As with most phones, the screws are the first to go once we're inside. And our Essential Electronics Toolkit is here, ready and waiting to take them out.

A few extremely tight midframe screws later, here's our first good look inside (in the visible-light spectrum, anyway).

Each phone gets its earpiece speaker mounted to the upper antenna assembly, which contains a dedicated speaker enclosure—that's a first! The speaker is the rectangular bit framed with a bright red gasket. It still fires through a channel in the midframe, much like it did on the Note10 and S20—but the new larger enclosures ought to boost audio quality a bit.

Both phones also get a rear-facing mic that piggybacks directly onto the back cover. Thankfully they connect via repair-friendly spring contacts, which is why we didn't encounter any booby traps opening these things up.