[Dell Streak 7] 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:

Heat bumpers until adhesive is weakened

Shove thing instrument underneath bumpers from outside edge

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:

One above the dock connector connecting the display itself

One towards the bottom left connecting the touch sensor

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: :D

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.