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Hardware iPhone News

Repair firms perform first teardowns of iPhone 6, 6 Plus handsets, report initial findings

As per usual, the cool cats at iFixit performed a full teardown of Apple’s iPhone 6 Plus handsets only hours after getting their hands on them at the first launches around the world. Over in another corner of the woods, Japanese blog Mac Otakara performed its own teardown of the smaller 4.7-inch iPhone 6 handset.

Per AppleInsider, the Mac Otakara teardown revealed an intricately designed interior with all-new components squeezing into a slightly revamped layout.

As seen in the video below, Apple was forced to make concessions in designing the ultra thin handset. For example, the 1,810mAh battery is now fastened to the aluminum chassis via adhesive tabs, a major change that sits somewhere between removable batteries from past iPhones and glued-in power packs from the current iPad lineup.


A variety of components have been redesigned or otherwise tweaked to fit within the 6.9-millimeter chassis, including the ear speaker, vibrator, iSight camera module and display, which now appears to be bonded to the front cover glass.

In a piece-by-piece analysis of the parts, it’s apparent that a majority of previously rumored components leaks were indeed accurate, including reports concerning the iPhone’s logic board, Touch ID, metal harnesses, flex cables and more.

The iFixit report has also commenced its customary live dissection of the 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus, which has confirmed rumors of a 2,915mAh battery rated at 3.82 V and 11.1 Watt hours.

As with the 4.7-inch model, the iPhone 6 Plus features a relocated — and redesigned — vibrator motor, which now sits to the right of the battery. Apple appears to be using a linear oscillating type vibrator instead of the rotating mass unit found in the iPhone 5s. Unlike the linear oscillator found in iPhone 4S, the iPhone 6 Plus unit is rectangular.

Moving on to the logic board, Apple’s new A8 SoC is easily spotted just above the phone’s nano-SIM reader, while a Hynix NAND flash module resides on the flip side. Other notables include Qualcomm’s MDM9625M LTE-Advanced modem with support for carrier aggregation, two baseband chips from Avago, Triquint amps and silicon from usual players Skyworks and Broadcom.

The repair firm gave the iPhone 6 Plus a repairability score of 7 out of 10, citing the use of pentalobe screws and the fact that Apple does not share repair information outside of its authorized service network.