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iPhone 12 Anti Repair Design - Teardown and Repair Assessment

Hugh Jeffreys · 11.6M views · 2020-10-28 · 16:22

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Overview

Hugh Jeffreys tears down the iPhone 12 and assesses its repairability, focusing on how parts are serialized and tied to the device so swapping components between phones does not work.

On Hacker News

HN cites it as evidence of Apple's parts-pairing restrictions in right-to-repair discussions.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2020–2021

Topics

Repair, teardowns & right to repairConsumer devices & gadgets
Search by tags
iphone 12teardownparts pairingrepairabilityapple

What people said

bogwog · 2021-04 · Criticism

No. Also, "right to repair" doesn't mean manufacturers have to change their product designs in any way. iPhones today aren't hard to repair because they're thin, they're hard to repair because Apple ships DRM that checks the serial numbers of all the parts, so that it will refuse to work if you try to replace something. Example: [VIDEO]

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neop1x · 2021-02 · Criticism

Nah, not anymore. SSD and RAM are soldered on the motherboard in newer Macbooks [1]. And you can't even swap parts in iPhone 12 unless you reprogram their EEPROMs [2]. [1] [LINK] [2] [VIDEO]

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emrehan · 2020-11 · Criticism

iPhone 12 models could only be serviced by Apple. A youtuber bought 2 iPhones and swapped their main boards to have a plethora of issues with the screen, battery and cameras: [VIDEO] I’m never going to buy another Apple product. The first blow was being unable to install linux to “my” devices.

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Sources

Video by Hugh Jeffreys, played through YouTube.

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