Apple tells us what they want and nothing else. They don’t tell us how much RAM there is or intimate details of the processors or battery size or lots of other things.
They much prefer “here’s magic, check it out” to “here’s tons of gory details”.
Doing teardowns like this would directly contradict that message.
Don't know if this par for iFixit, but this sort of reads like an ad. To be fair, it sounds like the phone is not too bad in repairability. We should also have scores for software repairability and replacement.
Don’t agree with this take; software doesn’t need repairs when you drop your phone, when it is submerged, when it is charged/discharged daily for a few years, and so on. Freedom to use your hardware however you like is more of an ideological discussion, whereas repairs are simply necessary due to the unavoidable wear-and-tear.
We loved writing them, too! Traffic to the photo teardowns dropped and has been replaced by video. If you can help us figure out how to get people to pay attention to long-form articles again, we're all ears!
Thanks for your work. The photo ones are much more practical as a reference though! I would imagine for long term traffic that still counts. You can browse through them quickly and zoom in easily. I’ve been using photo teardowns often as a volunteer in a local repair café and I hope you don’t give up on them.
The real question is how many parts have been serialised and impossible to replace without Apple's proprietary software? Will there be a large parts aftermarket?
Modern phones (especially iPhones) are worthless on the aftermarket so they're not as strong targets for theft.
(this is not to say that phone theft doesn't happen, in fact, it's pretty rampant in the UK, but they target people using their phones in the hope they're unlocked so they can be resold as entire units: components are useless).
I think you're asking "what parts can be replaced without the end buyer noticing?"
You can replace almost any part on an iphone, but if it isn't an Apple part its functionality is reduced. The only people that care are people reselling iphones with substandard parts.
Apple is kinda famous for scaling processes that are not supposed to be viable at scale.
They may be just buying out all of the worldwide (China-wide) available capacity. Perks of sitting on an impossibly large pile of cash I guess. Still, impressive.
Might (also) be a good way to expand testing and process development, similar to why they - presumably - started with the SIM ejector tool when they incorporated Liquid Metal in their processes.
With that iPhone Air Mass distribution and internal component list I am very much looking forward to future iPhone Air.
SoC with TSMC A20 or A14, N2 and C2 ( I expect the two will merge into one at some point ), Tandem OLED, all with better Energy efficiency, Silicon Carbon Battery with double energy capacity. All of these tech are here or ready within next 3 - 5 years. It is more of a question of whether Apple is willing to pay for it to be mass produced.
With the energy efficiency gain and battery improvements I could see iPhone Air getting double the battery life. It would be better than even today's iPhone 17 Pro Max in 5 years time.
This opens up the door for iPhone Air Mini. I say mini but it will probably still be 5.9", but weight the same as iPhone Mini ( I assume that is something Apple will market it as ).
The only thing I wish and I dont know if it is feasible, is the Camera lans to be the same as back of the bump without much loss of photo quality. And I am willing to pay extra $100 to $200 for it. I just dont know if the tech is here in the near future.
In other words, Apple complies with paragraph 18 of EU-Directive 2024/1799: "manufacturers are to provide access to spare parts, repair and maintenance information or any repair related software tools, firmware or similar auxiliary means."
This directive applies EU-wide for all devices sold after 31st of July 2026. Some countries have earlier deadlines, e.g. devices sold in Germany after 20th of June 2025.
I'm glad that they didn't try to delay it for the better part of a decade like they did with USB charging ports.
Do we also have board view. it sound like i'm entitled, but it's much better to replace a single IC or capacitor than replacing the entire new motherboard.
Would be interesting to know where the iPhone Air was built; India or China ? I'm asking because I understand it requires some very advanced tooling and expertise which the Chinese are not keen to share with the Indians and I'd be surprised if they have
I betting $10 Apple’s foldable will be two iPhone Airs where one side has 0 bezel hinged together with extreme mechanical precision and maybe some fairy dust to make the gap when unfolded unnoticeable.
This creates a foldable with no durability issues and no “crease” problems. Also the two halves of the display could be on the outside when folded, avoiding the need for a third display and getting a rear display for free. I would buy 3 of these.
