Teardown Provides Close Look Inside Microsoft’s Zune HD

by Michelle Maisto

Here is the unsuspecting Microsoft Zune HD music player in its box. Zune HD comes in a 16GB black model for $220 and a 32GB platinum silver model for $290. Rapid Repair got to work on the latter.

The Zune HD features a 3.3-inch OLED touch-screen on which users can watch 8.5 hours of video with a single charge. Rapid Repair calls it an “iPod Touch on steroids.”

The first step to dismantling the Zune HD is taking out the four tri-wing screws. At this point, warns Rapid Repair, your warranty is as good as gone. Instead of the tri-wings, Apple uses traditional screws and works to make them less noticeable.

Rapid Repair speculates that a Microsoft team member may have passed away during the development of this Zune. Thus, the unexpected inscription behind the lid: “For our Princess.” Cue the urban legends.

With the back panel removed, the board and battery are visible. There is one very visible T-4 screw to remove, and then, less obviously, two more plus a T-6. You can see them once you carefully peel the black serial plate from its two clips.

Once the screws are out, you can remove the three ribbon cables holding the digitizer, the OLED screen and the home button. With a nylon spudger tool—which Rapid Repair sells, should this be Greek to you—you can pull up the battery.

The media button should easily lift away from the internal frame. Rapid Repair warns against getting fingerprints on the OLED screen, which is apparently a bear to clean.

The larger chips are Toshiba NAND flash memory and the smaller, silver chip with the EMI shield, according to Rapid Repair, is an Atheros AR6002, which handles mobile Wi-Fi and is said to consume 70 percent less power than similar solutions.

The video chip, an Nvidia Tegra APX2600-HM-A3 processor with a 600MHz core, is pictured in the center. According to Rapid Repair, the Zune HD has quite a few parts in common with the Apple iPod Touch and Nano, including the battery and headphone jacks.