iFixit iPhone Air teardown
23 comments
·September 21, 2025londons_explore
dagmx
The Apple Watch Ultra 3 also has a fully 3D printed body casing. So they’re definitely quite confident in being able to build in quantity and have stability.
jazzyjackson
this would be metal sand laser sintering, these machines have fairly large print volumes, they can probably produce 1000 pieces at a time if not more (to be fair, it's also surprising to me, I haven't seen these machines used this way, just speculating it wouldn't be bad for such a tiny piece)
londons_explore
The dot pattern suggests to me it's more likely some inkjet printing a resin binder onto a metal powder.
geerlingguy
Thinness, I would presume. Titanium is hard for tooling.
adgjlsfhk1
titanium is notoriously annoying to work with so for a tiny part, it might just be easier and cheaper to print.
ksec
With that iPhone Air Mass distribution and internal component list I am very much looking forward to future iPhone Air.
SoC with TSMC A20 or A14, N2 and C2 ( I expect the two will merge into one at some point ), Tandem OLED, all with better Energy efficiency, Silicon Carbon Battery with double energy capacity. All of these tech are here or ready within next 3 - 5 years. It is more of a question of whether Apple is willing to pay for it to be mass produced.
With the energy efficiency gain and battery improvements I could see iPhone Air getting double the battery life. It would be better than even today's iPhone 17 Pro Max in 5 years time.
This opens up the door for iPhone Air Mini. I say mini but it will probably still be 5.9", but weight the same as iPhone Mini ( I assume that is something Apple will market it as ).
The only thing I wish and I dont know if it is feasible, is the Camera lans to be the same as back of the bump without much loss of photo quality. And I am willing to pay extra $100 to $200 for it. I just dont know if the tech is here in the near future.
wibbily
Does iFixit still post the traditional photo-slideshow teardowns? Their videos are fine but it’s easier to study the still images.
GCUMstlyHarmls
This is under "news", not a guides. Their "service manuals" have lots of photos as you would expect from them, I think this article is just a SEO hit while they prepare the diff.
https://www.ifixit.com/Device/iPhone_16e https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Nintendo+Switch+OLED+Model+Batt...
gertlex
What I think of as the classic teardown style by iFixit is not a service manual, e.g.:
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Microsoft+Surface+Pro+2+Tear...
lofaszvanitt
How can iFixit team up with the electronics barbarian bald guy? They immediately lost credibility.
GCUMstlyHarmls
Sorry, whats happening around 2:40-3:00, where he discharges (?) the adhesive tape? Or is he heating it with current?
imposterr
The new adhesives they use for their metal batteries can be undone by applying 9v for like a minute or something.
viewtransform
electrically-released adhesive.
https://hackaday.com/2024/09/22/hands-on-with-new-iphones-el...
jrockway
Looks like the battery is glued down with heat sensitive glue. Those are the terminals to connect to a built-in heater (i.e. piece of wire). This replaces a finicky 3m-command-strip-like thing. That's what I gather; I've never opened a modern iPhone.
wpm
I so desperately miss iFixIt’s older style pure text and picture only teardowns.
nsriv
This isn't a full teardown/repair guide, more a first-look video.
kaladin-jasnah
Don't know if this par for iFixit, but this sort of reads like an ad. To be fair, it sounds like the phone is not too bad in repairability. We should also have scores for software repairability and replacement.
Barbing
Good news.
Also -
Can anyone imagine what the impacts might be if Apple “Sherlocked” iFixIt and reviewers, and did teardowns, battery tests, etc. themselves?
londons_explore
I think apples lawyers would strongly advise against them publishing teardown videos.
As well as opening up liability and warranty issues when users consider those as 'instructions' to disassemble apple devices, it could also be seen by courts in some countries as publishing the design and internal details which would weaken Apples IP protections in some places.
esperent
It's very unlikely they would do that. They might be making decently repairable devices in a specific generation but if they release guides people will expect it in future generations too, and I doubt any company wants to hold themselves to this.
null
userbinator
The real question is how many parts have been serialised and impossible to replace without Apple's proprietary software? Will there be a large parts aftermarket?
3d printed titanium USB-C port, in a mass produced device??
3D printing is really unsuitable for mass production due to being so slow and therefore expensive.
I wonder what properties this port has that apple didn't feel they could achieve any other way?