Having the displays on the outside when folded removes all the durability advantages of closing the phone with the screens inside.
I don't even know if that affects my opinion of whether you'll be right or not, because putting glass on the back is definitely more fragile than machining the phone out of a solid block of aluminium. Am I remembering this incorrectly? Was that the unibody MacBooks? Regardless, I found the aluminium backs a lot less fragile, but we all gave them up pretty easily for wireless charging.
Is there something equivalent to longbets.org, but for bets which are about matters that aren't important to society? I'd take you up on the bet - not because I think you're wrong, but because I think it's fun and fairly harmless gambling that is unlikely to lead to either of us developing a habit - but has easily sending small amounts of money internationally been solved yet?
I'll bet $10 it hasn't! That I can't send $10 from one country to another, without paying fees that are a significant proportion of that amount, or needing to put an unreasonable amount of effort into setting up an account with a 3rd party service or doing the transfer with that service.
And the two bets above are a bad look, so I'll also bet $20 that you can't get me doing any more gambling by the end of the day.
I think it’s a cool idea, but for there to be no crease the 0 bezel sides would have to have incredibly sharp edges. Seems like a real cutting hazard when the phone isn’t folded out (especially if the screens are still glass instead of plastic)
The last time Apple introduced a product with a moving part was the Airpods line. I think we'll see a foldable iPhone about the same time we see a touchscreen Mac.
That would be an unacceptably fat foldable. Foldables are 4.1mm to 4.2mm at the head of the class and iPhone Air is 5.6mm. Double that and add a bit for folding and you're still under 9mm (acceptable) with today's leading folders, and about 12mm (not acceptable) for the hypothetical Air.
i wonder why people so obsessed with "no crease". If apple truly care about "perfect screen", they would remove the face id "notch/island" 5 generations ago.
On a sidenote, youtuber jerryrigseverything tested the iPhone air and was pretty shocked at the durability of the titanium frame. Something like 170kg of pressure on the middle line of the screen was required to break the glass panel. The LCD and touchscreen were still working. I too expected the thing to break with two thumbs only.
Is it normal for Apple to not mention the capacity of their batteries, or are they worried about how bad the numbers will look on paper?
I'm pretty pissed at them (again). Over the last couple of years, we've seen significant gains in battery capacities for the first time in more than a decade — you can now buy “standard” thickness phones for sane amounts of money with 6-7.5 A·h batteries, and I expected to see 8 A·h shortly. Two times the capacity of just a few years ago with the same volume and for the same amount of money.
What does Apple do with these gains? Crap out a new thinner phone, of course. Now other manufacturers will follow suit, just like they did with the 3.5" jack, and we will be back to square one.
Not once do I remember thinking "I would like this phone to be thinner", yet I wish that this thing would have a bigger battery almost daily.
> And in a fun twist, we’ve confirmed that it’s the exact same cell found in Apple’s MagSafe battery pack. You can swap between them and the phone still boots up just fine.
Are batteries no longer paired with the device? I thought that any battery replacement needs Apple's blessing via their servers, otherwise the phone will claim it's non-genuine.
> We tapped in some friends in the additive manufacturing industry, who said it wasn’t quite like any metal 3D printing they’d seen before. Their best guess is that Apple’s using a binder or aerosol jet process in addition to some after-printing machining.
I’m curious who they talked to. I’m no expert but this photo [1] looks like laser sintering. It’s got the telltale melt pools and the laser scanning direction from hatch passes
Maybe Apple has figured out economic electron beam melting at scale?
59 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 70.8 ms ] threadAlso -
Can anyone imagine what the impacts might be if Apple “Sherlocked” iFixIt and reviewers, and did teardowns, battery tests, etc. themselves?
Apple tells us what they want and nothing else. They don’t tell us how much RAM there is or intimate details of the processors or battery size or lots of other things.
They much prefer “here’s magic, check it out” to “here’s tons of gory details”.
Doing teardowns like this would directly contradict that message.
Modern phones (especially iPhones) are worthless on the aftermarket so they're not as strong targets for theft.
(this is not to say that phone theft doesn't happen, in fact, it's pretty rampant in the UK, but they target people using their phones in the hope they're unlocked so they can be resold as entire units: components are useless).
