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iPhone 5 Teardown Shows Boost To Repairability
iFixit has posted a detailed teardown of the new iPhone 5. While the casing still uses Apple's proprietary pentalobe fasteners, the good news is that Apple has made the screen much easier to remove. Once the fasteners have been removed, the screen will lift out easily through the use of a suction cup. The screens are by far the most common parts of iPhones to break, and this change turns a complicated 38-step procedure that takes about 45 minutes at minimum into a quick, 5-10 minute job. The teardown also shows the iPhone 5 battery to be very similar to the iPhone 4S's, suggesting that the improvements to battery life come from other hardware and software changes. We get a look at the new A6 processor running the phone, which is a custom design based on ARMv7. iFixit also looks at the Lightning connector assembly; unfortunately, it includes the loudspeaker, bottom microphone, Wi-Fi antenna, and headphone jack as well, so fixing any one of those parts individually will be difficult. Whatever you think of Apple's decision to move to Lightning instead of micro-USB, it seems their switch away from the 30-pin connecter was necessitated by size constraints.
was trying to concentrate here..
And since when did girls get on the internet?
umm, kinda obvious fact to omit from the summary, that whole ifixit repairability score...
They did something for some reason that wasn't just to screw over the sheep. Now I can't hate them as much.
Pentalobe fasteners are not a big deal. New and different screws, nuts and bolts are all the rage. It's been happening for, what, the last century? More? Sometimes they're actually an improvement and stick in the industry as the next great thing. The tools become available very quickly, or some of us make our own...
Will the lightning->micro usb adapter be free of charge (naive,and against the spirit of the EU directive), or how will this device comply with EN 301489-34 directive?
They have nice hardware designs. If only all electronics were that well made.
Too bad they're such assholes though... it means I won't be buying one.
I've had pentalobe drivers since before Jobs went back to apple and at least 15 years before the iPhone ever existed.
Just because you aren't used to seeing them on all the crap you buy designed to be as cheap as possible.
Pentalobe bolts are about a thousand times more reliable than Phillips heads, which are DESIGNED TO STRIP WHEN CRAPPY FACTORY WORKERS OVER TORQUE the screw/bolt during assembly.
Every time you call pentalobe proprietary you just make your ignorance and inner fanboy obvious.
Not considering the above mention of score, data comm speed are the same and multimedia roughly the same.
The inclusion of LTE alone marks that statement wrong.
Oh and playing music and sound quality? Hasn't changed much since the 3S
Which is why some people buy better headphones.
It's a phone, not a movie theater. The built in speakers are always worse than better headphone options.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The real point behind the directive is that over time people just have USB chargers they can use with anything, right?
Well the iPhone ships with a USB charger. Sure the port at the other end is different but in the end you can have one charger for many devices, with just a few cables.
An important point to consider is that if you just stick yourself with pure USB end to end, you cannot get as much power through the system to charge quickly.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
They're making their smart phones more repairable and their MacBooks less repairable? I'm not following the line of logic.
Because not everyone will use it. Everyone however does use mini-usb on something, and mini-usb phones sell far more total units. Apple should at least support that without an adaptor.
I thought the EU mandated all new phones to have the same USB connector to end the huge e-waste of discarded chargers with proprietary connectors.
Wait, let me guess: Apple got some sort of bullshit waiver for being totally cool and tubular.
5.4Wh - at 3.9oz. My Android phone with extended 9.7Wh battery weighs 6.5oz. Sorry, I'll take the additional battery lifetime for the weight.
So you need to remove fractured glass with a suction cup? Let me know how that works out for you...
Sure I sold you robot insurance. But you were attacked by a cyborg. Not covered.
The gist of that article is "Lightning is better because it has 8 pins! 8 is more than 5!"
And 11 is louder than 10...
It's nonsense. You can put audio and video over micro-USB (see: MHL), and the standard specifically allows for sending more power over the cable when a device is using its own charger, so the argument "You couldn't charge the iPad!" is BS. The Nexus 7, Kindle, Galaxy Tab, Transformer, etc. all charge fine over micro-USB based chargers.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
I'm nearly certain that "repairibility" is patented.
No, Apple has the patent on "repairability" which is why the summary was forced to misspell it.
Free Martian Whores!
...wasn't one of the bugbears I've been reading about elsewhere, the proprietary connectors Apple seems to love using? This is why I won't buy Apple: until they use a standard connector, I won't go fucking near one.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
As for chargers, all of them will work since Apple has always shipped USB chargers, and all of the other USB chargers will work with the new phone too.
