The good news is that phone has had a major internal redesign with a new L-shaped board enabling better battery access and improved thermal management, the repair specialists find…
iPhone 16
A highlight is the change that means the battery does not have pull tabs but uses a special adhesive that debonds on-demand when you apply an electric current. Basically, you hot-wire the iPhone…
And on thermal management – particularly relevant with the increasing use of AI – iFixit writes:
“How well the iPhone can dissipate heat has always mattered: When the processor gets too hot, it has to throttle down and reduce performance. In this new world of AI, with on-device machine learning models, performance is going to matter more than ever. Faster models are more intelligent and can give you better suggestions or photo enhancements.”
“Apple has significantly changed up their approach to dissipating heat from the main A18 processor with a new, ferrous heat sink. In this photo it looks like an EMI shield, but it’s actually a solid block of material. This sink sits inside the mainboard sandwich, soldered to the inside of the RF half of the logic board—which has an L-shaped footprint, similar to iPhones past and the 15 Plus from last year. Thermal paste transfers heat from the A18 to this sink.”
DIY repair
And so the final verdict is positive. It’s the first time since iPhone 5, says iFixit, that the majority of parts within the phone can be replaced with other OEM parts. It’s described as a “Huge win for DIY repair”.
The final “Repairability Score” for the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus is a provisional seven out of ten.
You can check out the full teardown, which includes a look at Apple’s Haptic button, in the video below.
See also: iFixit delivers retrospective kicking to Apple for iPhone repairability
