The latest and greatest iPhone X is out and it’s time for another teardown by iFixit. The iPhone X is Apple’s take on a futuristic smartphone and it comes with a 5.8″ Super Retina OLED Display that stretches edge to edge.
To find out what goes underneath its glass body, the folks at iFixit had meticulously taken the phone apart in their latest teardown project. Unlike previous iPhone model we’ve seen lately, the iPhone X is designed rather differently on the inside.
Taking the iPhone X apart is similar to other iPhones. You’ll need to remove Pentalobe screws at the bottom and apply some heat to loosen off the adhesive that holds the glass in place. For easy access, the iPhone X opens from the top side-ways and this also makes display replacements rather easy.
Since the iPhone X is a much smaller phone while having a larger screen, Apple has to be more space efficient with this model. The logic board is very dense and they have gone with a double-stacked board approach. According to iFixit, they haven’t seen this design since the very first iPhone.
The battery takes up the most space on the iPhone X and you can probably tell there’s very little room to manoeuvre in such a dense setup. Instead of a long and tall battery like previous iPhone models, the iPhone X uses a dual-celled battery which looks like two separate batteries being attached together to form an L shape.
iFixit says that the dual-cell design is more for space utilisation and it’s not about increasing capacity. Based on the ratings, the battery has a 10.35Wh capacity which is equivalent to 2,716mAh at 3.81V. That’s slightly more than the 2,691 mAh battery that powers the iPhone 8 Plus.
Overall, iFixit gave the iPhone X a repairability score of 6/10 which is similar to the iPhone 8 Plus. They note that the display and battery are easy to replace. You could also replace a cracked display without removing the biometric Face ID module.
Because of its dense design, there’s a lot of cable ties which can be expensive and troublesome to replace. The iPhone X also appears to be more fragile and if you crack the rear glass, you’ll probably need to replace the entire chassis.
You can check out the iPhone X step by step teardown here.
