Nintendo Switch Teardown: In Two Places at Once

Nintendo has a long history of trail-blazing. Growing from a modest card game shop to the company that broke the mold in home video game consoles with the NES in 1985, broke new ground in handheld gaming with the Gameboy, and later created a surprise phenomenon among causal gamers with the Wii – and it's game-changing (literally) motion controller.

In the years since the Wii's release Nintendo has waned somewhat as competitors like Microsoft and Sony have continued to push boundaries with more powerful hardware and by embracing VR and AR technology.

But Nintendo is back, and its new console, the Switch, has been a big hit with consumers, breaking sales records, according to the company.

What's the draw? The Switch is both a handheld and home system rolled into one. It can connect to a TV via a dock to work as a home game system and can also function as a portable system. It even features detachable, wireless controllers (called Joy-Cons). Also, as an interesting tidbit, the Switch's SD-card like game chips have been deliberately coated with a chemical (denatonium benzoate) that makes them taste bad, so children won't swallow them.

So what's really under the hood of Nintendo's latest game changer (pun intended)? The team at iFixit got their hands on a Switch for their latest teardown.

Here are the basic specs of the console unit:

Those Joy-Con controllers are the most interesting parts of the Switch. Though they look identical they actually have different hardware inside of them. They each have the same basics – lithium-ion battery, bluetooth, accelerometer/ gyroscope, and the “HD Rumble” motor for haptic feedback, but the right Joy-Con also has an infrared motion camera that can sense the shape, motion, and distance of objects in front of it. According to Nintendo, the camera can even recognize certain hand gestures like rock, paper, scissors and will also be able to record video in the future.

iFixit found that the HD Rumble motor in both Joy-Cons is a linear resonant actuator (LRA) that looks very similar, if not identical, to ones seen in controllers for the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. “It's essentially a voicecoil installed in a moving mass assembly, flanked by a pair of powerful magnets,” the teardown notes. “However, it's interesting that this LRA seems to vibrate along its short axis, while many haptic feedback motors that we've seen vibrate along their long axis.”

Overall the teardown reveals the Switch to be a modular, very repairable unit (earning an overall repairability score of 8 out of 10 from iFixit), with the only barriers to self-repair (and possibly some modding and hacking) being some proprietary screws and a difficult-to-replace display and digitizer.

Check out the video of iFixit's teardown below and visit iFixit for the full teardown.

Chris Wiltz is the Managing Editor of Design News.  

[Main image source: Nintendo of America]