The gang at iFixIt, who tear apart gadgets and look at their innards so you don’t have to, have take apart Apple’s iPhone X. You should read the entire iPhone X Teardown, but here are some highlights:
- For the first time in iPhone history, Apple packed in a 2-cell battery that allowed them to get creative with the shapes and placement in a space-constrained phone. It weighs in at 10.35 Wh, which is on par with the iPhone 8 Plus battery, but shy of the Galaxy Note8’s 12.71 Wh behemoth. Pretty impressive for a phone smaller than any of the aforementioned.
- Just like we saw on the iPhone 8, Apple banished all regulatory markings from the back of the iPhone X—including the e-waste symbol. We did a little sleuthing, and that featureless backplane is possible due to the E-LABEL Act, which allows manufacturers to display those labels on the screen instead.
- The dual rear camera has a beefy bracket that looks like it might also offer some bendgate-proofing support. The cameras are additionally secured to the rear case with foam adhesive to keep things from jostling out of place. (These cameras really need to stay put for Portrait Mode and similar features to work their magic.)
- With Apple’s embrace of the OLED display, repair costs for this luxury phone are likely to start high and stay there for a while.
Despite its name, the iPhone X earns a 6 out of 10 on the repairability scale. Like the 8 series, it makes battery and display replacements a priority—but it loses points for its lack of modularity and back glass replacement procedure.
