[Guide]Taking apart the Streak 7 (wip)

[TheManii]

Introduction:
It's been over a year since the Streak 7 has been released, long enough that Dell has stopped selling it on their website, yet noone has released a legimitate disassembly guide yet.

Around launch time there was a video made showing the device being taken apart, what makes the video completely worthless is the fact they skipped all the most important steps of actually disassembling it and fast forwards though it till when it's nearly fully taken apart.

This guide will detail out all the steps to take it apart while attempting to minimize damage to it for reassembly.

Overall difficulty: 6/10
Without a guide: 11/10

Tools required:

• Hair dryer [strongly recommended]
• Very small torx screwdriver
• Very fine plastic shim or xacto knife

Step 1: Removing the side bumpers
The two side bumpers cover the majority of the screws. The bumpers themselves are held on by a strip of adhesive tape and are also very brittle. The most obvious method to remove them is to heat each of the bumpers with a hair dryer to weaken the adhesive on them. After heating it multiple times it should hopefully weaken enough so that a thin plastic shim or xacto knife can be forced in from the edges.

Depending on the importance of minimizing cosmetic damage, this can be the longest step.

Summerized steps:

1. Heat bumpers until adhesive is weakened
2. Shove thing instrument underneath bumpers from outside edge
3. Pry off bumpers lengthwise to avoid snapping them

Caution:

• The area near the capacitive buttons has an exposed ribbon cable, care must be used around that as the cable can be easily sliced.
• The shiny plastic bumpers are VERY brittle and can easily snap if flexed any amount. It may take many re-heatings to remove them without damage
• Excessive heat applied to the screen may damage the underlying LCD, it is recommended to slowly heat the bumpers in multiple runs to reduce the chance of damage.

Step 2: Removing the screws

List of screws:

• 2 visible screws under left bumper
• 3 visible screws under right bumper
• 1 screw hidden underneath capacitive sensing pad
• 2 screws hidden underneath white pads inside side flap

The screws underneath the flap might not be possible to remove without cosmetic damage. As they are underneath the flap this may be an acceptable trade-off.



Step 3: Seperating display from body
The display try is attached to the base by plastic clips on the tray, there are 3 clips on the left side that must be detached and then the display should be able to slide slightly leftwards(?) and then opened downwards.




Caution: When detaching the display be aware of the following cables:

1. One above the dock connector connecting the display itself
2. One towards the bottom left connecting the touch sensor
3. One just right of the buttons connecting their sensors

Step 4: Detach display cables
The cables are standard thin ribbon cables, the main display one has a latch while the two touch ones do not(?)

Step 5: Finish detaching the display from the base
The guide will end here and not go though removing the motherboard or other components from the base tray. They are all simply held on by multiple screws.

Step 6: Reassembly
Repeat steps 1-5 in reverse order.

Food for thought:
The differences between the Wifi and 3/4g models are:

• Lack of modem
• Lack of PCI-E slot for modem
• Lack of sim card assembly
• Lack of cell modem antenna assembly

It may be possible to solder on a new PCI-E and sim card assembly to turn a Wifi into a 3/4g model. The PCI-E slot is a standardized one while the sim card bay might be custom fitted to the S7. Swapping out the modems from the EU and US submodels is as simple as removing and replacing.

Acknowledgments:

• Graffixnyc for donating a device to hack at with a screwdriver disassemble
• FCC.gov for stock photos of the disassembeled pieces
• Dell for making the Streak 7 held together ultimately by glue.
• No thanks to the other teardown video for SKIPPING half of the most important steps

Shameless self-advertising:
The guide is still somewhat incomplete as when I recieved the donor S7 it was already badly damaged, also as I was working more or less blind it took even more damage in the disassembly. If I had a 2nd one to disassemble I might be able to do it with minimum damage.

 

[TheManii]

-Reserved-

 

[jydie]

WOW!! Great job getting the Streak 7 apart. I would love to see the guts of the S7 in person.

Now we just need to get you a S7 that is in read-only mode so that you can try to open it up and figure out how to reset it. I am pretty sure that the Streak 7 I sent to Dell for a reset was the same one they sent back... but I do not see any physical signs of it being opened. I still have a hunch that they had to open it because they could not fix the problem over the phone. They had to re-flash it... I am not sure if the flash was required, but it makes me wonder if they had to replace the entire motherboard or internal storage drive.

Do you see the internal storage drive? Is it soldered on, or could it easily be replaced? Also, do you see a cmos type battery that could be removed and reinserted... or a jumper to reset the bios? I am not sure if tablet motherboards are anything like desktop motherboards.

 

[crockashat]

Thanks theManii

I appreciate this, I have seen the video in question - and yeah, the most important sequences for disassembly were not included.

I do have a question in relation to #1. after warming the end trim pieces were you able to use your "shim" around the majority of the perimeter, or did you just come in from the inside by the screen to work these trim pieces loose?

I look forward to the pictures, it will make me a lot more comfortable in taking on the disassembly challenge, thanks again.

 

[TheManii]

WOW!! Great job getting the Streak 7 apart. I would love to see the guts of the S7 in person.

