IFixit’s iPhone 12 mini-teardown shows how Apple fits so into such a small device

Orders for the new iPhone 12 mini started to arrive for customers, and the iFixit team did a two-part teardown – of a European and American model – to understand how Apple managed to include 5G hardware and the usual iPhone components in such a small device.

The first thing you notice when looking at the internal pictures is the mini’s smaller battery, which measures up surprisingly well to similar iPhone models, according to iFixit, with 8.57 Wh.

“That’s more juice than the 6.96 Wh of the 2020 iPhone SE, but naturally below the 10.78 Wh of the standard 12 on which it is stacked,” notes iFixit. That’s less than the iPhone 12’s 10.78 Wh battery, however.

I fix it

The Taptic motor, speakers, and MagSafe ring are all included in the mini in smaller versions to save space. But Apple has managed to squeeze the camera that’s the same size as its other iPhone models into the mini, which iFixit says could have come at the cost of battery life. The edgeDieter Bohn met in our iPhone mini review.

The mini camera has the same ƒ / 1.6 wide-angle and ƒ / 2.4 ultra-wide-angle cameras as the iPhone 12, the teardown shows.

I fix it

Overall, iFixit found the iPhone 12 mini to be quite similar to its larger counterparts: “The iPhone 12 mini is a small phone with big ambitions. We’re surprised at how familiar the internals look compared to other iPhones this year, given the size differences between them. “

Check out iFixit’s full iPhone 12 mini-teardown here. And see what The edge critics think of new iPhone models: