Apple Discusses iPhone 14's All-New Internal Design With Increased Repairability

[CarAnalogy]

The iPhone 14 plus is the most underrated iPhone: it’s light, big, powerful, repairable, durable, with a great battery life.

The funny thing is, you’re not wrong. Those things are good about it. In a vacuum it’s not bad.

But when looked at in context of the rest of the lineup, the way it’s marketed, and the things they excluded from it, suddenly one realizes that it could have been a much better value and doesn’t quite make sense.

 

[SSDGUY]

The fastest way to fix a broken iPhone is to buy a new one. All or this ifixit guff really grinds my gears. We want thin gorgeous devices not thick repairable bricks.

I consider my 14 Pro a thick (and heavy) brick, but it's apparently not very repairable.

 

[dumastudetto]

I consider my 14 Pro a thick (and heavy) brick, but it's apparently not very repairable.

It is repairable, which is why you consider it an unnecessarily thick and heavy brick.

 

[GraXXoR]

Who cares if it’s easy to repair when people can’t get spare parts and self repairs cost the same as sending it into Apple.

They are shysters, only interested in their shareholders. The no longer seem to care about the customer experience (which used to feel premium and dare I say, even special at times,) let alone care about their customers themselves.

Worst of all, politicians and “journalists” have had the wool pulled over their eyes and now believe Apple are supporting Right To Repair, which this was designed to specifically undermine.

 

[Jamie0003]

This is good stuff, and I hope all apples devices are easy to repair going forward.

A few months ago, the battery in my 2015 MacBook finally gave up the ghost. Due to it’s age apple wouldn’t replace it for me and I didn’t want to spend much so I had a go at it myself.

I regret that decision, I have no idea what I did wrong but it was a nightmare to get into and now won’t boot. What a waste of a perfectly good device, I have decided I won’t be buying a new machine unless it’s possible to replace the battery myself relatively easily.

So far, none of apples iPads or macs have this, so i’m just making do without for now.

 

[Joe Dohn]

I regret that decision, I have no idea what I did wrong but it was a nightmare to get into and now won’t boot. What a waste of a perfectly good device, I have decided I won’t be buying a new machine unless it’s possible to replace the battery myself relatively easily.

You could try showing it to a profissional technician so they will give a quote to you and let you know what happened.

 

[HiVolt]

It's all nice and dandy that its easier to physically take apart. The sad part is that all relevant often replaced parts are serialized and need Apple's blessing to replace.

 

[bodonnell202]

But… the pro is supposed to be their best

I suspect this is part of Apple's longer term strategy, as this is likely to be the design for the non Pro iPhones for at least a couple generations. Next year with the 15 lineup the 15s will get a fairly easy update with an A16, updated screen with dynamic Island, new main camera and new colors and that is it, while the effort is focused on a full redesign for the 15 Pros.

 

[SRemington]

While this is a small step towards a more circular economy, despite all of Apple’s good will and ambitions, it does not solve their main sustainability problem, the one they will never dare to face or mention: Their entire business model is based on annual hardware refreshes, with millions of people expected to waste resources on buying new tech toys every year (no matter how incremental and bs the actual improvements between generations are).

For as long as they aren’t able to produce products with at least 80-90 % recycled parts and/or raw materials, they won’t be able to make any significant progress towards decarbonizing their operations. All their current PR talk regarding sustainability? This is just a big hot air balloon. And it’s the same with every other major tech company (not talking about FairPhone etc. here - they are so small that they don’t make any significant contributions to global net zero).

 

[East India Company]

Oh the irony..

 

[69Mustang]

I stopped watching anything iFixIt after their Apple Watch videos from last year. They didn't even try, it was as if they were wanting them to get low scores.

Wait, you stopped watching because a device not designed with repairability in mind got <checks notes> a low repair score? Honestly what were you expecting? Products that are easier to repair tend to get higher repair scores from iFixit. iPhones are fairly easy to repair which is why they annually receive good repair scores. I think the last iPhone to receive a subpar repair score was the 3GS or 4.

 

[goobot]

I'll keep dreaming for a user replaceable battery like old Nokia days. At least that one first.
But all in all, still I appreciate Apple to improved their design for repairability for iPhone 14.

Replaceable batteries will never come back because having them basically means you’re getting a smaller battery than a non replaceable one. Very few people are going to rather carry an extra charged battery around with them over just having a bigger battery in the phone.

 

[Jamie0003]

You could try showing it to a profissional technician so they will give a quote to you and let you know what happened.

Didn’t see the point, it was an old laptop that wasn’t worth spending any anount of money on.

My point is it should be easy to repair yourself

 

[svish]

Easier repairs are always welcome.

