The iPhone 14 series is about to begin shipping to early buyers (three of the four go on sale tomorrow) and while they don’t look too different on the outside, there are some major changes on the inside. This teardown video from PBK Reviews offers a glimpse into the interior of the iPhone 14 Pro Max.
The good news is that the phone is relatively easy to repair – at least some components are. As this is a US model, there is no card tray for a physical SIM. This means that the first thing that comes out of the phone is the display.
There is a metal plate that helps keep the various cables firmly attached to the two-layer motherboard and also acts as a heat sink. After it’s gone, you can start disconnecting the screen and also the battery (by the way, the battery is marked 16.93 Wh). So these two common repairs are easy to do, even if that doesn’t mean they’re cheap.
Getting to the cameras requires you to extract a few more components. An interesting thing that emerges from the video is that it appears that the new front camera has the OIS (you can see it at 3:40). Apple added autofocus for the first time, but didn’t mention optical stabilization, the official spec just says “Automatic Image Stabilization”. This is something worth investigating.
The screen and battery come off quite easily • The satellite module?
Another interesting development is a mysterious new component: presumably it’s part of the new SOS over satellite feature and takes up quite a bit of space on the motherboard. Considering that the iPhone 14 Pro Max is basically the same size as the 13 Pro Max, Apple had to work hard to fit everything.
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