iPhones. Today in front of us we have the iPhone 13 Pro Max. And this is the part of
the intro where I convince you that there's something super new and super cool inside
to check out. Even though it suspiciously looks like an iPhone 12. Well, there's definitely
something super new and cool to check out, that's for sure. And now you're wondering
if that was a joke or if it's really true. Or maybe I'm just killing time because these
phones are a royal pain to take apart. Let's get started.
[Intro]
Let's be honest, Apple does some really good things like marketing or building ecosystems.
But making their phones easy to repair is not one of them. In fact, Apple goes out of
their way to make their phones hard to fix. It's like a really not fun game that Apple's
been playing since day 1. And the people who lose are the customers and the planet. The
iPhone 13 Pro Max has two pentalobe screws down at the bottom, just like usual. And then
with heat and suction the screen can start to lift up and out of the stainless steel
housing. This is much harder than it looks by the way, since the screen is flush with
the frame. It's hard to get a good grip on that screen without breaking it, especially
since glass is glass and we know what happens to glass. Keep in mind that if you ever crack
the back glass on your iPhone 13 Pro Max, Apple will charge you $599 to replace it.
Luckily, larger phone repair shops probably have a laser glass remover by now. So if you
don't want to play Apple's game, or don't have insurance, you can always go with one
of those.
Now that we have the screen off, feel free to feast your eyes on these internals. It's
interesting that Apple has taken time to print the A15 Bionic text on the motherboard, paying
extra to print in a place that nobody is supposed to see, unless Apple's counting on people
seeing it during my teardown, and by displaying that A15 Bionic branding, it brings awareness
to Apple's proprietary chip manufacturing capability to millions of people using my
videos, which they hate, to their own advantage. Well played, Tim, well played.
I'll check the screen to make sure we didn't' toast anything. Out of warranty screen repairs
are about $329 from Apple, by the way. Like the back glass, it's priced in a way that
will coerce customers into getting a new phone instead of just fixing their old one...Basically
off setting all the eco-friendly progress Apple's made in other areas. Not my favorite.
Right underneath the A15 Bionic (I fell for it), are three tri point screws holding down
the metal plate over the battery connector. I'll unplug that battery, just like a little
Lego, along with the screen ribbon. The top screen ribbon is held in place by two more
uncommon tri point screws, and switching screwdriver bits another time, two more Phillips head
screws. We have currently used three different screwdriver bits on 9 screws. See what I mean
by Apple making this difficult. If you don't keep your screws organized, it's game over.
With the display removed, the screen is actually pretty thin. Apple's still using the OLED
display on these new phones. They are calling it super retina. The ribbon cable on the top
contains a microphone proximity sensor and light sensor up inside that top notch. The
cameras and earpiece are still left inside of the phone body. Speaking of which, there
are two more screws holding down a third metal plate just south of that A15 Bionic. East
of the A15 Bionic we have a super large metal plate covering up the camera unit with it's
5 screws. To keep the screws organized, I lay out the screws around the metal plates
on my table and then just try not to sneeze for the rest of the repair. I'll get a close
up shot of the insides of this iPhone 13 Pro Max. Feel free to bump up your resolution
to 4K, screenshot this, crop it, and set it as the background of your phone. That way
you too can advertise the A15 Bionic. I mean, to be fair, it does look pretty cool.
Continuing on. There are two more Lego-style ribbon connectors in charge of the camera
units. And this is where things have changed...ever so slightly...from last year's model. The
sensors are slightly larger, taking up a good portion of the phone. And yeah, we have the
12 megapixel three times telephoto lens, sticking up like Everest, with OIS. Then we have the
12 megapixel ultrawide over here in the middle which does not have OIS. And finally, we have
the 12 megapixel main camera here on the bottom, which Apple says has something called sensor
shift OIS. But as you can clearly see, the lens itself is not moving. Instead of moving
the camera lens like every other smartphone manufacturer goes with their cameras, Apple
has decided to stabilize the internal sensor. Let me show you how that works. It might sound
like I'm praising Apple here for a second, because I am, but I promise I'll keep it short.
Like usual, all of the cameras are locked together inside of the same housing, which
makes switching between all three perspectives in the camera app much faster and more seamless.
But it also means we need to resort to catastrophic analysis to see what's going on.
Quick question though, do you remember those old school Lego Bionicles? I'm not sure what
reminded me of those. But anyway, back to the camera. With the rear removed so we see
that sensor inside it's actually shifting around in the housing. The reason this is
better or more efficient is that the sensor is much lighter than the lens. It weighs less
so it's much easier to move around and therefore quicker. Apple's new sensor shift technology
can stabilize an image 5x faster than regular lens optical image stabilization. Last year
this tech was only available on the iPhone 12 Pro Max, but this year Apple has applied
the floating sensor tech to the main camera sensor of all 13 variants. You can see the
four large magnets that manipulate the sensor inside of the lens. And on the sensor side
are the little copper pads at each corner that can be moved by the magnetic field. Tiny,
tiny tech, but makes for a pretty cool system. Large professional cameras have been using
this kind of stabilization for a while now, like on the inside of my GH5. This is the
same camera I used to film my videos with. The sensor moves around inside of the housing,
and as far as I know, Apple is the only smartphone manufacturer to implement this style of stabilization
into a smartphone. Nice work, Apple. Thumbs up for that. I'll put the sensor back into
the lens. It'll be interesting to see if this thing still works when I put the whole thing
back together again.
