Apple is using titanium on their newest iPhone 15 Pro Max.
Titanium is the coolest metal on the planet for many reasons.
It's biocompatible – used for creating artificial joints, repairing human bones.
Not to mention build interstellar spacecraft, and to
construct robots that crawl other planets.
And of course, it's on my ring.
My ring has titanium that I reclaimed from a wheelchair.
Titanium comes in quite a few different flavors.
Grade 1 being the cheapest, softest, and easiest to machine,
which is what I thought the iPhone was going to be.
But then Apple slapped a grade 5 on the screen and I got rocked in more ways than one.
And let me show you why.
I happen to have some 1 inch titanium bar stock laying around, as people often do.
This guy costs $170.
For example, this 6061 aluminum bar of the exact same proportions only cost me $10.
Aluminum is what smartphones are normally made from, and the
color difference between the two metals is glorious to behold, especially as it's heated.
The main reason my jerry rig knife is only 15 bucks is
because I'm using an aluminum alloy and not a titanium alloy.
And keep in mind, this solid rod is only grade 2 titanium.
I'm too poor to buy a full rod of grade 5 titanium since a
single notepad sized paper thick sliver already costs $106 all by itself.
If we do some simple math and scale this half a millimeter
thick piece of metal up to a hypothetical 8.5 millimeter
block – thick enough to mill a phone out of – we would be
looking at almost $2 ,000 worth of grade 5 titanium.
And that's not even including the complexity of milling and
shaping grade 5, and the dollars worth of iPhone
hardware that goes inside.
So the math just ain't mathin'.
And there's no way Apple suddenly decided to make
negative profit on each iPhone sold.
You might have noticed that titanium reacts in a very
unique way as it gets torched, oxidizing in extremely
predictable and consistent rainbows.
Going from yellow, to purple, to blue, to light blue, and
back to gray again as it gets really hot.
You might be thinking to yourself, hey Jerry, are you
even going to unbox the iPhone?
And I say yes.
Let's jump in and see what this iPhone is made from, and also
how well it can handle the heat of everyday life.
Hit that subscribe button if you haven't already, and let's get started.
[Introduction]
Inside the brand new iPhone 15 Pro Max box we find the phone itself.
This blue titanium is almost the same shade as the blue
titanium that I made.
Looking under the phone, this time we find there's no lightning cable.
Instead we have a brand new braided USB-C cable.
I imagine the world will soon follow Apple's lead on this one,
and we'll start seeing this port everywhere.
Probably the closest thing we'll ever see to world peace.
And honestly, the phone does feel good.
About the same as any other rectangular phone.
But the brushed titanium and the etched back glass do feel super cool.
But the imitation blue shade is just ever so much off from the
actual shade of blue titanium that I think it would bother me long term.
Apple said again that this screen glass is the strongest
glass ever on a smartphone.
They call it ceramic shield, and I agree.
It is a pretty solid slab of glass.
We normally see plastic screens scratched at a level 2 or 3,
glass at 5 or 6, and sapphire would be an 8 or 9.
This dual ion exchange ceramic shield does still scratch at a
level 6 with deeper grooves at a level 7, but level 6 does
appear to be quite a bit more faint than usual.
And I do think Apple is onto something with this proprietary glass.
The front selfie camera is tucked into the dynamic island
and is protected by that same slab of glass.
The earpiece is a razor thin slit between the glass and the frame.
No speaker grills to fall out or get dirty.
Making our way over to the titanium sides, Apple's using
something called a PVD coating, a physical vapor deposition.
It's a pretty wild method of applying an ultra thin
protective layer over the titanium.
I don't know enough about PVD to talk about it in depth, but
you know, it is scratchable... exactly like the anodized aluminum.
Everything except for this 5G antenna slot, for some reason
this oval is just not scratching.
I think they should make a whole phone out of whatever this stuff is.
The power button is scratchable however, and not removable,
along with the top
and entire left side.
It took Apple 14 hours to apply this finish, and my
jerry-rigged knife 14 seconds to unapply the finish.
The new action button is scratchable,
and our USB-C port
down near the bottom is an actual USB 3 with 10 gigabit transfer speeds.
The regular iPhone 15 is just USB 2, and if you don't know
what that means, you'll be just fine with either.
The matte back glass, which every phone should have, does not scratch.
The Apple logo in the center is the only thing that's smooth.
One thing that Apple did change up quite a bit this year is with the cameras.
We still get that gradual gradient built into the tinted
glass that rises up to the camera plateau.
And some of these camera upgrades we won't be able to
see until the teardown.
But Apple says these three lenses that we can see are actually 7.
Gotta LOL a bit at that absolute stretch.
Here at the bottom we have a 48 megapixel main camera, which
apparently has a nano scale coating on the lens to reduce glare.
The coating luckily does not scratch off or fracture.
