How to get inside the Galaxy Alpha (or the Galaxy S5) in two easy steps:

Step 1: Remove screws from the back of the midframe.

Step 2: Cry about how that did absolutely nothing, and go grab your iOpener.

On the Galaxy S5, we saw Samsung move to a midframe sandwich design—two halves of an internal frame surround the motherboard under a display panel lid.

This sandwich and display-first-entry design stuck around. Even though the midframe screws are no longer hidden under the display, as in the S5, the procedure remains the same: difficult.

We assumed this strange layered design was necessary to waterproof the S5—so why has it carried over to the hydrophobic Alpha?