The iPhones have always been some of the most complicated phones to take apart. You'll see

why over the course of this video, but there's no way we can let this iPhone 11 Pro Max flagship

slip by without seeing the insides. This is the most water resistant mainstream smartphone

money can buy right now. So it's time to see what helps keep water out and how repairable

it really is.

Let's get started.

[Intro]

Since basically day 1 of the first iPhone's existence, Apple has been in the business

of trying to keep people out of their phones and this new iPhone appears to be no different.

It has the same proprietary pentalobe screws holding the bottom of the screen to the stainless

steel frame of the phone. It uses a screwdriver that's pretty easy to find online, but most

people don't immediately have it on hand. I'll leave a link for a good tool kit in the

description.

Looking closely at the screw it has black threadlocker filling the gaps between the

threads and the phone body. This helps keep the screw in place as well as helps keep water

out. The biggest opening for water to get inside the phone though is the screen. There

is adhesive surrounding the whole rectangle. In order to pull the screen off I'll need

to use heat to soften that adhesive, and a strong suction cup to pull on the screen while

adding some leverage with my pry tool between the plastic lip and the stainless steel frame.

As I work my way around either side of the phone lifting off the display, you can see

the substantial amount of stingy gooey black adhesive that holds the parts together. I'm

taking special care to avoid the ribbon cables hiding along the edge of the right side. These

cables are about as fragile as paper and can be torn very easily. You'll get a better look

at them as the screen lifts off. They're down there through those gooey strands.

At first glance things look pretty standard for the iPhone – a ton of screws and the

massive L-shaped battery. Thumbs up to Apple for adding battery life and thickness to their

phones this year instead of trying to go thinner. I'm also glad that the ribbons are all off

to the side. Last year had a random ribbon cable coming from the center that made the

screen removal quite a bit harder.

The front camera and face scanner are tucked up in the top of the phone. I'll remove the

6 y triple-zero screws holding the metal plate over the top of the screen ribbon connectors.

One of those screws is easier to access from the other side of the screen if you close

in and scooch it over a bit.

And take a look at that motherboard. It's Lego connector central up in here. Happy birthday

to myself. I'll remove another 4 y triple-zero screws that hold the top protective metal

plate and side ribbon guide down over the camera units. Then there are two more screws

holding down the tiny plate over the battery connector. Before I unplug that battery though,

I want to make sure this whole thing still works and that nothing was damaged during

the screen removal.

Tapping the power button shows the Apple logo, and the phone turns on. Which app should I

test to make sure the phone still works? Maybe I should use today's sponsor Audible. That

was convenient. Audible is actually one of my favorite apps. The book I'm currently listening

to is called The Man Who Knew the Way to the Moon, and is one of the Audible Originals

It sounds more like a verbal documentary than a narration. I usually adjust the speed to

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I'll unclip the battery connector like a little Lego from this smorgasbord of Lego connectors.

The battery actually has two connectors, one is found down below by the charging port.

So unclipping both of those is a good idea at this point. I just didn't know the second

one existed until later. I'll unclip one of the charging port ribbons, and then I'll make

my way down to the three main ribbons holding the screen to the body of the phone.

The screen is significantly more simple this year than it has been for the previous years,

which is definitely appreciated. It only has 3 screws holding the earpiece to the back

of the display. Apple throws Phillips head screws randomly in here and there throughout

the phone, so for those of you following along at home, this is the third type of screwdriver

we've used so far. The earpiece folds down which lets us pry away the front sensors from

the glass. Replacement parts will become more common and get cheaper as the phones get older.

I'll try to link some in the video description as they become available. Screen replacements

aren't super difficult on iPhones. And with the disappearance of 3D touch, the display

is actually thinner and leaves more room for the larger battery.

Speaking of which, I've had a few requests for a straight up clean video shot of the

internals – so feel free to screen shot this, crop it, and use it as your phone wallpaper

if you want. Just make sure to tag me on Twitter if you do.

Let's remove the front camera and the face ID depth scanner thingy. It's got two ribbon

cables to unplug...wait, no, there's three. The last one kind of just snuck in there.

This little unit has the front 12 megapixel selfie camera, the one that can film in 4K

and do those slowfees, and also has the infrared dot projector and secondary camera for the

face ID. It's a pretty cool set up, and I'm glad it's not attached to the screen. It makes

repairs easier.

The three rear cameras each have their own ribbon cable attached to the motherboard I

can unclip each of those and then the whole contraption comes right out of the phone.

Apple really has made their design much more modular this year and I'm a fan.

Up at the top we get the normal 12 megapixel camera with optical image stabilizing. Down

at the bottom we get another 12 megapixel 2x optical zoom camera which also has optical

image stabilizing. And over here on the side we have a 12 megapixel wide angle camera with

no physical stabilizing I feel like this is the perfect set up and the arrangement I would

personally like to have someday when I upgrade from my Galaxy S8. I feel like Apple has finally

brought way more features to the table with smartphones this year and are finally competing

at the same level of other flagships.

Let's get this motherboard out. I'll unplug the charging port ribbon, but before I can

pull that out, once again I need to switch back to the y triple-zero screwdriver. There

are 3 screws running down the right side, keeping this cable with the metal bracket

tucked to the side of the phone. The next three screws are a bit trickier. These are

called standoff screws and they hold the motherboard in place. If you don't have a standoff remover,

I can usually take a flat screwdriver bit and just twist the screw around in the circle

from one side. And as the screw comes out, you can see that a stand off screw is actually

a screw that has a screw hole inside. A screw within a screw. They are annoying to work

with but Apple uses them to save space and stack things on top of each other.

