Teardown experts iFixit have taken the iPhone 5 apart to see what’s inside, and what they’ve found is looking promising for would-be buyers.
No sooner had the iPhone 5 gone on sale in Australia – technically the first place in the world you can buy the iPhone on release day – had the company bought one and slapped it down on the operating table, ready to be pried apart.
Apple has stuck with the fiddly pentalobe screws; two of which are located on the bottom edge of the phone. Once removed, the iPhone 5 casing then has to be split into two parts in the reverse order you would do with an iPhone 4 or 4S. With the 5, you’ll need to use a sucker pad (like a satnav car mount) to gently lift the front panel out of the rear casing. iFixit says this will make the iPhone 5’s screen much easier to replace than ever before, which is great news for those who would be confident enough to repair their own iPhone.
Apple tends to keep the finer details about its iPhone components a secret, but thanks to the teardown we can scope out what wasn’t revealed at the media event. For example, the iPhone 5 packs a battery only marginally bigger than the iPhone 4S – 1,440mAh compared to 1,432mAh – which goes to show the impact the new A6 processor has on improving the battery life.
iFixit’s teardowns are a brilliant way to see how a gadget is put together, and if you’re pretty nerdy like us, this is the equivalent of tech porn in high resolution. Taking a look at the inner workings of a gadget is always interesting, but never more so than with Apple’s intricate designs
Overall the iFixit team gave the iPhone 5 a ‘repairability’ score of 7/10, which is an improvement on the iPhone 4S, which scored 6/10. View the full teardown with high res images here.
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