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.

Comments

Well there goes all my productivity for today

[mozumder]

was trying to concentrate here..

And since when did girls get on the internet?

Summary fails to give final score (7/10)

[Scowler]

umm, kinda obvious fact to omit from the summary, that whole ifixit repairability score...

F$^%$ers

[Anonymous Coward]

They did something for some reason that wasn't just to screw over the sheep. Now I can't hate them as much.

Re:F$^%$ers

[TimHunter]

So are you saying that nothing should ever change about the iPhone connector? Once god-awful 30-pin, always god-awful 30-pin? So that nobody ever has to buy new peripherals?

Or are you saying that it's okay if they change it (and force everybody to buy new peripherals) but only if they change it to something "compatible"? Note that micro USB isn't doesn't support the functionality the iPhone needs. See http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-lightning-vs-micro-usb-2012-9

Re:F$^%$ers

[tlhIngan]

Here's something extra to hate about them. They took away the god-awful proprietary 30 pin connector, and replaced it with a new god-awful smaller proprietary connector that remains incompatible with the rest of the world. Nobody's old apple-y devices, cables, or chargers will work with their new phones; and non-apple cables or devices will remain incompatible. Yay, Apple, your i5 adopters all get to replace a couple hundred dollars worth of peripherals each.

Well, there comes time to change. The dock connector is nearly a decade old, and being called to do stuff it was never envisioned to do so pins are heavily multiplexed and you still need to have protection circuits (after all, someone could still plug in a +48V firewire cable to it, even if the pins ar eused elsewhere, it still needs ot handle it gracefully). And other stuff get obsolete - do you really need composite, s-video and component video outputs these days? And other stuff gets bodged in (VGA, HDMI, USB host) In the end, the connector's a mess.

The new cable would at least be a bit more future-proof (the dock connector was designed for a time when iPods were king, and smartphones were a race between Blackberry, PalmOS, and WInMo, tablets were running Windows You can only expand it so much before it starts becoming a legacy maintainance nightmare.

So a new connector is needed, and it should take in mind it will have to handle stuff that may be coming soon (e.g., 3D, 4K video formats) as well as stuff that no one's thought of yet (because changing connectors is painful). It should also support what made the old connector good - an easy way to get line-out and headphone audio, an easy way to control the iPod and an easy way to get video.

So the best way to future proof it would be a connector that basically adapts some sort of bidirectional digital signalling system with adapters that produce the final output desired. If some fancy new way to hook up an iDevice to TVs comes out, a new adapter is all it takes (and supporting software), rather than having to figure out how to multiplex pins even more.

It's probably also why the Lightning to dock adapters are so bloody expensive - they've got signalling chips that transform the digital into stndard analog audio, serial control , etc that the old connector has).

Re:F$^%$ers

[Cinder6]

Well, this article supposedly covers some of it: http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-lightning-vs-micro-usb-2012-9

However, not owning a phone with micro-USB, I'm not sure how accurate it is. Anyone care to chime in?

Re:F$^%$ers

[Mike Buddha]

Note that micro USB isn't doesn't support the functionality the iPhone needs. See http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-iphone-lightning-vs-micro-usb-2012-9

Neither does the Lightning connector. No ipod controls. No analog audio out. No 12-volt charging.

So why is it that we need this new connector again? One that does less than the previous one but will require all new cables and accessories?

Pentalobe is not proprietary

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Pentalobe is not proprietary

[Baloroth]

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.

I call BS on this, everything I've googled is stating that Pentalobe is a new design that Apple came up with. It is very similar to the Torx screw, but incompatible by design. Unless you have some link to prove that pentalobe is not a new design, I'm gonna say you are shilling or mistaken.

Data comm speed - guess LTW means nothing...

[SuperKendall]

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.

Re:Data comm speed - guess LTW means nothing...

[immaterial]

I'm surprised you didn't catch this. There HAS been a significant upgrade to the speakers and microphones in the iPhone 5 (and to top it off, Apple is working with carriers to improve audio quality during calls as well).

http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/09/12/iphone-5-three-mics/

Complies with spirit

[SuperKendall]

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.

Re:Sooo...

[Cinder6]

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.

Flavors of Spinal Tap

[Chibi Merrow]

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.

Re:Flavors of Spinal Tap

[0100010001010011]

I believe it can also be inserted either way. Micro USB is a horrible design. (And USB as a whole). Someone completely failed Poka Yoke design when designing it. Micro-USB is just slightly different when flipped upside down. Sometimes with MicroUSB I can't tell if the connection is just snug or if it's being inserted backwards. I often have to double check visually. Something my parents wouldn't be able to do because of their eye sight.

Re:Perhaps a better screw

[pubwvj]

You're thinking about it the wrong way. The new screw in each case is a challenge, a hurdle, an intelligence test. If you haven't got what it takes to figure out how to open the device then perhaps you shouldn't.

Re:Most things still work

[SuperKendall]

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.

Re:Most things still work

[SuperKendall]

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.