iFixit – a company specializing in the sale of spare parts for Apple devices and more – has started the teardown of the iPhone 13 Pro. A quick teardown was carried out as part of a livestream event and more details on the procedure teardown and internals of the device will arrive in the next few hours and days. This article has been updated with the complete disassembly and traditional repairability score found by scrolling down this article.
As usual, an X-ray was first taken of the two devices (iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max). X-rays show L-shaped batteries, stabilizing magnets in the camera sensors, tiny logic boards, and smaller Taptic Engines than the previous generation.
The opening procedure is similar to the one already seen for the iPhone 12 Pro. Once the display has been lifted, the touch screen digitizer, the cable that connects the display and the Taptic Engine can be seen, actually smaller than that of the iPhone 12 Pro. The earpiece, previously on the back of the display, is embedded in the chassis, an element that should simplify the replacement of the display.
The notch is 20% narrower than that of the iPhone 12 Pro, the result of the integration of the Flooud Illuminator (fill light that allows recognition even in the dark) and dot projector in a single module.
The camera block (array) looks similar to that of the iPhone 12 Pro. The "L" battery is labeled 11.97 Wh (higher than the 10.78 Wh of the iPhone 12), with obvious advantages in terms of autonomy .
At the time of writing, iFixit has not yet finished the teardown (here the link with photos and step-by-step instructions) and has not indicated the score (from 0 to 10) in terms of repairability. However, the new phones are not complicated to open, it is possible to replace the batteries, the display and other elements, reasons why the repairability score should not be too low.
Updated with parts list and repairability score
Now that disassembly is complete, iFixit specialists provide a complete list of identified components and final repairability score. The memory is provided by the 6GB SK Hynix LPDDR4X chip, supported by several proprietary chips designed by Apple for power management, Ultra Wide Band UWB technology and communications, while the modem is the Qualcomm SDX60M component. As for storage, Apple uses a NAND Flash chip made by Kioxia.
Interestingly, on the eve of the introduction of the terminal, Ming Chi Kuo announced that a Qualcomm modem chip capable of supporting satellite communications is used in the iPhone 13, but the iFixit teardown found no trace of this function. If it is really present, it is still a latent function, not exploited by Apple: according to advances it could arrive with the iPhone 14 in 2022.
Even though the Face ID components are now separate from the screen components, a display replacement intervention by unauthorized centers renders Face ID unusable. Taking into account this problem, the double glass and the waterproofing that complicates some interventions, iFixit assigns the iPhone 13 Pro a repairability score of 5 out of 10.