Speaking of saving space, once those screws are out and the SIM card tray is removed,

the whole motherboard is ready to come out of the phone. And this, my friends, is it.

This is the whole thing – the brains and brawn of the whole iPhone operation is sandwiched

between these two stacked boards. One thing I'm pretty impressed with on the iPhones this

time around is that all the solder connecting the circuits inside of this motherboard is

made from 100% recycled tin. You might be thinking, “Nice work Apple on recycling

that tiny drop of tin.” But because Apple is using recycled tin on not only their iPhones,

but the MacBook Air, the iPad Air, and the iPad Mini, it adds up to over 29 thousand

metric tons of tin ore that they don't need to mine from the earth. It's a pretty substantial

achievement and I'm glad Apple's doing it.

Let's keep going deeper. The taptic vibrator engine is down here below the battery near

the charging port. It's got three little screws holding it in place and I'm going to set those

off to the side to help keep things organized. A lot of phones you can take apart and just

toss the screws helter-skelter, but since basically every screw in here is a different

shape and size, it's very important to keep them organized.

With the metal plate gone and the vibrator unclipped from the charging port, we get our

first close up of the taptic engine. It's nice of Apple to include their logo in case

we forgot what phone we're taking apart. This little guy is also using 100% recycled rare

earth elements. Since we don't have an unlimited earthly supply of these magnets, I'm glad

Apple is now going through the effort to reuse and recycle parts of their phones.

I'll remove one more screw and pull off the metal plate over the microphone hole. And

check out all that white adhesive over the hole to help keep water out of the microphone.

It's time to remove the battery. Apple once again has added the magic pull tabs which

I'm thankful for. Prying out permanently glued batteries is extremely dangerous. And even

if a pried and bent battery doesn't spark and start on fire right away, it'll still

be damaged internally and it'll start to puff up and expand over time. These pull tabs make

battery removal much safer. [Stretching sounds] Yeah, they are still pretty fragile and break

every now and then, but it's still much better than what Samsung's currently doing with the

permanent adhesive and therbones. [Stretching sounds] Apple has three pull strips at the

end of each side of the battery [stretching sounds], and I was successful enough with

most of them [stretching sounds] that the rest of the battery can be lifted up unharmed.

This is a 3,969 milliamp hour capacity. Which is quite an improvement over last year's 3,174

milliamp hours. For real, Apple has come out to play this time.

The loudspeaker comes out next with it's two screws holding it in place. You might have

noticed so far that while the iPhone seems complex, most components are still modular

and come out relatively easily. You can see the substantial amount of black adhesive holding

the loudspeaker to the frame of the phone. Like I said in my durability test video, this

iPhone 11 Pro Max is the most water resistant smartphone on the market right now. While

most manufacturers have water tested their phones to a depth of 1.5 or 2 meters deep

for 30 minutes just to get that ip68 rating, Apple has gone above and beyond and tested

the new iPhone 11 Pro's to 4 meters deep for 30 minutes. Double the depth of what everyone

else is doing.

Hold on for a second though. Check this out, the loudspeaker is full of a ton of those

little white sound balls. I assume these white balls help fill the space inside of the tiny

little cell phone speaker to keep it from sounding like a tiny little cell phone speaker.

I'll take out the last 9 screws for the charging port and get back to that ip rating. Even

though Apple went twice as deep as everyone else, they still only got the same ip68 rating.

You're probably like, “Why didn't they just go up a level to ip69?” And that's because

ip69 is a totally different test. Instead of submersion, it's a high pressure and temperature

water jet test. And pretty irrelevant for cell phones. Cell phones get accidentally

submerged all the time, but getting accidentally blasted by a firetruck is far less common.

The charging port is finally out of the phone. That was definitely a nightmare I don't want

to repeat. The iPhone has so many intricate components. It's not to much a difficult phone

to repair, it's just a very complex phone to repair, and one wrong move or screw in

the wrong place could wreck the phone. If you do end up breaking your back glass and

don't have insurance, you can either pay Apple $599 to fix it, or just buy a replacement

housing and swap over each component individually. Yeah it's going to be pretty extremely painful

either way. Apple's still kind of being a big jerk where that's concerned. I think you

should just get a case before it breaks.

I'm pretty impressed with Apple for stepping up and going above and beyond the bare minimum

that they usually do. This time Apple has given customers the specs and features they're

paying for, and that always hasn't been true in the past. Of course in my opinion, Androids

can still accomplish more. I'm not ready to switch sides just yet. But I am glad that

Apple has stepped up with enough performance to match the price tag...and is doing it with

recycled and recyclable materials. We can all appreciate and support that.

I'll get the camera units put back into their slot. They are all housed in the same metal

block so it's impossible to get them out of alignment. And the same thing goes for the

front cameras. Finally, the front screen with it's three ribbon cables can plug into the

tiny motherboard and I can start throwing down all those metal plates over the Lego

style ribbon connectors.

The last thing that gets plugged in is the battery and this little metal bracket that

covers the top. Then we can turn the phone back on. And once again, I'm just as surprised

as you are that this thing still works. I, for one, am glad that Apple has started participating

again in the smartphone race. And even more so for using recycled components. Innovations

in both areas are good for everyone.

I'll be looking into the recycling efforts of other manufacturers in the future, so hit

that subscribe button if you haven't already. It's free. And remember that the computer

the astronauts used to land on the moon 50 years ago is less powerful than the cellphone

in your pocket right now.

Don't forget to check out the Audible link in the description for your free audio book,

and come hang out with me on Instagram and Twitter. Thanks a ton for watching and I'll

see you around.