board and all of the individual chips, memory units and sensors within.
At ‘Step 13’ the battery gets some attention and iFixit reveals it was ‘pleasantly surprised to find some relatively repair-friendly features.’ The battery analysis also reveals the battery inside the iPhone 11 Pro Max ‘pumps out 3969 mAh at 3.79 V, for a total of 15.04 Wh […] a whopping 2.96 Wh more than the XS Max battery, and 1.52 Wh less than the Galaxy Note 10+ 5G battery.’ Of course, this increased capacity comes with a slight size increase. The battery inside the iPhone 11 Pro Max is 4.6mm thick and weighs 59.6g, which is 0.7mm thicker and 13g heavier than the dual-cell battery arrangement inside the iPhone XS Max.
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The remainder of the teardown covers the bottom section of the devices, which includes speakers, microphones, charging ports, additional cables and more. iFixit gives the iPhone 11 Pro Max a repairability score of six out of ten, mostly due to the fact that if the back glass cracks the entire device essentially needs to be stripped away to repair it.
Image credits: Courtesy of iFixit
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
We have already seen reports on the components used in the Huawei P30 Pro’s innovative multi-camera setup. Thanks to a new video-teardown by Youtuber JerryRigEverything we are now getting a very detailed look at the camera and especially the periscope-style 5x tele lens and its internal components.
Looking at the video it is quite impressive how Huawei has managed to squeeze this much technology into the P30 Pro’s thin smartphone body, particularly considering that the huge 4200 mAh is taking up a large proportion of the available space.
The only way to achieve a 5x optical zoom factor was to install the tele-module sideways inside the phone, using a 90-degree mirror to divert incoming light into the lens and onto the sensor. The Huawei is the first phone to use this technology but most certainly not the last. Unfortunately the tele-lens is being sacrificed in the process of recording the video but given the close looks we are getting at the internals it’s all worth it.
Fast forward to 5:36 in the video if you want to jump directly to the section about the camera module.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
Periscope-style tele lenses are the latest big thing in mobile photography as they allow to squeeze longer zoom factors than before into the thin bodies of high-end smartphones. Huawei just launched the P30 Pro with a 5x optical tele and OPPO’s Reno device with a similar setup is set to launch on April 10, 2019.
Despite still being more than a week away from the official launch date, a video has surfaced on the Chinese social media site Weibo, showing a teardown of the Reno’s rear camera, including the innovative tele lens, and it’s fascinating to see how much technology and optical engineering can fit into such a tiny module.
The periscope camera only measures 23.5 x 11.5 x 5.73mm, making it thin enough to fit into phones without the need for a big camera hump. It also doesn’t take up much space in the body overall and therefore does not get into the way of other components.
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| A close-up of the periscope-style camera array on the Huawei P30 Pro. |
The module consists of the image sensor, lenses and the prism that diverts the incoming light into the lens and onto the sensor. Optical image stabilization is achieved through a magnetic coil that moved the prism. Optical image stabilization is also available on the camera’s primary wide-angle and image data captured by the two cameras can be combined to generate a 10x hybrid-zoom image.
We also already know that at least one version of the Reno will be powered by Qualcomm’s top-end chipset Snapdragon 855-powered and come with a 6.4-inch AMOLED display with 2340 x 1080 pixel resolution. So, overall the upcoming OPPO looks like it could be a real competitor to the P30 Pro.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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| Lensrentals.com, 2018 |
It’s been less than two weeks since the Canon EOS R started shipping and already Roger Cicala, founder of Lens Rentals, has taken one apart in incredible detail to see what’s inside.
Per his usual routine for gear teardowns, Cicala makes notes of various features and components found inside the camera along the way.
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| Lensrentals.com, 2018 |
The EOS R teardown started with the removal of the adhesive grip tape from around the body of the camera to better see where all of the screws are. From there, the Cicala stripped the EOS R of its various elements piece by piece from the outside in.
While Cicala called it ‘a rather a boring disassembly,” the resulting photos and look inside the camera are anything but. Canon appears to have done a solid job across the board considering the price point and feature set of the camera, but there’s certainly room for improvements.
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| Lensrentals.com, 2018 |
The buttons on the camera are thoroughly protected with weather-sealing gaskets, but the body itself is only water-resistant by tightly overlapping two pieces of the seams of the polycarbonate frame. In Cicala’s own words, “that means, I think, that it will be fine in a misty rain for a while, but don’t get it saturated and don’t set it somewhere wet.”
