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iPhone 5 Teardown Shows Boost To Repairability

Posted by Soulskill on from the if-it's-broke,-fix-it dept.

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.

7 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Well there goes all my productivity for today by mozumder · · Score: 5, Funny

    was trying to concentrate here..

    And since when did girls get on the internet?

  2. F$^%$ers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    1. Re:F$^%$ers by TimHunter · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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

    2. Re:F$^%$ers by tlhIngan · · Score: 5, Informative

      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).

    3. Re:F$^%$ers by Cinder6 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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?

      --
      If you can't convince them, convict them.
  3. Flavors of Spinal Tap by Chibi+Merrow · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  4. Re:Data comm speed - guess LTW means nothing... by immaterial · · Score: 5, Informative

    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/