Unlike the iPad 2, no heatgun is necessary to access the PlayBook’s innards. All it took was a simple plastic opening tool and some prying.
Once inside, we were a little surprised to see that the guts of the PlayBook were actually housed in the display assembly, not the rear case like most other tablets. That’s unfortunate from a repairability standpoint, since simple repairs — like replacing the battery — require the motherboard to be removed.
Thankfully, all screws holding the motherboard in place were of the good ol’fashioned Phillips #00 variety, so you won’t need any hard-to-pronounce screwdriver to remove them.
A small magnetic dock connector for charging on the bottom edge of the PlayBook is reminiscent of one of our favorite features of Apple’s laptops — the MagSafe connector.
The PlayBook has a 20 watt-hour battery, which is a bit smaller than the iPad 2′s 25 watt-hour unit. Of course, that doesn’t mean the PlayBook will get worse battery life, considering it has a significantly smaller screen than the iPad 2.
The cameras are pretty hefty: its 3 megapixel front-facing camera crushes the iPad 2′s VGA camera, and the rear-facing camera has a 5 MP sensor which shoots 1080p video.
One drawback is that the cameras and control buttons are all attached to one assembly, making replacing the power button or volume control pretty costly.
We noticed that there are no less than 8 chips in the PlayBook belonging to Texas Instruments, which is sure to translate to a decent amount of dollars going to TI with every PlayBook purchase.
For more of the teardown and pictures, visit iFixit.
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