Teardowns

The Marathon Teardown Continues With an iPhone 7

We did it. We went on a teardown bender and made iFixit history by delivering you three live teardowns in one night. Last up on the teardown table: the iPhone 7. We’ve been hard at work—on at least three continents—peeling back layers of Apple tech. We’re all a bit tired, so we’ll keep this post short. Here’s what you need to know:

It’s black. Matte black.

Matte black iPhone 7 ready for teardown

Got it? Great. Here are your iPhone 7 teardown highlights (You can see the full teardown on iFixit.com/teardown):

  • Where the headphone jack used to be, we find a beefier Taptic Engine and an audio baffle. According to Apple, this plastic component is a barometric vent. With the added ingress protection afforded by the watertight seal, the iPhone uses this baffle to equalize the internal and atmospheric pressures in order to have an accurate altimeter.
  • The 3.8 V, 1960 mAh battery is rated for a capacity of 7.45 Wh—a notable increase from the 6.55 Wh battery in the iPhone 6s.
  • As with the iPhone 7 Plus, we found lots of evidence of waterproofing measures around points of ingress, including the speaker grille, the SIM tray, and the volume buttons.
iPhone 7 teardown

We’re also conducting a (very informal) waterproofing test of the iPhone 7 live on YouTube. Long story short, we put an iPhone in a fish tank. And, we gotta say, our iPhone is doing surprisingly well. So far, it’s even outlasted the mechanical swimming fish we put in the tank to keep our iPhone 7 company. RIP, Jack.