The iPhone 15 series received iFixit’s official teardown treatment and the results are a mixed bag. The 15 Pro models finally received the updated internal design where you can now directly remove the back glass without removing the display first. The internal components on the Pro models are still hidden behind the screen instead of the back glass like on the vanilla iPhone 15 and the 15 Plus. The big change with the 15 Pro models is that the back glass is now removable so cracked back repairs should will be faster and easier.
There is one major caveat though as Apple continues to impose software limitations by pairing specific components and parts to each iPhone making third-party repairs and even genuine component swaps that much more difficult. iFixit recently demoted the iPhone 14 down to a 4/10 repairability score retroactively over the part-pairing limitation and the iPhone 15 models all earn the same score with a do-not-recommend rating.
Looking at the process in more detail, the 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max open from the front or back but their internal components are hidden behind the screen just like all iPhones before the iPhone 14. The big change with the 15 Pro models is that the back glass is now removable so cracked back repairs should will be faster and easier. Keep in mind that Apple still pairs each glass back to the corresponding device so repairs will need to be validated via Apple’s System Configuration tool.
iFixit even ran a pairing test between two identical iPhone 15 Pro Max units to see which part swaps would work and most of the components would not work or would send out warnings.
The 15 Pro Max features a 17.1 Wh battery and the main and ultrawide camera sensors appear to be the same size as on the 14 Pro Max. We also get to see Qualcomm’s Snapdragon X70 modem which handles 5G connectivity. The iPhone 15 Pro Max uses SK Hynix DDR5 memory which is next to the A17 Pro chipset on the main board.
You can watch the full iPhone 15 Pro Max teardown below.
