phoneWreck

Ah yes the BlackBerry Tour 9630 – RIM’s answer via Sprint and Verizon to the very successful Bold (available on GSM networks).

Design wise, the Tour shares similarity with all 3 of the current and very successful BlackBerry devices available on the market. It’s got the shape of the storm, the screen of the 8900 and the keyboard of the Bold. In Dr.Wreck’s humble opinion, this device takes all of best physical design features from the current roster tosses them in a pot and mixes up a delicious cup of chowder. This device has good weight, good size and good functionality (screen, keyboard, software).

Alot of you have had difficulties with the trackball. Luckily RIM has disbanded this gosh-forsaken mechanically unstable and frequently unreliable piece of junk for the new optical trackpad we see on the Gemini and the newly announced 9700. Gone are the days of blowing on your trackball in hopes that a gust of bad breath can fix it!

Dr.Wreck has gone ahead and ripped this thing apart to perform a  full teardown and analysis. Click through for all the juicy details!

The first step to taking your Tour apart is to remove the  battery cover and battery. There you will see 4 hex bolts embedded in the plastic frame. Grab your T6 for the best fit. Remove all 4 screws but take note, the screw about midway up the right side of device has a white sticker covering it.

After you remove the screws, you are NOT ready to pull this cover off. Don’t pull, pry push or break.. There are six screws holding the device together – the top two are hidden and getting to these can be somewhat difficult.

To get to these well hidden monsters, you need to pry away the plastic piece with the BlackBerry logo and earpiece grating. Dr.Wreck uses a staple remover for all of his leveraging needs – he recommends you do the same.

This piece is adhered with double sided tape. Pry it away but be careful not to crack the plastic!

Voila! Now use your T6 to remove the screws you just found underneath – pull away the rear cover and reveal the PCB!

It’s important to keep in mind that your PCB won’t look like Dr.Wreck’s. In order to identify all of the integrated circuits we had to remove all of the “cans” (Metal shields) that provide heat and ESD shielding. Removing these shields is a bit of an art, we’ll keep that secret to Dr.Wreck’s dainty hands!

You can now pop off the flex cable tabs like Dr.Wreck is in the image above. These connectors are fairly robust however – delicacy should be practiced. You will also need to pop off the antenna which is located at the top right of the PCB.

You should now be able to flip the PCB vertically to reveal the underside (where the real brains are!). There are 3 flex cables attached to the PCB. These are used for The LCD, Trackball and keyboard. Pop them off to fully remove the PCB!

This is a good point to discuss the design of this device further. RIM has opted for a “floating” PCB design. This both saves money and makes these devices MUCH easier to take apart and service. The drawback is with the trackball (which we will see/discuss in a moment).

As soon as you pry away the chrome, face-plate and device border, the keyboard and track ball fall apart. This is where the design flaw lies that has created a massive warranty issue for the carriers. On the bold, the entire track-ball module clips into the PCB via a small malleable metal frame. This piece was totally discarded on the tour and consequently the ball more or less floats inside of the device.

If your trackball stops working, put a thumb on either side of the module and press firmly and evenly across the front of the device. This should reset everything and temporarily let you use the device again.

The Bringer of Pain

Now – for the reason you’ve all been reading – the Teardown Analysis.  What devices make this puppy tick?! Check out the functional block diagram below.

At the core we once again have the Qualcomm MSM7600 which provides both the Baseband and Application management functionality. Not surprisingly, this is the very same core that resides in the current BlackBerry Storm. As a matter of fact, when we look further we see many other shared ICs from the same Qualcomm reference design. These include the Qualcomm PM6658 for Power Management, the RTR6500 Dual-Band Transceiver and RTR6285 RF Transmitter.

It looks as if RIM went away from CSR for bluetooth with it’s decision to use the Samsung BTTM53C2RA chipset. This ia not entirely the case. Delving into our resources reveal the same CSR core, disguised in a Wafer-Level-Chip Scale Package.

Looking even further we see the same USB Phy from SMSC coupled with the now BlackBerry standard MicroUSB port.

Unfortunately the 9630 falls a fair amount short of the mark in the memory category. Sporting the ever-common Samsung MCP K5W2G1, we note that it only has a 2Gb OneNAND coupled with the 1Gb SDRAM. This falls short of the Storm however the phone really does perform admirably well – under almost every benchmark test we could subject it to (with the exception of sideloading).

And that’s all she wrote! Any comments, or questions – feel free to pop them into the comment section below! Dr.Wreck is going to be spending some time with  two new devices over the next few days.  Stay tuned for lot’s of data!

-Dr. Wreck