The new Sony Xperia Z tablet is a beautiful device, slimmer and sleeker than pretty much anything else on the market. But is its beauty only skin deep?
Sony tries to prove it isn't, with an official teardown video that exposes the electronic guts of the Xperia Z tablet.
Unlike most teardowns, usually performed by talented amateurs with a bit of extra pocket money, this video is a well-crafted, professionally-shot advertisement.
Barely more than three minutes long, it cuts from component to component as they emerge from the thin frame, held aloft by tweezers in the hands of an anonymous engineer. Backing music and voiceover narration obscure the sounds of grating metal or cursing typically involved in tech work (at least in my experience).
The video begins with a highlight reel of the Xperia Z tablet's ports, then starts into the disassembly. First the plastic back panel is removed by peeling away the adhesive and separating it from the battery, to which it is affixed with double sided tape.
Most component in the tablet are taped down, and the engineer dutifully peels it away (in one piece), arranging each of the tiny gold or steel screws and miniaturized parts that power the device.
Sure, it doesn't look that difficult, but we don't get to see what footage hit the cutting room floor, and even so, it still seems like a one-way process. And with our curiosity satisfied, at least we won't have to ruin our own tablets once they're actually available. They hit the U.K. on Apr. 12, and the U.S. at an unspecified date after that.
The Sony Xperia Z tablet is the world's thinnest and lightest Android tablet, weighing just 1.09 pounds and measuring just over a quarter inch thick. It features a 1.5 GHz quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, 2 GB of RAM, a 10-inch 1900x1200 display, an 8 megapixel camera and runs Android 4.1 Jell Bean, though Sony has promised a quick upgrade to 4.2. It is waterproof down to a meter in depth for up to half an hour.
Check back for the latest information on the Xperia Z tablet as it becomes available.
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