iFixit has finally pulled back the curtain on Apple’s latest top-of-the-line flagship smartphone with its teardown of the iPhone 15 Pro Max, revealing the device’s inner workings.
Although the iPhone 15 Pro Max shares a resemblance to the iPhone 14 Pro Max, inside and out, the teardown reveals several internal changes Apple has made to improve the device’s performance and repairability.
To start, we have the redesigned frame that allows the back glass panel to be easily removed with a suction cup and a pick without the need for heat or special tools. A quality upgrade for those who want to get their device’s cracked back glass fixed from a third-party repair shop for a lower fee.
The over-moulded plastic on the panel edges that keep the internals secured now has a different white colour, while the battery has three “hard-to-reach” pull tabs. According to the video, to remove the battery, you’d first need to take out the taptic engine and the bottom speaker.
Spraying the battery with isopropyl alcohol loosens the glue, and the battery flops out with ease. The battery on the iPhone 15 Pro Max is a 17.1 Watt hour (Wh) cell, which is a roughly 2.5 percent increase over the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s predecessor.
The video also gives us a closer look at the iPhone 15 Pro Max’s camera system, which boasts a new Telephoto lens with a tetraprism system that enables 5x optical zoom, up from 2x on the iPhone 14 Pro Max. Further, iFixit said that the Main and Ultra Wide lenses on the iPhone 15 Pro Max appear to be identical to those on the previous generation, suggesting that the camera improvements are due to the new A17 Pro chip and software optimizations.
iFixit gave the iPhone 15 Pro Max a low repairability score of 4 out of 10. While the smartphone is more repairable within Apple’s “walled garden,” in the real world, “not so much,” due to Apple’s part requirements, making it more difficult for independent repair shops to fix the device.
Check out the full teardown here.
Image credit: iFixit
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