This is simply not true. Only one end of the chargers Apple uses is USB. The other end is proprietary, and Apple charges a $4-per-connector royalty fee for any accessory that uses their proprietary connector.
If they would have made their new connector compatible with micro usb by taking the form factor and adding proprietary features they desired, people could use their existing micro usb cables (which over the last few years has become THE defacto standard for all non-apple devices) to charge their iphones. Instead, when the cable that comes with the phone goes bad or gets left at home, and an iphone user has to buy a compatible cable to charge their phones, and Apple gets another $4.
Go to a store with an electronics section and find the mobile phone chargers. You'll find there are two classes or chargers; chargers that charge everything and chargers that charge everything but idevices. The chargers that charge everything but idevices will cost about $5 less.
Apple having these proprietary connectors is all about milking their captive market out of every last dime they have.
If you don't mind being nickle and dimed like that, that's fine, but don't delude yourself into thinking Apple's connector is about anything other than sucking money out of it's customer's wallets.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
This is simply not true. Only one end of the chargers Apple uses is USB.
It is true because ANY USB charger will work with that Apple cable to charge an iPhone 5.
If they would have made their new connector compatible with micro usb by taking the form factor and adding proprietary features they desired
Then we would have a cable with a worse connector at one end. To me it's absurd to settle for a USB micro connector, in the future that connector will limit speed of transfer and other things devices can do even if you attach proprietary meanings to some pins... the connectors are simple smaller than on the new Apple connector.
You'll find there are two classes or chargers; chargers that charge everything and chargers that charge everything but idevices.
This is not an iPhone problem.
And further shows why USB SUCKS as a standard for anything.
Generally though, iPhones will charge with ANY USB charger. It's iPads that have more issues as they need more power.
Apple having these proprietary connectors is all about milking their captive market out of every last dime they have.
And has nothing at all do to with having a more capable connector with the capacity for much higher data transfer speeds, of course. It's purely to screw YOU even though it represents a tremendous amount of extra work for them.
Mission accomplished Apple! Toadlife considers himself screwed.
If you don't mind being nickle and dimed like that
Nickel and dimed how? I have a cable, perhaps two that I use for the life of the device. For the new connector I have an adaptor I use when I need an adaptor, the need for which diminishes over time. This is not a "nickel and dime" recurring bleed, this is a one time charge to adapt to a connector that is is better and simpler - than either the older iPhone connector OR Micro-USB.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You don't need an adaptor, just the standard Apple cable. It attaches to any USB device to charge. Mini-USB isn't a standard either, I have a mini-uSB cable for my hard drives that does not work with my camera because it has a DIFFERENT mini-USB connector. So as far as I'm concerned when using USB you already have to deal with several cables anyway and the Apple cable is just one more.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It may be improved but in the end the built in speakers will simply not be as good as even the cheaper headphones. If for no other reason than speakers on a phone will always be too close together to get any kind of stereo separation.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Mini-USB is a set of standards.
I actually meant micro-usb 5 pin. That as far as I can tell all android phones use.
Pretty good take on the whole cable thing. http://brockerhoff.net/blog/2012/09/13/boom-2/ From the article: People keep asking why Apple didn’t opt for the micro-USB connector. The answer is simple: that connector isn’t smart enough. It has only 5 pins: +5V, Ground, 2 digital data pins, and a sense pin, so most of the dock connector functions wouldn’t work – only charging and syncing would. Also, the pins are so small that no current plug/connector manufacturer allows the 2A needed for iPad charging. Note that this refers to individual pins; I’ve been told that several devices manage to get around this by some trick or other, but I couldn’t find any standard for doing so.
Of course, I have even more USB micro-B cables.
So do I. And the other kinds of micro-USB cables, something like five or six possible ends... I have a micro-USB cable for my hard drive, a slightly different tiny micro-USB connector for my camera. And if I want to plug in a hard drive dock why THAT's a whole other kind of USB connector. I have a travel USB adaptor with several different ends to attach.
So how is that any better? The Apple cable as far as I'm concerned is just one of the several cables I'll need to attach and/or charge a device over USB anyway. The world of USB is not the world of a single cable, it never has been.
If USB had ever really had a connector standard I might agree with you, although universally all of the micro-USB connectors are terrible in quality and are practically designed to degrade. But there is no REAL micro-USB standard, the cables are confusing an I'm happy to have at least one USB cable I can actually tell at a glance is for sure one of the ones I need to pack on a trip.
Do you know how many iPhone 5 cables I have? Absolutely none!
And people owning an iPhone 5 have one, as many as they need. You obviously do not need one.
