Repair site praises new iPhone 16 line as the most repairable yet

AppleInsiderAppleInsider
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in iPhone

The traditional teardown by repair site iFixit has given the iPhone 16 lineup the highest repairability score of any previous iPhone, thanks to three key changes in the design and internals that make it easier to access components.

Disassembled iPhone 16 components arranged neatly, including screens, circuit boards, batteries, and camera modules.
The iPhone 16 lineup is easier to disassemble than ever before. Photo credit: iFixit



The rating, which is provisional pending Apple's release of parts, is based on what iFixit identifies as three major changes. As noted in an earlier teardown, rumors of Apple encasing the iPhone 16 Pro battery in hard steel case have proven to be true.

"Hard cell batteries instead of soft pouch batteries won't get accidentally punctured by a slip of a screwdriver, and so they're way less likely to catch fire," iFixit noted on its blog, greatly reducing the risk of battery damage. The company also praised Apple's change to a new adhesive that secures that battery, which can now be debonded when one passes an small electrical current through it.

The third factor noted was the expansion of the ability to disassemble the iPhone either from the front or back, increasing the ease of getting to the specific components that need repairing. This feature actually debuted on the base model iPhone 14, but it has now come to the iPhone 16's Pro models as well.

The iFixit blog referred to these changes as "big leaps for repairkind," which allowed for a more consistent and easily-repeatable repair process. Apple's own battery repair guide provided to AASP technicians shows that the debonding can be done with two leads from a household 9v battery.

Partially disassembled iPhone connected to a 9V battery using alligator clips, with a timer showing 1 minute and 30 seconds on the phone screen.
Apple's AASP repair guide shows how to debond the battery case using a 9v battery.

Harvesting OEM parts made easier also



The iFixit blog also praised Apple's new "Repair Assistant" program to assist AASP technicians and DIY-ers alike to be able to calibrate and confirm proper "parts pairing" when using new or harvested OEM parts to repair an Apple device.

"When we tested it out with the iPhone 15 series earlier this week, we thought it was promising, if not quite ready for prime time," the company noted. "But it worked impressively smoothly on our vanilla iPhone 16: one click to pair and calibrate all components at once, and no bugs to be found."

The Repair Assistant feature in iOS 18 may or may not work with some compliant but third-party repair components, however. The software could also become a nuisance to buyers of used iPhones who were unaware of previous repairs, or any use of third-party parts.

Apple's own repair guide notes that using a 9v battery can debond the battery casing in the iPhone 16 in about a 90 seconds. iFixit's comparison used a 12v battery, and was able to debond in 60 seconds.

The full iFixit teardown also revealed that there's more to the new Camera Control activator than meets the eye. The company was pleased to upgrade the repairability score of the iPhone 16 line to a seven out of 10; the iPhone 15, by comparison, scored a four out of 10.



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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,960member
    No doubt upcoming EU directives came into play on these changes. 

    muthuk_vanalingam
  • Reply 2 of 8
    XedXed Posts: 2,812member
    avon b7 said:
    No doubt upcoming EU directives came into play on these changes. 
    Show your work.
    roxsocksmacxpresswilliamlondon
  • Reply 3 of 8
    mikethemartianmikethemartian Posts: 1,468member
    All these improvements to repairability and yet it is the best iPhone ever! Who would have thought that was possible. :-)
    tiredskillsroxsocksmuthuk_vanalingamwilliamlondon
  • Reply 4 of 8
    macxpressmacxpress Posts: 5,907member
    mikethemartian said:
    All these improvements to repairability and yet it is the best iPhone ever! Who would have thought that was possible. :-)
    It also took a shitload of reengineering of basically the entire internal section of the iPhone. This couldn't have been cheap to do. Stuff like this is the stuff people don't understand when they complain that the phone is the same phone as last year. Maybe at a glance yes it's the same phone as last year but they don't see the internals being pretty much entirely different. Sometimes the changes that need to be made are under the hood, not customer facing. 
    williamlondon
  • Reply 5 of 8
    macxpressmacxpress Posts: 5,907member

    avon b7 said:
    No doubt upcoming EU directives came into play on these changes. 

    Oh I'm sure they'll find something to bitch about. The EU is never happy no matter what Apple does for anything whether it's a piece of hardware, software or their services. 
    elijahgwilliamlondon
  • Reply 6 of 8
    MplsPMplsP Posts: 3,996member
    Yet they still insist on using those asinine pentalobe screws! Can someone explain what is wrong with industry standard torx? (I also have to question iFixit’s complaint that you could puncture the battery with a screwdriver. Just how much force are you using on a 1mm screw???

    Any improvement in reparability is welcome. From the videos, it still seems that the battery is rather difficult to access, requiring the removal of several other components. 

    williamlondon
  • Reply 7 of 8
    danoxdanox Posts: 3,250member
    Due to recent events in the Middle East right to repair is going to disappear, every part in any personal electronic device used by the public is going to have to be accounted for with a serial number and those electronic parts will be designed not to work if they have been tampered with. Sound familiar? Government bureaucracies and ambulance chasing lawyers are going to have a field day in the EU and in America.
    edited 3:18PM williamlondon
  • Reply 8 of 8
    chasmchasm Posts: 3,499member
    danox said:
    [...]every part in any personal electronic device used by the public is going to have to be accounted for with a serial number and those electronic parts will be designed not to work if they have been tampered with. 
    Putting aside the hysterical paranoia for a moment ... Apple is moving to make repairs **much easier** for both pro and amateur repairers, and that's a good thing. An earlier AppleInsider article featured interview with Apple execs talking about the balance between durability and repairability, and it would seem that around the time this issue became a cause celebre in the tech press, Apple execs tasked the engineering teams with rebalancing the ratio a bit. This is the result.

    Repairs done poorly are still a risk. Ever been inside an AASP repair facility? There's a bucket of sand and a fireproof safe next to every technician, and there's a reason for that. People have died from explosions involving smartphones (or more often, their cheap replacement chargers). No terrorist organisation required.

    Making the battery safer and yet more replaceable is another example of superior Apple engineering and evidence that it does listen to customer issues/complaints. Every change made to an iPhone involves a complicated rebalancing of everything else. It's a miracle that smart changes like this can happen on a fairly regular basis.
    williamlondon
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