
iPhone 5s Teardown - jonbaer
http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone+5s+Teardown/17383/1?revisionid=HEAD
======
RyanZAG
Interesting notes:

The battery is even harder to remove now and is glued in with excessive
amounts of adhesive.

There is no "M7 co-processor" [1] chip in the device - possibly it's just
marketing for some part of the A7?

The new fingerprint censor is a bunch of small capacitors. Possible cause for
concern if you plan to keep using the fingerprint access for the life of the
phone.

[1] [http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/15/apples-m7-motion-sensing-
co...](http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/15/apples-m7-motion-sensing-coprocessor-
is-the-wizard-behind-the-curtain-for-the-iphone-5s/)

~~~
czhiddy
> There is no "M7 co-processor" [1] chip in the device - possibly it's just
> marketing for some part of the A7?

Not sure why the iFixit guys jumped to the conclusion that it was possibly
marketing fluff. It is an SoC after all, the M7 doesn't have to be a separate
chip on the logic board.

~~~
leoc
The wording and the slide images at the 5C/5S presentation were definitely
calculated to give the impression that M7 was an actual chip with its own
package
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZac8af1L4E#t=619](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZac8af1L4E#t=619)
. Phil Schiller even explicitly says "the M7 chip" at 11m52s in the video
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZac8af1L4E#t=11m52s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZac8af1L4E#t=11m52s)
.

~~~
arrrg
Not really no. And anyway, it’s not like that’s a discussion worth having.
Where the M7 is does not matter at all. What matters is whether it’s there or
not and whether it does what Apple says it does. It being on the same die as
the A7 does not prevent anything Apple said it would do from happening.

~~~
leoc
Not really? So Phil Schiller saying "the new M7 chip" is not really meant to
suggest that the M7 is a chip? Pull the other one. Of course it doesn't really
matter, but evidently it mattered enough to Apple marketing for them to lie
about it.

~~~
nopal
I'm not sure they "lied."

[http://www.macrumors.com/2013/09/20/a7-processor-
manufacture...](http://www.macrumors.com/2013/09/20/a7-processor-manufactured-
by-samsung-m7-is-standalone-processor-from-nxp/)

~~~
leoc
Ok, then they truthfully claimed that the M7 is a separate chip; excellent.
Hopefully now we can stop pretending that is not what they claimed.

------
harrytuttle
Glue: technology shared with a $1000 and a $5 device but none in between.

I've just replaced the battery on my Lumia 820 after 9 months. They don't last
forever. Glue is inexcusable. If they had a half decent mechanical design,
foam pads would secure it in place when the device was assembled and allow
replacement.

I'd probably buy new Apple products if they weren't held together with glue.
I'm not investing lots of money in something intended to be disposable. My
last MBP (2010) was at least servicable. Now replaced with Lenovo kit as it's
possible to strip it down and replace anything.

~~~
Steko
"replaced with Lenovo kit as it's possible to strip it down and replace
anything."

Spoiler Alert: Lenovo Ultrabooks have glued in batteries. In fact the
Ultrabooks from almost every company (HP, Samsung, Dell, Toshiba, Asus,
Lenovo, Acer) have glued in batteries. This is because glued in batteries are
a useful innovation.

~~~
harrytuttle
Yeah I know that. I buy T-series. No glue.

They're not a useful innovation - they are an abhorrent consumerist
"disposalism" decision to pump sales, a safety nightmare (isolate it? nope),
purely a cost cutting exercise for the manufacturer and make it even harder to
recycle the nasty chemicals.

Don't give me the shit about it allowing smaller devices to be made either.
You can make smaller devices with removable batteries fine.

I'm a qualified EE for ref.

~~~
Osmium
Just playing Devil's advocate... (because I happen to agree with you that
batteries should be user-replaceable, especially with phone battery life as
bad as it is)

> I've just replaced the battery on my Lumia 820 after 9 months.

If your Lumia's battery needed to be replaced after 9 months, it was already
under warranty and should have been replaced by the manufacturer.

> a safety nightmare

You know what's also a safety nightmare? Batteries. Which is why stopping
third-parties from replacing certified batteries with random bought-off-eBay
batteries is definitely a good idea.

> purely a cost cutting exercise for the manufacturer and make it even harder
> to recycle the nasty chemicals

Apple does have a recycling programme where you can bring your old electronics
for free (and they'll even pay you for it with some products).
[http://www.apple.com/recycling/](http://www.apple.com/recycling/)

As for the glue itself, I imagine it's trivially removable by qualified techs
(there's probably a solvent that brings it right up?). And the excessive
amount we're seeing now could be equally due to initial assembly issues (c.f.
thermal paste a few years back) as much as any conscious decision.

I would definitely be interested in hearing more about why glue is bad though!

~~~
harrytuttle
> If your Lumia's battery needed to be replaced after 9 months, it was already
> under warranty and should have been replaced by the manufacturer.

It was. Nokia service sent me a new one out for nothing after a 5 minute phone
call.

> You know what's also a safety nightmare? Batteries. Which is why stopping
> third-parties from replacing certified batteries with random bought-off-eBay
> batteries is definitely a good idea.

