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iPhone 5s Teardown

Teardown

Teardown

Teardowns provide a look inside a device and should not be used as disassembly instructions.

Featured Guide

Featured Guide

This guide has been found to be exceptionally cool by the iFixit staff.

One…Three…G…Three…G again…S!…Four…Four again!…And another S!… Five!…S!...Five?!…C!

Thankfully Apple is in the technology business, not the education business. We can only imagine how jumbled pre-school students' ABCs and 123s would be if they were taught in Cupertino.

Crazy nomenclature aside, we were anxious to bite into this latest piece of phone fruit. So anxious, in fact, that we sent one of our own to the land down-under to get one.

Join us as we dissect the latest iPhone, and when you're done do what we did, and take a look inside the iPhone 5c as well!

Otherwise, check us out on Instagram for kooky pictures, Twitter for quirky quips, Facebook if you wanna be friends.

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Add Note Edit Step 1 — iPhone 5s Teardown  ¶ 

  • An iPhone release means a trip to the future—the iFixit teardown crew has traveled 17 hours forward in time to get the iPhone 5s early.

  • We want to send out a big thanks to our good friends at MacFixit Australia for letting us use their office in Melbourne for the teardown. They stock Mac and iPhone upgrades/accessories, and also carry our iFixit toolkits.

    • To cover all our bases, we confirmed with our best linguists that the 5s upside-down is still the 5s.

  • Speaking of toolkits, for this teardown, we'll be using iFixit's brand-new Pro Tech Screwdriver Set.

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Add Note Edit Step 2  ¶ 

  • As we ready ourselves to delve into the delightful innards of the 5s, let's check out some of its tech specs:

    • Apple A7 processor with 64-bit architecture

    • M7 motion co-processor

    • 16, 32, or 64 GB Storage

    • 4-inch retina display with 326 ppi

    • 8 MP iSight camera (with larger 1.5µ pixels) and a 1.2MP FaceTime camera.

    • Fingerprint identity sensor built into the home button

    • Available in three different colors: space gray, silver, and gooooooold (or as we call them, Not-at-all-the-Color-of-Space, Second Place Medal, and Bling!).

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Add Note Edit Step 3  ¶ 

  • Apple continues the everlasting trend of locking users out with pentalobular screws. Luckily, we came prepared. We whip out our trusty iPhone 5 Liberation Kit, and to our pleasant surprise, it works!

  • Unfortunately, we are ill-equipped in the color department, as we only have silver and black replacement Phillips screws.

    • We are currently involved in heavy lobbying to our product designers to create 14k gold replacement screws. They'll be $50 each and strip the first time you try to unscrew them, so they will be perfect for the iPhone. Stay posted.

  • With our iPhone 5s sufficiently liberated, it reminds us of another polka-dotted iPhone teardown coming in the near future…

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Add Note Edit Step 4  ¶ 

  • We're done screwing around; it's time to get this baby open! Just like last year, we enlist the help of a suction cup to free the display assembly from the rear casing.

  • Unlike last year, we make use of some gentle spudgering, just in case…

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Add Note Edit Step 5  ¶ 

  • Our careful spudgering paid off. At the bottom of the phone, a cable connects the Touch ID sensor in the home button to the Lightning port assembly.

    • This adds a small element of danger to disassembly, as pulling too hard on the suction cup could cause accidental damage to the cable.

  • We survive this first booby trap and swiftly disconnect the Touch ID cable connector with the help of a spudger.

  • Alas, our first peek at the internal layout of the 5s. Comparing it to the iPhone 5, we spot very few differences, the main one being the lack of a battery removal pull-tab.

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Add Note Edit Step 6  ¶ 

  • With our favorite screwdriver set, we remove a few metal connector covers and embark on the epic battle of battery removal.

  • The missing battery pull-tab, though seemingly innocuous, indicates a bigger problem for battery repair: glue.

  • Perhaps the "s" in 5s stands for "stuck," as in "this battery is stuck in with a lot of glue," or "I hope you didn't want to replace your battery—you're going to be stuck with this one."

  • While we'd love a tool-less battery removal as we've seen in other phones, we settle for thermal battery removal via an iOpener.

  • Holy adhesive! It appears Apple ditched the minimal adhesive in the iPhone 5 in favor of those two huge white runways of adhesive holding the 5s(tuck) battery in place.

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Add Note Edit Step 7  ¶ 

  • The 5s has a claimed 10 hours of talk time on 3G, but there are rumbles that iOS 7 isn't doing you any favors.

  • The gold unit from Desay Battery Co., Ltd in Huizhou, China sports a 3.8V - 5.92Wh - 1560mAh battery. Comparatively:

    • iPhone 5: 3.8 V - 1440 mAh - 5.45 Wh. Talk time: Up to 8 hours on 3G. Standby time: Up to 225 hours.

    • Samsung Galaxy S4: 3.8 V - 2600 mAh - 9.88 Wh. Talk time: up to 7 hours. Standby time: Up to 300 hours.

    • Motorola Moto X: 3.8 V - 2200 mAh - 8.4 Wh. 24 hours of "mixed usage."

  • It appears different units sport different battery manufacturers; our "space-gray" spare (right) comes to us from Simplo Technology Inc.

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Add Note Edit Step 8  ¶ 

  • With the battery safely removed, we turn to the next step in our disassembly journey: removing the (unchanged) 326 ppi Retina display assembly.

  • A few flicks of a spudger to disconnect the FaceTime camera, digitizer, and LCD cables, and the display is free.

    • Looking for some tech specs on the display? Well look no further! In fact, just look backwards…to the iPhone 5. Despite the trend in almost every other smartphone release, the iPhone 5s display is no bigger, better, or badder than the 5.

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Required Tools

Small Suction Cup

$2.95 · 50+ In stock

iOpener

$12.95 · 50+ In stock

Pro Tech Screwdriver Set

$69.95 · 46 In stock

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