 

[Unggoy Murderer]

Wait, you stopped watching because a device not designed with repairability in mind got <checks notes> a low repair score? Honestly what were you expecting? Products that are easier to repair tend to get higher repair scores from iFixit. iPhones are fairly easy to repair which is why they annually receive good repair scores. I think the last iPhone to receive a subpar repair score was the 3GS or 4.

I stopped watching because the presenter took zero care in dismantling the device (prying the display instead of using an appropriately sized suction cup), and apparently took great care at dispensing grievances with Apple.

I have no issue with them giving low scores, but they clearly displayed absolutely no interest in trying to see if it was indeed repairable.

 

[GraXXoR]

I have decided I won’t be buying a new machine unless it’s possible to replace the battery myself relatively easily.

So far, none of apples iPads or macs have this, so i’m just making do without for now.

This is the sort of logical decision making that deserves some respect.
If more people were like this, Apple would be forced to make their devices serviceable.

The majority of my business is frozen at 2011 in terms of iMacs and 2014 in terms of Mac Minis because they are the last devices I can open and replace the HDD with an SDD without breaking a sweat.

Luckily, they all still run Homebrew so they are likely good for another few years.
And then I'll just throw Linux on there.

My iPhone 11 battery is starting to show its age. I have to decide whether to stand up to Tim Cook and move away from iPhone or pull out the KY Gel and pay for one of their overpriced batteries.

 

[ian87w]

Huh, since when Apple do these kind of PR? Are they that desperate to sell the iPhone 14 models? I mean really, what’s with Apple execs being sent around to do interviews?

 

[SamRyouji]

Replaceable batteries will never come back because having them basically means you’re getting a smaller battery than a non replaceable one. Very few people are going to rather carry an extra charged battery around with them over just having a bigger battery in the phone.

I see. That makes sense. If so, then what Apple did with iPhone 14 going forward I think is the best we could get: easier to open and quicker to replace the battery.

 

[Royksöpp]

The iPhone 14 plus is the most underrated iPhone: it’s light, big, powerful, repairable, durable, with a great battery life.

If it was priced $100 less I could maybe agree. For $200 more, the pro is really a better value for the money.

 

[gund1234]

I'll keep dreaming for a user replaceable battery like old Nokia days. At least that one first.
But all in all, still I appreciate Apple to improved their design for repairability for iPhone 14.

it is possible to get replaceable battery option, if you can give up water resistance.
EU is about to pass new law that mandates water resistance for all mobile devices.

 

[NT1440]

Huh, since when Apple do these kind of PR? Are they that desperate to sell the iPhone 14 models? I mean really, what’s with Apple execs being sent around to do interviews?

There’s pending laws in some of their biggest markets. They’re doing what all companies do in that case, getting ahead of the story.

 

[DeepIn2U]

A step in the right direction. But please make the batteries in the Apple Pencil and Airpods replaceable.
This can be done even in the existing models, provided you destroy the casing and replace it with a removable 3D-printed shell.

Hells no!

Replaceable batteries in earpieces or headset??!

Not even Jabra does that for the Engage 75 series for desk phones, let alone earpieces. The 7yr old Jabra 6400 series did.

Nobody wants HUGE honkers sticking out their ears simply cause over a year time they’d want to replace the batteries.

 

[Jamie0003]

This is the sort of logical decision making that deserves some respect.
If more people were like this, Apple would be forced to make their devices serviceable.

The majority of my business is frozen at 2011 in terms of iMacs and 2014 in terms of Mac Minis because they are the last devices I can open and replace the HDD with an SDD without breaking a sweat.

Luckily, they all still run Homebrew so they are likely good for another few years.
And then I'll just throw Linux on there.

My iPhone 11 battery is starting to show its age. I have to decide whether to stand up to Tim Cook and move away from iPhone or pull out the KY Gel and pay for one of their overpriced batteries.

I wouldn’t even mind really if apple supported devices past their shelf life but they don’t tend to (once something becomes vintage it’s dead to them) but yeah it’s terrible for the environment and you could make the argument their devices are hard to repair by design since a good chunk of people will just replace the machine instead of the battery

 

[_Spinn_]

I’m surprised they made anything more reparable.

 

[boyarka]

I'll keep dreaming for a user replaceable battery like old Nokia days. At least that one first.
But all in all, still I appreciate Apple to improved their design for repairability for iPhone 14.

This could be done - at the expense of weakened structural itegrity and ingress protection.
A "smart" way of doing this would be modern phones designed with modern manufacturing technologies - however designed to repaired easily, without having to heat the glue to just short of sun's surface temperature, without obvious anti-repair sabotage like batteries locked to devices (thanks, Apple!) etc.