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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...
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
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.
It's perfectly logical: Making it easier to repair makes it cheaper (for the tech) to repair.
1. They sell more iPhones than they do MacBooks.
2. iPhones break more than MacBooks--there's #1, and also the fact that people carry their phones everywhere.
3. The most common breaking point of an iPhone is the screen.
4. Making the screen easier to remove makes it cheaper to replace.
MacBooks don't have nearly the number of accidents, so they can lock it down a bit more in their quest for nicely fitting and ultra-thin hardware.
If you can't convince them, convict them.
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
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
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