Enterprise Mobility: Motorola Droid 3 Undergoes iFixit Teardown

The Droid 3 is the latest in Motorola's line of Android smartphones. For those who can't stand tapping a screen, it offers a sliding QWERTY keyboard. For those who like to get things done, it also boasts multitasking and a powerful set of hardware specs. But what exactly lies under the hood of this device? Repair firm iFixit decided to subject the Droid 3 to one of its exhaustive teardowns, and found some interesting features hiding beneath the plastic. Highlights of the new Droid 3 include a SIM card (something lacking in earlier Droid versions), a speaker assembly that "uses pressure contacts to transmit data to both the speaker and antenna, offset keys on the smartphone's slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and a motherboard loaded up with a three-axis accelerometer and other components. "Yet even with all the techno upgrades, Motorola paid no attention to the [reparability] of the Droid 3, iFixit wrote in its accompanying July 18 note. "You still have to take apart the whole phone in order to access the display and glass, a procedure hampered by Torx screws and glue that are used to hold everything together. The firm ended up giving the smartphone a score of 6 out of 10 on the reparability front, "having been given some brownie points for an easily-replaceable battery and for a straightforward (albeit time-consuming) disassembly process. For more on this topic click here.