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iphone x

Apple is famous for coming upward with clever engineering tricks to cram more components within a smartphone. The new iPhone Ten with its edge-to-border display and compact front-facing camera cluster presented some unique challenges, though. Equally is tradition, iFixit has pulled the latest Apple tree gadget autonomously to see what makes information technology tick. The phone disassemblers accept discovered some wacky things in the new iPhone, including an L-shaped dual battery and a folded-over logic board.

Past iPhones have gotten low marks for repairability from iFixit, and part of the problem is the company'due south insistence on choosing non-standard screws to go along people out. This phone uses a combination of tri-point and pentalobe screws, plus adhesive to ensure the phone is water-resistant. Once the chassis is opened, it'south clear the iPhone X has some new tricks up its metal and glass sleeve.

Most of the internal volume is dominated by the battery–actually, batteries. At that place are two split lithium-ion cells connected in an L-shape. Apple tree is notoriously light on spec sheet details, simply the capacity of these cells together is reportedly ii,716mAh. That's slightly more than the iPhone eight Plus (2,691mAh), but that telephone is a little bit larger. Apple really packed in all the battery it possibly could to power that big OLED console. All the same, reviews say the iPhone X's bombardment life is a little weaker than the iPhone viii Plus.

iPhone X hardware. Credit: iFixit.

Function of making room for that battery was shrinking the logic board of the phone. After freeing the board from the phone, iFixit noted it was only 70 pct every bit large every bit the iPhone 8's board despite having more components. Apple basically folded the board over and soldered the ii halves together. Information technology's a fascinating manner to salve infinite inside the phone, only it also ways repairs to the logic lath are most incommunicable. If something goes wrong at that place, it'll probably need to be replaced. it probably the most expensive role of the phone as well.

In general, Apple's miniaturization techniques don't have equally much negative impact on repairability as they once did. The goal of iFixit's teardowns isn't only to permit us ogle the within of a telephone, it'due south supposed to tell us how easy a device is to repair. In this case, the iPhone X got a respectable half dozen out of ten. That'southward the aforementioned score Google earned with the Pixel 2 Forty and a little ameliorate than Samsung's Galaxy Note 8 at four out of x.

Top image credit: iFixit