And if the iPhone 5 owners get the Micro-USB adaptor they can just carry that with them and use all the same cables you use.
And, no, they don't need a "special dock cable" to do video out or whatever Apple's bullshit reason is for that.
And USB 3.0 connections as is rumored to happen with the new dock connector? Oh that's right, you are screwed because you picked devices that standardized on an ancient IO standard with the worst connector design ever devised by man.
The new connector has a wide range of possible I/O interfaces, video is only a tiny example. Apple has a connector designed for future I/O needs, not one struggling just to keep up because it was designed many years before modern devices. In the end remember this; you are using a connector based on a GOVERNMENT choice to standardize on, rather than a connector designed by the industry to be future proof.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
And has nothing at all do to with having a more capable connector with the capacity for much higher data transfer speeds
No, it doesn't.
even though it represents a tremendous amount of extra work for them.
You honestly believe that inventing an entirely new connector takes less work that taking an existing standard form factor and adding pins to suit your needs?
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
The only thing I have ever seen a micro-USB on is phones. The apple dock connector however has become common on clock radios, speakers & a plethora of docks. As micro-USB does not have enough pins for some dock functions, is not reversible, cannot furnish the wattage necessary to quick charge an iPad & should not need to be changed to accommodate USB3, it looks to me to be a good move. Change now, give an adapter for the old devices & do not need to change for another decade.
Do you really believe that the current Micro-USB connector has much longer to live given that it cannot do USB3? Have you seen the abomination that is micro-USB3 with a dual socket structure wider than a USB type A? Have you never had problems with micro-USB being hard to insert the right way? Hell, I've seen a number of normal sockets where the shelf holding the contacts was snapped off & micro-USB damaged by people inserting them the wrong way. USB is not a great connector & within a few years most phones will have moved on to something else anyway.The only thing I have ever seen a micro-USB on is phones. The apple dock connector however has become common on clock radios, speakers & a plethora of docks. As micro-USB does not have enough pins for some dock functions, is not reversible, cannot furnish the wattage necessary to quick charge an iPad & should not need to be changed to accommodate USB3, it looks to me to be a good move. Change now, give an adapter for the old devices & do not need to change for another decade.
Do you really believe that the current Micro-USB connector has much longer to live given that it cannot do USB3? Have you seen the abomination that is micro-USB3 with a dual socket structure wider than a USB type A? Have you never had problems with micro-USB being hard to insert the right way? Hell, I've seen a number of normal sockets where the shelf holding the contacts was snapped off & micro-USB damaged by people inserting them the wrong way. USB is not a great connector & within a few years most phones will have moved on to something else anyway.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
No, it doesn't.
You're right, because it ALSO results in a connector you can insert without having to look to see if it's in the right way, vastly superior for real people.
You honestly believe that inventing an entirely new connector takes less work that taking an existing standard form factor and adding pins to suit your needs?
Obviously not since my point is that people who believe Apple invented the new connector just to screw people, do not realize the amount of work that goes into building a whole new connector vs. simply overlaying functionality on top of an existing connector.
Apple would not go to extra work just to screw people over, as much as Apple haters would love us all to believe the opposite. Apple is doing what they have always done, taking people off an obsolete system (old iPhone cable, Micro-USB) before people have quite realized the old system is obsolete - as was the case for floppy drives or internal CD-ROM drives.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
While this is most definitely great news for the DIY crowd and the independent repair shops, I don't think it was necessarily done to make things easier on us. Not trash-talking Apple at all for this move, but this is going to save them a metric shitton of money in the long run.
Apple replaces/repairs so many devices with cracked screens that bringing the repair time down from 45 minutes to practically nothing will make the profit margins on their warranties and AppleCare coverage skyrocket. And makes those of us who do these things for fun and profit very happy. Smart business move from all standpoints.
Mini-USB is a set of standards.
Being a set with more than one element means there's always room for one more.
I actually meant micro-usb 5 pin. That as far as I can tell all android phones use.
What about people that do not have any Android phones? It's just as weird for them to have to get the five-pin as it is for an Apple user to have to get an Apple cable. I didn't have ANY micro-usb five pin cables until my camera came with one; it went missing and I had to get another even though I had a slew of OTHER micro-usb cables from connecting hard drives and the like to my computer. I have a box downstairs with a huge number of orphan computer cables and for me the five-pin was the least common USB cable I had.
