- Is it possible to modify the iPhone 11 pro?
I don't know, but I want to find out.
I've been getting a bunch of messages
about headphone jacks and USBC
and I've been looking at a bunch of other tear downs
that other folks have done.
And I just can't quite see what I need to see
to answer the question.
So I'm headed over to the Apple store here in San Francisco.
I'm gonna pick one up,
take apart and we'll find out for real.
(upbeat music)
Hi, I don't have a reservation,
but I would like to buy a phone.
Two 11 pro maxes.
I'd love gray one 64 and one 512.
Well, that was a bit of a bust.
They are only selling phones
on a reservation basis right now.
And I don't have a reservation.
So I got to come back at six.
It kind of screws my rest of my afternoon
but the guy did recognize me
from my videos along with several of his coworkers
and that's always nice.
So back in a few hours.
And how does trade in work?
So I buy the phone today, bring that back.
I just need to bring one of these back.
I think I'm already signed up.
So I got a not one, but two phones and a case.
This 64 gig is to take apart.
And this 512 is for me to use.
As bunnie Huang, the infamous electronics hacker says,
"You should always have one to take apart.
One that you left unmodified and then one to modify."
And so I've got two out of three of those.
I figured I'd hold off on the third one to modify
until we figured out what we can do.
Let's crack this open.
So it boots, let's immediately break it.
Usually there is a gasket that goes around here
and I suspect as these phones get more and more waterproof
that gasket is only getting stronger and stronger.
But first you have two screws to remove here.
So break out my trusted tool kit and get into it.
Probably need suction cup and picks, bludgers and tweezers.
Now this Airbnb didn't come with a heat gun
but it does have something pretty close to a heat gun.
Put on the special phone attachment.
(blow dryer blowing)
Come on, I'm used to opening up the second hand ones,
which usually don't have a good adhesive.
(Blow Drier blowing)
Okay, I'm going to thumbnail in there.
Check that out.
The next step is always to unplugged the battery.
I heard there are actually two battery connections.
So I'm gonna go after both.
Next I wanna remove the screen
and get rid of that right there.
So that big cluster cables there
it's super easy to rip in all iPhones.
Screen is off successfully.
I think we can begin to look at this thing now.
So let me actually take a step back here
and explain what I'm looking for.
I am looking for empty space anywhere in here
that we can stick stuff for modifications.
Getting it to work electrically is a challenge,
but even bigger challenges.
How do you fit it inside these phones.
Apple uses all of the space that they can,
or at least they claim to.
And so the trick is can we find anything extra
that they didn't use that we can cram stuff into?
So I'm looking in particular down here for space
for like a headphone Jack or USB-C
somewhere around the lightening.
I did notice this huge empty space here
and got all excited for one moment before I realized, Oh
that's where all of this stuff goes,
which it's a speaker I think.
I mean, we could play with that.
It's going to be hard to see.
This is one of the reasons that I wanted to look
at it myself because this is very hard
to figure out from pictures.
But if you sort of line them up and fit them together
you can often see if there's a little extra space in there.
It looks like there's maybe a tiny bit, but not a lot.
The other place that I'm seeing space is right next
to the taptic engine here.
So this is where I stuck the headphone Jack in the seven
and that little corner still.
So I'm going to leave the battery alone.
There's a bunch of sticky strips under it.
I don't really need to remove it right now to
learn what I want to learn, but I'm going to pull all
of these pieces out.
I think I want to pull the speaker out next
(mumbles) ended driver.
Oh, here it is.
That right there is the little standoff tool.
It's just a cross with the little divot.
The speaker is out.
We can see a little bit more of what's going on here.
So that plugs into this flex cable that goes here.
We'll take the taptic engine out.
A lot more space in here.
I don't understand what this is.
Is this another speaker?
I got some more screws to take out.
What is that?
This little white thing here,
that looks a lot like the barometric vent used to look
in the seven.
Let's pry this off.
(laughs) I'm laughing because this is a more refined version
of the same piece of plastic that Apple was cramming in
where they used to have the headphone Jack
three or four phone iterations ago.
Whenever the seven was since the seven.
I think that little white bit
is actually the barometric vent.
The rest of it is just a piece of plastic.
