Sony LinkBuds S Teardown by 52Audio
52Audio have released their LinkBuds S teardown, and it does reveal a few things I was not able to show in my earlier teardown post which I made using the FCC documents. I only covered the headset in that teardown, but with the new teardown we have more details and the charging case as well. Photos courtesy of 52Audio.
We will start off with the charging case. Opening the case, we can see that is a large foam piece at the bottom protecting the battery. This is absent in the WF-1000XM4 since the battery there is covered by a plastic piece with the wireless charging coil on top of that.
Looking closer, this foam piece is quite thick, but if Sony used a design like the WF-1000XM4, wireless charging could have fit into the case along with the battery. There are wireless earbuds that have wireless charging at this price range, so it is a shame the LinkBuds S lack it.
The battery sits in a small box on the bottom of the headset. There is probably many reasons why Sony decided to go with this setup, rather than copy the WF-1000XM4, but perhaps cost is one and the second could be so the LinkBuds S were not superior in battery capacity compared to the more expensive WF-1000XM4.
Like with previous models from Sony, the battery is provided by Spring Power yet again. The battery is rated at 3.85 V, with a 450mAh/1.732Wh capacity. It is larger than the WF-C500 battery, but smaller than in the WF-1000XM4.
Unlike both the WF-C500 and WF-1000XM4, Sony has opted for two PCBs inside the LinkBuds S case rather than 1. I am not sure why Sony went this route, but I guess space was more limited than in the other 2 models, so 2 boards were necessary.
Here we can see the first board, with the battery connector at the top left, the USB type C port in the bottom left and the pairing button in the bottom right. A ribbon cable connects the 2 boards.
Flipping the main board up, reveals the second board. On the underside of the first board is a the main chip in the case. More on that later.
The second PCB has the charging pins and a LED on it. Turning back to the other PCB, we can see 2 important chips, the TI BQ25618 and NXP Semiconductors K32 L2B. For those wanting to see the datasheets, and what the chips are used for, click the links for each chip.