Now we just need to get you a S7 that is in read-only mode so that you can try to open it up and figure out how to reset it. I am pretty sure that the Streak 7 I sent to Dell for a reset was the same one they sent back... but I do not see any physical signs of it being opened. I still have a hunch that they had to open it because they could not fix the problem over the phone. They had to re-flash it... I am not sure if the flash was required, but it makes me wonder if they had to replace the entire motherboard or internal storage drive.

Do you see the internal storage drive? Is it soldered on, or could it easily be replaced? Also, do you see a cmos type battery that could be removed and reinserted... or a jumper to reset the bios? I am not sure if tablet motherboards are anything like desktop motherboards.

Everything but the modem card is soldered onto the board and the board itself has no jumpers.

I appreciate this, I have seen the video in question - and yeah, the most important sequences for disassembly were not included.

I do have a question in relation to #1. after warming the end trim pieces were you able to use your "shim" around the majority of the perimeter, or did you just come in from the inside by the screen to work these trim pieces loose?

I look forward to the pictures, it will make me a lot more comfortable in taking on the disassembly challenge, thanks again.

I went from the outside as I had a xacto knife and was afraid of scratching the screen, I was pretty agressive with it since it was already scratched up. If you dont go very slowly you might end up discoluring the black plastic (though it's black on black and not hugely noticible)


I used the FCC internal photos to work off of when I did it:

3/4g internals
wifi internals

 

[crockashat]

Originally Posted by TheManii>

I used the FCC internal photos to work off of when I did it:

3/4g internals
wifi internals

Thanks for the information, I will be attempting some surgery of the DS7 in the near future.

when I tried to open the links, they come up as:

You are not authorized to access this page.

not a big deal, I am mechanically inclined so I can figure out most things without too much destruction

 

[TheManii]

Hmm, that's odd, perhaps they dont like direct links to it

3/4g

wifi

it's the links labeled 'internal photo' on their respective pages

 

[TheManii]

Rewrote the guide, it's nearly complete except the lack of pictures highlighting the various things. Placeholders have already been placed summerizing what they will be of

 

[crockashat]

best diagrams/pics on the 3G/4G linked page

Hmm, that's odd, perhaps they dont like direct links to it

3/4g

wifi

it's the links labeled 'internal photo' on their respective pages

These links did work.
Actually both the internal and external photo PDFs have some useful information, and it appears that the more detailed information is in the link for the 3G/4G model.

Thanks again The Manii, appreciate all the helpful information, ROMs, etc.

 

[jydie]

Hmm, that's odd, perhaps they dont like direct links to it

3/4g

wifi

it's the links labeled 'internal photo' on their respective pages

The FCC links work now! Thank you so much for fixing them. Those internal photos are very nice... still I would love to see one in person. I just love taking things apart to see whats inside... but I normally wait until they are dead or defective.

Looks like they use SanDisk for the internal storage... and it is indeed soldered to the board. So, I am not sure what they are doing when they "fix" Streak 7s stuck in read-only mode. Maybe they have to manually short out or complete a connection on the motherboard while re-flashing the internal storage?? Or... with the right equipment, could they actually remove the old flash drive and solder on a new one?

By the way, I like the redesigned layout for your guide. Thank you so, so much for taking the time to describe this process. I greatly appreciate it.

 

[giveen]

Did you happen to take a close look at the camera to see a S/N or make/model?

 

[TheManii]

I havnt looked at any of the part numbers, I'll make a list when I make the photos to finish the guide

 

[TheManii]

Unfortunately looking at the internal photos again, it looks like virtually all the major chips are underneath the two RF shields or have their own RF shield.

Pretty much the only visible chips are the touchscreen controller, possibly the sim card interface chip and one of the lcd driver chips.

I'm not willing to cut/remove the RF shields as they seem pretty secure, so I'm not gonna be able to pull part numbers off them.

What I'm left with now is a device with:

• Demolished dock connector
• Cut Capacitive button cable
• Missing Flap
• Extensive cosmetic damage

Only the cut cable was during the dissassembly though, rest was as-is.

I'm gonna take the final disassembly photos tomorrow then put the whole thing in storage.

 

[robertkmagill]

hmmm...

I wonder if you would be interested in selling that poor streak for parts
I just bought a unit with a cracked digitizer...

 

[TheManii]

finally added images to guide, I will have to go back some time later and double check it's accuracy.

It's been long enough I dont really remember the screw locations underneath the bumpers.

 

[DCoop]

finally added images to guide, I will have to go back some time later and double check it's accuracy.

It's been long enough I dont really remember the screw locations underneath the bumpers.

Is the glass and screen one piece or will the gorilla glass come apart? I cracked the glass today and the screen itself isn't damaged at all. The unit works perfectly but has cracks on the glass.

Have you heard about sources for parts?

thanks in advance,
DC

 

[TheManii]

The glass and lcd arnt bonded, there's an air gap.

I dont know about getting replacement parts, beyond the scope of the guide.

 

[giveen]

can you see a maker/model of the lcd? also the battery.

 

[DCoop]

The glass and lcd arnt bonded, there's an air gap.

I dont know about getting replacement parts, beyond the scope of the guide.

Thanks for the guide, I'll use it when I find the glass to replace.

 

[tlnlion]

this is awesome.
been looking for such a guide since long time.
thanks!