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| Lensrentals.com, 2018 |
Cicala also notes that “it’s not very crowded inside [the EOS R],” meaning there’s plenty of room to pack in more features and tech inside if Canon decides to do so. He specifically mentions that much of the extra space he noticed between the circuit board and image sensor is where the in-body stabilization (IBIS) is seen inside the Sony A7R III he took apart. But don’t hold your breath for seeing IBIS in future EOS R cameras. Cicala adds “Canon has been very clear that they think lens stabilization is superior.”
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| Lensrentals.com, 2018 |
Overall, Cicala says the EOS R appears to follow most of the design and engineering elements of past Canon DSLR cameras. “It was rather a boring disassembly, really, about what we should expect for Canon doing a Canon 6D Mark II quality mirrorless camera […] It’s neatly laid out and nicely engineered inside.”
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| Lensrentals.com, 2018 |
To see more photos and more thorough insights from Cicala, head on over to the full Canon EOS R teardown. Cicala notes that a similar dissection of Nikon’s Z7 is complete and will be written up as soon as he can get around to it.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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When Apple announced the new iPhone models XS and XS Max the company told us that the camera’s wide-angle module featured a larger sensor with 1.4 µm pixels compared to 1.22 µm on last year’s iPhone X.
Now a teardown performed by TechInsights has confirmed the new sensor, but has also revealed some additional detail about the wide-angle camera. The sensor is a stacked model provided by Sony and measures 7.01 mm x 5.79 mm (40.6 mm2). This is 7.8 mm2 more than the wide-angle camera sensor on the iPhones X and 8 Plus.
TechInsights engineers noticed an increased density of Focus Pixels
In addition, the TechInsights engineers noticed an increased density of Focus Pixels. This means more regions of the sensor are available as autofocus points and should, at least in theory, improve autofocus performance in most light conditions and shooting situations. Focus Pixels is an Apple term for masked PDAF pixels which were first introduced in 2014 with the iPhone 6.
TechInsight’s teardown is still in progress, so we hope the team can provide some more information and also have a closer look at the camera’s 2x tele-module, which on paper looks unchanged from last year, over the coming days.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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The analysts at Tech Insights have torn down the Samsung Galaxy S9 in order to analyze the device’s camera sensors and, as usual, the summary of their findings makes interesting reading for anyone who has an interest in image sensor technology. The main takeaway from Tech Insight’s report is that Samsung is once again using different image sensors by region.
Depending on where you buy the Galaxy S9, your device will either come with a Samsung S5K2L3 or Sony IMX345 chip.
Both imagers use a 3-layer stacked structure, comprising a CMOS image sensor, image signal processor (ISP) and DRAM. The Sony IMX345 is very similar in structure to the IMX400, the world’s first 3-layer stacked imager that was introduced on the Sony Xperia XZ flagship a year ago.
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The Samsung S5K2L3 ISOCELL Fast sensor is the Korean manufacturer’s first 3-layer stacked model. In contrast to Sony’s custom solution with the DRAM in the middle, Samsung has opted for connecting the DRAM chip face-to-back on the ISP. The assembly also includes a dummy silicon structure filling the unoccupied space next to the DRAM chip.
This definitely won’t translate into noticeable performance or image quality differences between Galaxy S9 smartphones, but it does seem to show that Samsung is far from its goal of dethroning Sony to become #1 in the global image sensor market—it’s hard to dethrone the competition when you’re still using their sensors.
For a lot more detail on the sensor structure and assembly head over to Tech Insights, where you can also purchase even more in-depth reports if you really want to dive deep.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)
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| Credit: iFixit |
The team at iFixit has performed its usual teardown on the new Huawei P20 Pro triple-cam equipped smartphone to assess the device’s repairability. The score for the latter is 4/10—which means it’s probably advisable to leave repairs to trained service personnel—but far more interesting to us photographers is the detailed look iFixit got at the Huawei triple-camera setup.
You can see the full teardown here, but the main and most pleasant surprise is that Huawei actually built in more stabilization than their specs revealed.
In the official Huawei specifications, only the tele-lens with 80mm equivalent focal length is listed as optically stabilized, while the RGB main camera and the the monochrome secondary unit rely on the Kirin chipset’s neural processing unit for ensuring sharp images. However, according to the iFixit engineers, all three cameras come equipped with OIS hardware, which makes us wonder if there are plans to activate this hardware via a firmware update at some point in the future.
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| Credit: iFixit |
The image above shows the triple-camera in all its glory. The primary RGB camera is placed at the center of the setup and uses a large 40MP 1/1.7 inch sensor with an F1.8 aperture and a maximum ISO setting of 102,400, on the left you can see the 20 MP monochrome camera with F/1.6 aperture, and the 8MP/F2.4 telephoto is on the right. Next to the triple-camera the engineers have placed the 24MP front unit.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)