Sony WF-1000XM6 FCC Teardown

The FCC internal photos of the WF-1000XM6 have become available. Time to check out if they reveal anything interesting.

The first photo shows the earbuds opened up, and it reveals some good news.

 

The good news being, there is no cable connecting the top cover to the rest of the components like in WF-1000XM5. This means less of a chance to damage anything when opening up the earbuds for a potential battery change. I say potential, since we have no idea how easily the rest of the components come out, and if they are glued in.

Zooming in on the opened earbud, 3 things are obvious:

1. Contact for the Bluetooth antenna
2. Contact for the touch sensor
3. Possible production date of the cable assembly, 2521, or 2025, 21st week (end of May 2025).

The holes for the feedforward microphones are also visible. The clear plastic cover is different, and I cannot remember if Sony ever used anything like this before, I would have to check.

The next photo shows the entire flex PCB assembly, which was previewed in the Sony Engineer interview.

The colour of the flex PCB assembly is different to what we first saw in the earlier post. Unfortunately there is no photo of the other side of the assembly. We can see one MEMS microphone, which is one of the feedforward microphones.

Here is the assembly from the Sony Engineer interview, which shows both sides.

1. This is the board to board connector for the SiP
2. Possible battery contacts
• This could suggest a non-soldered battery (unconfirmed) 

Battery

That is all the photos from the main internal photo file. Before we look at the wireless module, the reference guide in the FCC filing does provide one detail on the battery. The same information can be found in the Sony Latin America reference manual as well.

The battery model inside the earbuds is "Z55FA". While no brand is provided, the reference guide from EU support does provide the information about what batteries the WF-1000XM6 is using. I do not remember seeing this information in past reference guides. Guess it is a new EU law, as the WF-1000XM5 reference guide also has battery manufacturer information.

Back to the earbuds, the 4 battery suppliers are:

• Springpower
• Highpower/TH
• VDL
• ZeniPower/ZP

It is pretty obvious that model Z55FA is from ZeniPower, as their previous batteries also use the Z prefix, like Z55FH. This means the new WF-1000XM6 has received a new battery model, 3.85V, but unknown capacity (see update below). The Taiwanese certification is not available yet, but once it appears, we should get the battery capacity information.

Update

We have battery capacity information from the Taiwanese certification, plus some other details on the Qi coil suppliers.

1. Left/Right earphones
   • Brand/Model: ZeniPower - Z55FA
     • Specification: DC 3.85V, 95mAh
2. Charging case
   • Brand/Model: VDL - 532145PM4
     • Specification: DC 3.85V, 560mAh
   • Springpower - 532145
     • Specifications: DC 3.85V, 560mAh
   • Highpower - 532145
     • Specifications: DC 3.85V, 560mAh

The charging case from the certification shows 5V, 800mA, so it should charge max, 4W. We know the wireless antenna in the earbuds is made by Goertek Inc, so nothing new. but the Qi coil details are new.

Antennas:

1. Left earphone: Monopole Antenna, Brand/Model: Goertek Inc. / ANTENNA L, Antenna Gain: -3.18 dBi
2. Right earphone: Monopole Antenna, Brand/Model: Goertek Inc. / ANTENNA R, Antenna Gain: -2.54 dBi
3. Charging case: Qi Coil Antenna
   1. Brand/Model: TDK Taiwan Corporation / 10237661
   2. Brand/Model: Luxshare Precision Industry Co., Ltd. / 10253641

For comparison, the WF-1000Xm5 earbuds battery was ZeniPower Z55FH, 3.85V, 95mAh, so identical but a different battery model. The internal case battery was 3.85V, 500mAh, so smaller capacity.

End of update

Searching for this new battery on Google yields zero results.

Finally, we have one more photo, the SiP.

The SiP is GSBR-005. I hypothesized Sony would move to a new SiP in this post, specifically GSBR-005, and it looks like I was correct. The only information provided, is the version 3-2 of the SiP, and the Bluetooth chip inside, MT2833.

This means the photo from the promo video was misleading. 

The board to board connector is on the reverse side and not above the chips. With the resin covering the chips, we will not be able to see the chips, and more specifically the new QN3e. I do wonder if the scale of the components is accurate, if it is, it would suggest the QN3e is twice as large as the Sony V2.

If we compare the WF-1000XM5 chips, the Sony V2 and QN2e, were about the same size. So the increase in size is intriguing.

While browsing Sony WF-1000XM6 product page, I noticed this little tidbit:

 

 

Except this is incorrect. The QN1 is not found inside the WF-1000XM5, the QN2e is found inside the WF-1000XM5, as we can see this on the WF-1000XM5 product page and in the press release.

 

Edit, thanks to aborne25 from twitter, it seems that it is a translation error, as the Japanese Sony website, has the correct information. 

 

Sony Japan website

 

So what gives? Anyone from Sony reading this and can clarify, either in the comments or by email? Are the QN1 and QN2e the same in terms of speed/performance? Or is this just a typo? 

Back to the WF-1000XM6. With the chips covered in resin, anyone know any method to remove said resin without damaging the chips inside? I have a broken WF-1000XM5 and wanted to remove the resin, but nothing I tried has worked. Any ideas or tips, leave them in the comments.

 

This concludes the FCC teardown. I have a strong feeling 52Audio will have their teardown out in the near term. Once that goes up, we will get better sense how much has actually changed in terms of construction.