One thing I'm pretty proud of actually is that we managed to incorporate that sensor
shifting camera lens hardware into my Teardown Skin. And since the hardware exists in all
iPhone 13 models, each one of them will have the copper accents around the main camera.
I think we did a pretty good job. I'll put a link down in the description so you can
grab a Teardown Skin for your own phone. Let's go deeper.
To remove the motherboard, I'll unsnap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap, snap,
snap off 10 more ribbon cables. Just like an entire box of Legos. Pop out the SIM card
tray and remove two large standoff screws with our fourth screwdriver bit. And this
is it. The entire brains of the iPhone 13 Pro Max. Double stacked soldered together
motherboards. Super consolidated. For some reason I can't remember the name of Apple's
processor though. I think it was B14 cryogenic. I'm not good with names...but wait, there's
more. A fourth camera, a lidar camera, is also sitting inside of the massive rear camera
lens. Apple mostly uses this guy for low light auto focusing. Up at the top of the phone
we can remove three more screws, pop off a little metal thingy, and remove a fourth standoff.
And then our loudspeaker is free, along with the front facing cameras that are tucked underneath
that speaker. These cameras make up the face ID scanning stuff with a dot projector and
infrared camera. The regular 12 megapixel front facing selfie camera does have electronic
stabilization. Down at the bottom of the iPhone 13 we have 12 more screws. Once those are
gone there's a piece of tape holding down the loudspeaker to the taptic engine. Apple's
fancy word for vibrator that provides haptic feedback. I'll make a dedicated video about
vibrators at some point in the future. This little guy actually does some pretty cool
things.
At first glance the iPhone 13 Pro doesn't appear to have any balls inside that bottom
loudspeaker. But if you stab it in just the right place we can indeed see the little guys.
These provide more surface area inside the speaker for the sound to reverberate off of,
making the speaker sound larger than it actually is. The charging port ribbon is the last ribbon
down here at the bottom of the phone. And if we count there are another 8 screws spread
out all over, even sticking sideways into the frame. It's pretty crazy in here, so much
so in fact that all of these little bumps on the charging port ribbon say 'Apple uses
too many screws' in Chinese braille. It's funny cuz you don't know if I'm joking or
not, and Tim Cook's probably going to go check.
Finally, the battery. [Stretching plastic sounds] Which does have magical pull tabs.
[Stretching plastic sounds] Apple has expanded the battery capacity just slightly this year.
And these pull tabs are the only repairable thing about this phone. Watch them be gone
next year. With these two pull tabs pulled, we can lift up the battery to find two much
smaller pull tabs up at the top, which we could have also enjoyed but I didn't see them.
This year's iPhone 13 Pro Max has 4,325 milliamp hours. Pretty solid increase over last year's
3,687. For reference, I still need about 6,000 of these batteries to match the capacity of
the electric hummer I'm building. Finally, the last layer of coolness inside of the iPhone
13 Pro Max is the wireless charging and magnets on the back. You can see the copper coils
and outlines of the 20 magnets, and like, I don't want to show off, but it's all identically
mirrored on my Teardown Skin from outside the phone. I'll throw down some double sided
tape to keep the battery from jiggling around after it's put back together.
Assembling this thing is basically exactly like the nightmare you'd expect it to be.
While putting the bottom loudspeaker back into the phone I discovered that the balls
are leaking everywhere. A little piece of tape will solve that problem. Another real
problem though is that let's say you want to replace anything in here, the battery,
the screen, or the cameras, you'll get perpetual warning messages saying that you're not using
genuine Apple components, even if the components you used were harvested from a genuine Apple
phone. Apple has tied every individual component to the phone it was created with, and with
that capability is one step away from blocking all third party repairs, which is insane.
No other industry is like this. I can change the tires on my car, or my windshield, my
oil, alternator, or exhaust, or my graphics card in my computer, the memory sticks, or
the colored fans. I can fix those things because I actually own them. But if I can't replace
the components inside of my own iPhone without daddy Apple's permission, do I really own
my iPhone? I think not. Apple still owns the iPhone you thought you paid for. Yeah, putting
a case or screen protector on your phone can prolong its life and avoid paying Apple's
exorbitant repair prices, but I think we can all agree it's a little messed up, especially
when these phones are costing as much as my first car. Personally, I was able to harvest
parts from a broken Note 10 Plus to keep my own phone around for a few more years. And
Apple is doing everything they can to prevent that same situation with their phones. Apple
sells about 200 million phones a year, so repairing them is a big deal. And yeah, they'd
sell a few less if they allowed repairs, but it would be much better overall for your wallet
and the planet if they did. It's hard to take any of Apple's environmental recycling progress
seriously when they aren't doing the reducing and reusing parts first. The broken camera
is in place, along with the screen. And all the metal plates are screwed down next to
the A15 Bionic. And to everyone's surprise, including my own, everything still works.
Sometimes you'll need to plug it in to get the screen to power up. Anker is the official
charging partner of Jerry Rig Everything, so I use their fast chargers and cables. I'll
get the two pentalobe screws back into the base of the phone. And even more surprising
than the phone still turning on is that the bus setup module is actually still functioning,
even after having ripped the sensor away from the lens. To double check, I can put my finger
over the lowest lens, the one we destroyed, and it's still seeing my finger. Kind of mind
blowing. The phone can definitely survive repairs if Apple would just let them happen.
Have you ever repaired your own phone or had it repaired? Let me know down in the comments.
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And thanks a ton for watching, I'll see you around.