this may have seemed like a boring
iphone update year and it sort of was
but that's okay it's totally not
sustainable to expect a major design
refresh every year despite how green
apple claims to be the only thing that
does is create more waste even though
there weren't big changes there were
plenty of interesting changes that we
found in our tear downs in this video
i'll walk you through five of those
changes with a little help from our live
stream and our written teardowns which
we'll link below first up in our
countdown number five cool cameras the
new cameras and the pro iphones are
almost unbelievable just look at the
difference in size between the 12 pro
and the 13 pro camera modules it's wild
that they were able to make this much
room in the non-max body cameras are
quickly becoming my favorite part of
smartphones not necessarily because i
like to take pictures with them but
because they're so intricate and
interesting to take apart i'll show you
what i mean here's an iphone 13 pro
camera assembly fresh out of an iphone
behind the metal housing you can already
see some of the tiny image stabilization
hardware usually a bunch of heat lets me
pull the whole standard wide unit out
but today just the sensor wanted to come
off so we can get straight to the good
stuff
in their keynote last year apple showed
off the iphone 12 pro max with sensor
shift image stabilization this is an all
new sensor and lens but the
stabilization hardware is pretty similar
it will subtly move the sensor around up
to 5000 times per second to counteract
your shaky hands the smaller 12 pro max
sensor on the left now lives in the mini
and standard iphone 13s i was hoping to
put this lensless sensor back in the
phone to show you how it moves around i
even poked a hole in the glass so you
could see it better but unfortunately
neither of the cameras that i
disassembled survived so maybe next year
number four some new display tech apple
announced one major change to the iphone
13 pro displays on stage with promotion
but we found another upgrade they didn't
mention all four iphones this year are
using new oled technology with an
integrated touch layer our frontal bias
from instrumental explains it on our
live stream so taking a look at the
iphone 13 pro display
which again like taylor mentioned has
has this new
uh this new pro motion display panel a
completely redesigned oled and when we
compare it with the 12 pro
it has two cables coming off two flex
cables coming off of that display
uh with the with the two board board
connectors that plug in but the new 13
pro just has one cable in the old model
the iphone 12 so there's there's
actually two separate flex cables
because
uh under the hood here there is a touch
panel which is just a super thin
transparent plastic layer that's between
the display and the glass
and what it looks like they were able to
do on the 13
is combine that touch layer in with the
display if only they didn't pair this
screen to the logic board more on that
in a minute number three return of the
l-shaped battery for a few years now
apple has been using some pretty cool
tech to take advantage of the extra
space around their super dense stacked
logic boards we found a couple patents
that show just how they accomplished
this carefully layered electrodes and a
clever notch on the inward corner the 12
pro battery last year shared the regular
12's rectangular shape which was great
for parts compatibility again if the
things weren't paired this year it makes
a return to the 13 pro more powerful
than the 12 but less so than the
rectangular 13. that's right even though
it looks bigger and takes up more space
it's not quite as potent as the good old
rectangle number two the shrinking of
face id while everyone else has moved on
to hole punches apple has been pretty
content with their signature knots for
the last few years this year on stage
they announced the iphone 13 monsters
were 20 smaller what did apple do with
that extra screen space
not a single thing the redesigned face
id module on the inside is interesting
though to accomplish this nothing they
took the infrared flood illuminator off
the display and integrated it with the
rest of the face id hardware now all the
infrared flashy lights come from the
same spot in the notch and finally we've
arrived at number one parts pairing
absurdity well we saved the worst for
last believe it or not the iphone's 13
are still victims of apple's attempt to
monopolize their repair in our live
stream we were able to perform a battery
swap which felt like a win since some
rumors were claiming an iphone 13
wouldn't even turn on with a foreign
battery installed but that small victory
didn't last very long after a long day
of extensive testing we and some others
found that despite the simple new
display replacement procedure any
display swap we performed even
transferring the original face id
hardware would disable face id
completely i will say this behavior
feels buggy and it's possible that apple
could fix this with software like we saw
last year where camera swaps between
iphone 12s would cause the camera to
glitch out until a later software update
but even if face id worked flawlessly
after a diy display swap you're still
losing other important features like
true tone and auto brightness add to
that the fact that you have to deal with
annoying warnings and constant reminders
from the settings app and you've got a
downright awful repair experience apple
has reasons for parts pairing and safety
pop-ups and some of them are even valid
but don't you for one second believe
that they couldn't find another way
around this problem if they wanted to
this is the same company that makes a
thirty thousand dollar user serviceable
cheese grater you know that thing
doesn't give you any warnings when you
swap a park believe me
okay rant over for a more comprehensive
look at all the ways parts pairing
affects iphones 13 you can check out
hugh jeffrey's video which will link
below we should have our own blog coming
soon with all of our parts testing
results oh and one last fun but
unhelpful thing we found in our parts
testing it's not pretty but if you
really want to you can put an iphone 13
pro max screen on an iphone 13 pro and
vice versa you're welcome software gore
subreddit no matter how cool you think
the new iphone 13s are we can't say it
enough don't upgrade unless you need to
these phones are just fine but the best
phone is the one you already have oh if
you haven't had a chance you can click
here to watch the live stream of our
iphone 13 and 13 pro tear down thanks
for watching
you