The problem is more power isolation. If you get a short when you damage the
device etc (compression/impact/waterlogging), your typical LiPoly cell is
going to catch fire or at least knock out extremes of heat. This is very
hazardous. Removal batteries at least have a chance of power isolation.

My specific example here is my 2010 MBP which the battery was not glued (but
inaccessible). This got waterlogged after a drink was spilled on the table.
Turning it upside down revealed that capillary action around the base plate
had sucked up the water. It rained on the logic board. About 30 seconds later,
it caught fire. My only resort was to throw it in the garden and watch my
£1249 investment burn up.

> Apple does have a recycling programme where you can bring your old
> electronics for free

Yes they do but perhaps if you could replace the battery out of warranty, you
wouldn't need to recycle it :)

~~~
arrrg
Apple will replace the battery out of warranty no problem. Their laptop
batteries are competitively priced (no idea about the iPhones), i.e. replacing
the rMBP battery costs $199 (including labor), a comparable battery from
Lenovo for T-series laptops costs $179.

~~~
harrytuttle
Well it's not comparable. I'm sitting on a new 9-cell that cost me $129
equivalent and has 8.5 hours left :)

When that runs out, I can take it out and stick the other one in out of my
bag.

~~~
harrytuttle
Downvoted by an Apple fanboy no doubt!

------
001sky
_The sensor technology, developed by AuthenTec and bought by Apple a year ago,
reportedly stores your fingerprints locally, so giving your iPhone the finger
will not make it all the way back to Cupertino._

------
callmeed
iFixit is awesome and they're building a new office right next to mine. Go
SLO, go Poly!

~~~
sjwright
As soon as they finish building their new offices, they must do a teardown and
score it for repairability.

~~~
kwiens
We're actually fixing up an old, old building. So the project is really the
biggest repair we've ever attempted. And we're doing everything we can to
leave infrastructure exposed so it's easily repairable.

But the cabinets will be nailed to the wall.

~~~
adestefan
Just don't glue down the flooring.

------
Ellipsis753
They seem to have to just embedded a Youtube video
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzuRDujwb_A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzuRDujwb_A))
but cut off the bottom of the video so that you can't jump around in the video
or tell that's it's from Youtube. I can't see the bottom of the image or some
of the text. Not cool.

~~~
deweerdt
If you click on 'read more', right bottom of the video, you'll be able to see
the controls.

~~~
Ellipsis753
I didn't see that. Thank you.

------
philfreo
Anyone have any explanation for why the different color iPhones (gold vs
silver) would have different batteries?

~~~
sjwright
Redundancy of supply. It would be insane for Apple's supply chain to be halted
because the supplier of one part failed to deliver for whatever reason. Nearly
every major and minor component in an iPhone would be second-sourced, else
they'd need to accumulate a month's supply of that part in a warehouse...

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_source](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_source)

It's the same reason MacBooks can ship with displays from either Samsung or
LG, with SSDs from either Samsung or Toshiba. It's pretty much a lottery, and
you won't know which till you run _About This Mac_.

~~~
jng
I don't see the name of the manufacturer for the display or SSD in "About this
Mac". Am I missing something?

~~~
dijit
hit the 'System Report' button.

------
Zoepfli
To kill the TouchID sensor, but keep the home-button functionality intact, and
keep the design the same, does anyone know if one can just cut that TouchID
cable?

In other words: Where is the physical home switch located, inside the TouchID
assembly or below it, on the main board?

------
UnoriginalGuy
I'm very confused by their 6/10 score.

They gave tons of phones and other devices just as difficult to teardown far
lower scores than that, some as low as 1:

[http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/HTC+One+Teardown/13494/1?sing...](http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/HTC+One+Teardown/13494/1?singlePage)

Just compare that HTC One teardown with the iPhone 5S, while the HTC One is
"worse" there isn't much in it. So if they were being consistent the iPhone 5S
should have no more than a 2-3 on their scale.

Then we have the Nexus 4 which got the same score (6) as the 5S but doesn't
have things like glue holding the battery in place and a taking it apart
requires "minimum effort":

[http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nexus+4+Teardown/11781/3](http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Nexus+4+Teardown/11781/3)

The iPhone 5 got a fixit score of 7 which is even more odd. I guess they
knocked off one point for the glue, but again seems like Apple's scores are
getting bumped by 2-4 points relative to other teardowns they have done.

[http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone+5+Teardown/10525/1?sin...](http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/iPhone+5+Teardown/10525/1?singlePage)

~~~
Steko
You complain about the other articles but did you even read them or did you
just ctrl-f for 'glue' and base your conclusions on that?

"compare that HTC One teardown"

HTC One link:

 _absence of any exterior screws_

 _remove large foam padding_

 _With no clear path to entry, we decide to get a little more creative with
our approach…for a good half hour._

 _Last time we checked, "gutting" is not a term that shows up very often in
the service manual of a repair-friendly device._

 _We won 't lie, getting to this point was an arduous and daunting task. The
amount of work required to separate the rear aluminum case and the front case
was immense._

 _copper shielding is a pain to deal with during reassembly_

Etc.

"Nexus 4 which got the same score (6)"

TFA: _Nexus 4 Repairability Score: 7 out of 10_