The coolest camera is definitely the middle one – a
12 megapixel 5x tetraprism telephoto lens that redirects
and reflects light 4 times before hitting a 3D sensor shift OIS stabilizer.
If there's one reason to take apart the iPhone 15 Pro Max,
it's to see what in the world that looks like from the inside.
Then up top we have a 12 megapixel ultra wide.
Apparently these two cameras on the edge can work together like
two eyeballs to generate spatial video, which I don't
want to be the guy to beat a dead horse, but that was
something Android did 12 years ago with the HTC Evo 3D.
Probably before some of you kidlets with iPhones were even born.
Gotta honor your ancestors.
Apple said during their event that the back glass panel is
easily removable to facilitate repairability, which is a huge
commendable move.
And then in the same sentence Apple said that the internal
structure of the iPhone 15 Pro Max is made from 100 % recycled
aluminum, which immediately tells us two things.
One, it's nice to see that there's more than just the
iPhone design that gets recycled every year.
And two, the internal frame is not solid grade 5 titanium,
only the exterior.
This explains quite a bit.
The iPhone 15 Pro Max has a 6.7 inch OLED display with 2000
nits of outdoor brightness and 120 hertz refresh rate, and
lasts for about infinity seconds before having no
reaction to my lighter.
Nice work Apple.
So, we'll try out my big boy lighter in a second.
It's time to see if the new blended aluminum titanium
grafted hybrid structure compromises the structural
integrity of the iPhone 15 Pro Max.
Yeah, I'm going to be honest, I did not see that one coming.
You've been watching me durability test smartphones for
about 11 years now, and most phones do not break.
iPhones especially do not break like ever.
And that snap was abnormally quick.
Kind of stunned.
I'm not sure if it's because the grade 5 titanium frame has
nearly 3 times more tensile strength than aluminum, or half
the elasticity, but the glass did not like being pressed or
flexed by my thumb.
That's crazy.
On the first bend too.
Internally, the phone itself is doing fine of course.
There's no cracking or shattering of the frame.
But the back glass is definitely obliterated.
Good thing Apple made the glass modular so it only cost $200 to replace instead of $500.
But still, if I was a person who just purchased a $1 ,200
titanium iPhone 15 Pro Max, I would be extremely nervous right now.
Anyway, I did not plan on that happening.
But you gotta admit, the crack looks pretty cool.
The Apple iPhone 15 Pro Max does not survive my durability test,
which means it's time for the big boy lighter.
The PVD coating is already an imitation blue,
which would make any actual blue in the titanium frame very difficult to see.
But if we sand it down and expose some better titanium,
we might be able to see if Apple's grade 5 reacts the same way as my grade 5.
That's some pretty good looking brushed titanium.
Still not sure why it takes Apple 14 hours.
I'm using a MAP gas torch, which I think, along with burning my desk,
is actually lighting some of the titanium dust on fire.
You can see the sparks glow white as they sputter away from the phone.
Now, the titanium itself could probably handle the heat,
but the screen and the phone circuitry, not so much.
The torch definitely accomplishes what my lighter could not.
And if we look super close at the iPhone frame,
we can see it start to change colors from the heat.
Apple is indeed using real titanium.
Is it grade 5 though?
I do have ways of finding out.
I think it's getting kind of hot in here.
Now everyone knows the whole point of getting a new iPhone is so that everyone knows you have a new iPhone.
Hiding it in a black plastic case would wholly and entirely defeat the purpose.
And wow, side note, natural titanium is the move for sure.
However, getting a transparent case to show off your phone is dangerous.
since most clear cases are made of thermoplastic polyurethane.
Which when exposed to ultraviolet radiation,
undergoes the irreversible process of photooxidation.
Sunlight makes clear cases turn yellow.
So on the off chance you ever do go outside, you won't have a clear case anymore.
Enter my channel sponsor, Dbrand.
Dbrand has inexplicably found a way to defeat the sun with their never yellowing, completely transparent ghost case.
And they're offering free replacements if it ever does yellow, which is pretty brave of them.
The best part is, the ghost case is also completely compatible with my teardown skin.
You can keep your own phone from getting absolutely wrecked like mine with the link down in the description.
Now, I pride myself on being extremely thorough, And
I'd be amiss if we let this golden opportunity to check the back glass of
the regular iPhone 15 Pro for similar structural deficiencies as it's larger counterpart.
With some very strong bends from the back,
nothing happens.
Flipping the phone over to the front, again, nothing happens.
The normal sized iPhone 15 Pro survives and does not have the same fate as the Max.
I'm curious to see how thin Apple's titanium layer actually is, and what grade it is.
The iPhone 15 Pro Max teardown is going to be quite a bit more destructive than usual.
Thank you for subscribing, and thank you for watching.
I'll see you around.