Full iFixit iPhone 13 Pro teardown shows merged Face ID components and highlights display replacement issues

iFixit started one of its traditional full device teardowns on the new iPhone 13 Pro, giving us a full rundown of all the components inside.

Before taking a look inside the new iPhone, iFixit took x-rays to show the L-shaped battery, MagSafe magnetic ring, and stabilizer magnets for image sensors and logic boards.

This year’s iPhone 13 Pro has a top sensor cable near the top that’s easy to tear during repairs, with iFixit calling it “scary thin.” Visually, the Taptic Engine inside the device that controls Haptic Touch appears to be smaller, but it’s actually bulkier than the similar component of the iPhone 13 Pro‌, weighing 6.3 grams, up from 4.8 .

Compared to the iPhone 12 Pro, the iPhone 13 Pro‌ does away with the display-mounted speaker earpiece, a move that will make it easier to replace the display. iFixit suspects Apple of using integrated touch OLED panels that combine the touch and OLED layers of the screen, reducing the cost, thickness and number of cables to process.

The iPhone 13’s flood illuminator and dot projector merged into a single module, which is part of the reason why Apple was able to reduce the size of the notch on this year’s iPhones, and Face hardware. ID is now independent of the screen. The earpiece speaker that was removed from the screen has been moved between the front camera and the Face ID module.

According to iFixit, despite decoupling the Face ID module from the screen, any screen replacement disables Face ID. This means that screen replacements not authorized by Apple will result in non-working Face ID components.

As we found out last week, the iPhone 13 Pro‌ uses an 11.97 Wh battery, which equates to 3,095mAh, compared to 2,815mAh in the iPhone 12‌ Pro. The iPhone 13 Pro’s battery has an L-shaped design this year, a change from the rectangular battery used in last year’s Pro model. iFixit says the battery swap tests were successful, despite rumors that battery swaps were not possible.

There’s 6GB of SK Hynix LPDDR4X RAM inside, along with several Apple-designed power management and ultra-broadband chips, and as expected, the iPhone 13 Pro comes equipped with Qualcomm’s SDX60M modem. and what iFixit thinks is a Qualcomm DRR868 5G RF transceiver.

Apple analyst Ming-Chi Kuo said that the Qualcomm modem chip in this year’s iPhones had satellite communication functionality, but if it is there, iFixit did not notice it and since no satellite functionality does. has been announced, it is a latent function if it exists. Bloomberg Apple said Apple is working on a satellite feature that will allow people to text in emergency situations using a satellite connection, but this feature is not expected until 2022.

Then the iPhone 13 Pro‌ includes Kioxia NAND Flash memory, Broadcom front end module, NXP Semiconductor NFC controller, and more.

The full iFixit teardown has more details on all of the components that are inside the device, and iFixit ultimately gave the iPhone 13 Pro‌ a repairability score of 5 out of 10 due to the issue with Replacing the Face ID screen, double glass, and sealing methods that make some repairs more difficult.