Nothing about the Apple cable is any more annoying than the horrible USB situation for normal non-technical consumers. At least with the Apple cable you can tell which one is for the phone at a glance.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Micro-USB 5 pin also works on my old Sanyo dumbphone, my Nook, my wireless headset, and my Nikon point & shoot. One plug for four devices (since the dumbphone got retired when I finally got an Android phone about six months ago. The only other things I plug in to charge are my laptop and my 3DS.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
Because not everyone will use it. Everyone however does use mini-usb on something, and mini-usb phones sell far more total units. Apple should at least support that without an adaptor.
Why? Is this a chicken and Apple-doesn't-support-it problem? Where if Apple doesn't support it, nobody actually does? Like NFC?
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
This is simply not true. Only one end of the chargers Apple uses is USB.
It is true because ANY USB charger will work with that Apple cable to charge an iPhone 5.
No, it is absolutely not true because none of my iPhones or iDevices have ever been able to recharge from "dumb" USB chargers. I've had USB cigarette lighter power jacks for years in my vehicles. They used to work fine to charge various Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Motorola phones. The Moto phones were especially convenient to charge anywhere because they had mini-USB ports on the phone ends, so the ubiquitous mini-USB cables were a perfect fit. But once I got an iPhone, the dumb chargers were no longer good enough for it. My choices were to either trot over to the Apple store and buy expensive new incompatible crap with 30 pin connectors, or poorly made junk from some third party.
Look at the use cases for the new dock connector that you're defending. 75% or more of the connections anyone makes to an iPhone are solely for charging purposes. USB works fine for that (or at least it would if Apple would remove the circuitry that limits its ability to charge from a dumb power source.) Over the remaining uses, most connections are to host computers for syncing and charging. That's 100% USB today, even to a Mac. There are a few connections to docking media players and car stereos, so a docking station makes sense, right? Actually, no. They transfer the music data and control information over USB. Watching video on your Apple TV? Finally, something that isn't USB - except for the part where it's wireless. No dock connector needed at all. So what use case exists where anyone actually needs a proprietary dock connector? Making money.
This is not a "nickel and dime" recurring bleed, this is a one time charge to adapt to a connector that is is better and simpler - than either the older iPhone connector OR Micro-USB.
I'd like to point out for the counting-impaired that this is now a second one-time charge, or as everyone else calls the practice "nickel and diming". At some point you have to look beyond the supposed "oh this might make a potential future technology perfect in every way" and look at the reality - Apple makes their customers bleed so often that their fans are cutters.
I realize nobody will convince you that the new proprietary connector is horseshit, because you don't want to hear that Apple is enjoying screwing you. Fine, close your ears, but don't expect the rest of us to believe that shit.
John
But once I got an iPhone, the dumb chargers were no longer good enough for it.
I have several cheap USB cigarette lighter chargers. Some I got as giveaways at conventions. EVERY SINGLE ONE has been able to charge every iPhone I've ever had.
Can you give us the model of any USB charger that cannot charge an iPhone? It's absurd because a USB charger HAS to provide the minimum specced power to whatever is plugged in and that is enough for an iPhone.
You may have had bad cables or something, but the chargers should have worked for the iPhone. I have never ever plugged an iPhone into a working USB port and not had it charge.
Again iPads are different, but we are talking iPhones.
75% or more of the connections anyone makes to an iPhone are solely for charging purposes. USB works fine for that (or at least it would if Apple would remove the circuitry that limits its ability to charge from a dumb power source.
And again, there has NEVER been such a limitation.
So what use case exists where anyone actually needs a proprietary dock connector? Making money.
Cars as mentioned. MINI for example uses the connection to have the phone talk to the car and present a custom display for its won apps and apps like Pandora.
Standalone radios (because real people don't listen to music over Bluetooth unless they have a gun to their head).
Custom gaming controllers (although a lot of those have been bluetooth).
Coming soon: 3D headsets.
Basically anything that would like to use the iPhone as a display and interact more directly with it.
The fact that YOU cannot imagine a use for a high-speed IO off a mobile device does not mean there are not a ton of good uses for it, as you will see over the coming years with more accessories...
I realize nobody will convince you that the new proprietary connector is horseshit, because you don't want to hear that Apple is enjoying screwing you.
That's odd, I was just thinking how strange it is that a Slashdot reader was unable to understand technical benefits of faster IO. It's almost like you enjoy the little box of ignorance you choose to live in under the bridge of modern living with advances whooshing by above you.
Enjoy your USB buggy grandpa!
I'll let you have the last response because you really have nothing more to say I can imagine wanting to read.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You're confusing micro USB and the older mini-USB. The latter isn't really a good standard, as it puts the wear-prone springy contacts into the device instead of the cable.
Like I said, in my original post, the micro-USB spec allows for more power to be pushed over the wire when the device is paired with its own charger...
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them