GoPro's Hero3 gets the teardown treatment from iFixit.com.

The folks over at iFixit.com have torn apart GoPro's Hero3, the Wi-Fi-enabled, 4K-resolution-capable camera designed to capture sports and action video and stills.

The teardown revealed a separate lens within the tiny 59 x 41 x 21 mm camera, helping boost its repairability score to 7 out of 10 on the iFixit scale. The iFixit team also found: 

  • Minimal adhesive securing the front cover.
  • Four surprisingly-long (8.1 mm) T4 Torx screws holding most of the the GoPro internals together. 
  • The Hero3's 3.7 V battery is rated at 1050 mAh/3.85 Wh, a 50 mAh decrease from previous models -- presumably due to the device's smaller size.The battery is intended to be easily replaced by the user, and requires no tools to access.
The Hero3 comes in white, black and silver editions with 5, 12 or 11 megapixel cameras, respectively.
  • The image sensor pops off the motherboard assembly and can be replaced independently of the rest of the board. This should keep repair costs down if the sensor itself dies, but not the whole motherboard. 
  • Chips on the motherboard include: 
    • Chipsip CT4924 multi-chip memory package
    • Ambarella A770 camera system-on-a-chip
    • Austriamicrosystems AS3713 system PMU with backlight driver
    • Freescale Kinetis SCK20DN51Z USB controller
    • Qualcomm Atheros AR6233GEAM2D 802.11n + Bluetooth 4.0 controller
Most components in the Hero3 use very little power and generate minimal heat. A light coating of thermal compound on the image processor is the most aggressive cooling feature in the device.

You can see the full teardown on the iFixit website.