You can replace almost any part on an iphone, but if it isn't an Apple part its functionality is reduced. The only people that care are people reselling iphones with substandard parts.
3D printing is really unsuitable for mass production due to being so slow and therefore expensive.
I wonder what properties this port has that apple didn't feel they could achieve any other way?
They may be just buying out all of the worldwide (China-wide) available capacity. Perks of sitting on an impossibly large pile of cash I guess. Still, impressive.
Not sure which method Apple uses (must be really advance one), but 3d printing can be fast if you want.
SoC with TSMC A20 or A14, N2 and C2 ( I expect the two will merge into one at some point ), Tandem OLED, all with better Energy efficiency, Silicon Carbon Battery with double energy capacity. All of these tech are here or ready within next 3 - 5 years. It is more of a question of whether Apple is willing to pay for it to be mass produced.
With the energy efficiency gain and battery improvements I could see iPhone Air getting double the battery life. It would be better than even today's iPhone 17 Pro Max in 5 years time.
This opens up the door for iPhone Air Mini. I say mini but it will probably still be 5.9", but weight the same as iPhone Mini ( I assume that is something Apple will market it as ).
The only thing I wish and I dont know if it is feasible, is the Camera lans to be the same as back of the bump without much loss of photo quality. And I am willing to pay extra $100 to $200 for it. I just dont know if the tech is here in the near future.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/123052
This directive applies EU-wide for all devices sold after 31st of July 2026. Some countries have earlier deadlines, e.g. devices sold in Germany after 20th of June 2025.
I'm glad that they didn't try to delay it for the better part of a decade like they did with USB charging ports.
https://youtu.be/sQ56ve39l2I?si=Y3TIUV9R3O2TA9qE
This creates a foldable with no durability issues and no “crease” problems. Also the two halves of the display could be on the outside when folded, avoiding the need for a third display and getting a rear display for free. I would buy 3 of these.
I don't even know if that affects my opinion of whether you'll be right or not, because putting glass on the back is definitely more fragile than machining the phone out of a solid block of aluminium. Am I remembering this incorrectly? Was that the unibody MacBooks? Regardless, I found the aluminium backs a lot less fragile, but we all gave them up pretty easily for wireless charging.
Is there something equivalent to longbets.org, but for bets which are about matters that aren't important to society? I'd take you up on the bet - not because I think you're wrong, but because I think it's fun and fairly harmless gambling that is unlikely to lead to either of us developing a habit - but has easily sending small amounts of money internationally been solved yet?
I'll bet $10 it hasn't! That I can't send $10 from one country to another, without paying fees that are a significant proportion of that amount, or needing to put an unreasonable amount of effort into setting up an account with a 3rd party service or doing the transfer with that service.
And the two bets above are a bad look, so I'll also bet $20 that you can't get me doing any more gambling by the end of the day.
I'm pretty pissed at them (again). Over the last couple of years, we've seen significant gains in battery capacities for the first time in more than a decade — you can now buy “standard” thickness phones for sane amounts of money with 6-7.5 A·h batteries, and I expected to see 8 A·h shortly. Two times the capacity of just a few years ago with the same volume and for the same amount of money.
What does Apple do with these gains? Crap out a new thinner phone, of course. Now other manufacturers will follow suit, just like they did with the 3.5" jack, and we will be back to square one.
Not once do I remember thinking "I would like this phone to be thinner", yet I wish that this thing would have a bigger battery almost daily.
Thanks again, Apple.
Are batteries no longer paired with the device? I thought that any battery replacement needs Apple's blessing via their servers, otherwise the phone will claim it's non-genuine.
I’m curious who they talked to. I’m no expert but this photo [1] looks like laser sintering. It’s got the telltale melt pools and the laser scanning direction from hatch passes
Maybe Apple has figured out economic electron beam melting at scale?
[1] https://valkyrie.cdn.ifixit.com/media/2025/09/20111617/USBC-...
Oh what a dream…
It doesn't seem to have been a priority for them, but we'll have to see if this shows up in their marketing.
That's it. That's the post