Samsung Galaxy S 4G Gets Torn Down And (Partially) Set On Fire

Ah, the Samsung Galaxy S 4G, just another Galaxy S family device only this time with a shot of HSPA+ for T-Mobile USA, right? That's certainly what you'd expect, but the teardown-terrors at iFixit have still taken it upon themselves to rip the poor Android smartphone open and dig around, soothsayer-style, in its electrical entrails.

The magic – by which we mean the magic of 4G, not iFixit's ability to tell the future – is courtesy of an ST Ericsson THOR M5730 HSPA+ Thin Modem, paired with the usual 1GHz Samsung Hummingbird processor, Broadcom WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1. The teardown team then checked whether or not Samsung really does use magnesium for its structural components, rather than aluminum.

To do so, they scraped some of the metal off and set fire to it, resulting in the tell-tale bright glow of a magnesium flame. That helps Samsung keep the weight low, despite magnesium being even lighter than aluminum.