It's just a plastic clip that it takes up too much space.
There's a lot of space down here.
What is this right here?
So this is microphone.
Don't know what this is.
I'm guessing antenna assembly of some sort.
I have removed what I call the bottom flex cable.
This one is definitely the coolest one I've ever seen.
It's got a sandwich board here.
So it's got two layers of board in there for sure.
And shielding and stuff,
definitely some serious magic going on there.
But upfront here is the standard lightning Jack
that is just soldered down
on top of the flux cable sitting right there.
If I was to do USB-C
I think that would be obviously prime location.
That's where you'd want to stick the USBC Jack.
And I think you would just de solder that
and build a board that solders
down a flex cable that solders down to that connector
just like I did for the headphone Jack.
And then the USBC Jack would sit on top of that board
on the other side.
Future Scotty here I had to step in
while we were editing this.
I realized I didn't really do this justice.
I needed to go find this
which is the conversion logic that I was talking about.
And it's not a USB-C to lightning adapter.
It's just a USB-C to lightning cable.
I was thinking of headphone adapters.
When I said that before, it's just the cable.
It's the cable that comes with the phone.
So this is the inside of the lightening side of that cable.
And I took the cable to the shop
took it apart and got this out.
This is the important logic that does the lightening
to USB-C conversion.
And it does the Apple MFI made for iPhone authentication
for the cable, all of that stuff.
This we'd have to find a place for this inside the phone.
Back to Scotty in the past.
You'd have to find a place in here for that board.
And so I think that's really the question is
where would you stick extra electronics to do conversion
from say USB-C to lightning or for the headphone Jack
just the same way I did with the seven.
Electrically the headphone Jack should be exactly the same
between this model and the seven.
I see absolutely no reason that they would be different.
I feel fairly certain that this piece
of plastic is bullshit and that you totally don't need it.
Well, you need it if you want your phone to be waterproof.
I'm gonna not worry about that as a constraint.
I've never worried about that.
It's possible, it's just a lot of engineering work.
I don't think is very interesting.
And then the question is, do I have enough vertical space?
The problem last time was the screen.
And actually there is a chip here
that you'd have to worry about.
That might be a problem.
There's some possibility here.
I think USBC is very possible.
I'm I gonna have to do this?
I don't wanna.
So here's what's going on in my head.
The headphone Jack took me three months
of full-time heart wrenching work
and I'm looking at this and I'm going
I could definitely see how this would be possible
but do I really want to sign
up for three months worth of agony?
It's one thing to jump into an adventure like that naive
and not having any idea what you're signing up for.
It's another thing to do it again once you have.
I don't want to make any promises in this video
that I'm definitely going to have USB-C two on the phone
but what I think I can say definitively is yes
I do believe it's possible.
I don't know what to say.
I was going to say, leave a comment below
if you think I should do the USBC Jack.
Maybe you'll sway me over,
but I think it's going to come down to
do I really wanna go through the agony of that again?
Do I want to put all the hours into that
or do I wanna go out and do some other interesting projects
that I've got lined up?
So always solicit your opinion.
See what you guys think.
Yeah, yeah.
Lots of possibilities.
Today's sponsor is Skillshare.
They gave me a bunch of money to go buy a very
expensive phone and take it apart and probably break it
in the process all for your curiosity and my mind too.
And I get asked by a lot of people,
"Hey Scotty, how do I learn to do what you do?"
And honestly I think Skillshare
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That about does it for this time.
If you enjoyed this,
hit that like button.
hit that subscribe button.
I will see you again soon.
I am still working on the big project that I keep hinting
about the big secret project here in San Francisco.
We are really, really close.
We've got a fully working, everything's plugged together.
There's one last little hurdle that I have to deal
with on Monday.
And if that goes smoothly
we'll be in the home stretch here.
We're starting to edit the video.
It's a heck of a story.
We have been through a ton of trials
and tribulations and there's all sorts of side quests.
And I can't wait to share it with you.
So make sure you hit the subscribe button below
if you haven't already so that you see that
when it comes along and stay tuned.
Should be out in a few weeks.
As always I'm Scotty from strange parts.
I'll see you again soon.
(Upbeat music)