it's new iphone season and that means
we've gotten our hands on apple's latest
iphone for professionals only
the iphone 12 pro with an updated three
camera system that includes lidar
a new well kind of new flat edge design
an updated processor and of course
who could forget 5g 5g 5g 5g 5g
5g in short the iphone 12 pro has all
the makings of a very exciting teardown
so let's get right to it after spending
the morning in our super scientific oops
machine stress tester
our iphone 12 pro looks a little ragged
but it's still intact
for now the first steps of the opening
procedure are familiar
remove two pentalobe screws from the
bottom of the phone and then use some
heat and a suction cup to separate the
display
this phone feels like it needs more heat
than previous iphones to soften the
display adhesive
and maybe that's due to the 12 pro's
upgraded ip rating
apple claims this iphone can withstand 6
meters of water for
up to 30 minutes that's a whole 2 meters
deeper than last year's iphone 11 pro
what's this our first curveball the 12
pro opens from the right edge not the
left
and the battery and logic board have
switched places familiar but tiny
tripoint screws hold the cable connector
shields in place
and once the battery and display cables
are disconnected the 6.1 inch super
retina xdr oled comes right off
side by side with the unprofessional
iphone 12 the two phones look almost
identical even on the inside
in fact the only difference we can spot
at this point is the iphone 12 pro
slightly different camera shield
under that camera shield are three
cameras and a lidar sensor
the cameras come right out but the lidar
sensor seems to be connected to the
bottom of the logic board
we'll come back to that later the iphone
12 pro cameras all use 12 megapixel
sensors but they vary in quality and
each one uses a different lens
like the iphone 11 pro before it the
iphone 12 pro has a standard wide camera
an ultra wide camera and a telephoto
camera the similarities between the 12
and 12 pro continue here as it seems the
camera connectors on both phones are the
same
since we have a non-pro iphone 12 laying
around we decided to try a quick camera
swap
we're saving the whole story for our
iphone 12 parts testing blog so stay
tuned to ifixit.com for that
but let's just say the three camera
array from the iphone 12 pro
didn't not work in the standard iphone
12.
if you happen to like cables the iphone
pro is going to make you very happy
there are a ton of them connected to the
logic board the first two release the
front camera and face id sensors
then the rest go off to places unseen
for now with just a few screws
connecting the logic board to the rear
case we attempt to lift it out
but it's firmly connected to some long
antenna cables that wrap around the
battery and connect somewhere on the
opposite side of the phone
once again we'll leave this in place and
come back to it in a minute to clear
some space for removing the battery we
pull out the loudspeaker and the
noticeably smaller taptic engine
with those parts out we see an
interesting repair ability change
the loudspeaker now has an orange rubber
gasket that was previously adhesive
that will definitely make repairs easier
for the 12 and 12 pro
the iphone 12 pro battery sports four
handy adhesive pull tabs but removing
the pull tabs proves to be more
difficult than we're used to with
iphones
we get the first two tabs removed from
the bottom of the battery but the two at
the top are annoyingly blocked by those
antenna cables we ran into earlier
so we skip messing around with those
pull tabs sneak in a couple drops of
isopropyl alcohol and the battery comes
right up
this battery is actually identical to
the one found in the non-pro iphone 12.
it's rated at 10.78 watt hours which is
actually a decrease from the 11.67 watt
hour battery we saw in the iphone 11 pro
with the battery out of the way we
finally have access to that pesky cable
that connects to what we can now see
is the 5g millimeter wave antenna on the
side of the phone once we disconnect it
we can pull the logic board out on the
back side of the circuit board we can
see another 5g millimeter wave antenna
module and after we separate the two
boards you can now see the a14 bionic
and the qualcomm x55 5g modem it may
seem like we're out of things to pull
from this phone but don't forget about
that lidar sensor we left behind
with a little help from an opening pick
the lidar sensor is free
like face id lidar starts by projecting
a grid of infrared dots out into the
world in search of a surface
but that's where similarities end face
id recognizes faces by interpreting the
distortion pattern on a very fine grid
of dots
but lidar maps distances around the room
by calculating how long it takes each
beam of light to bounce back to the
sensor
also known as time of flight the iphone
12 pro's camera system uses lidar to
help with low light focusing
improved portrait mode performance and
it can even measure how tall you are
one thing that remains hidden from us
are the magnets that make this iphone 12
pro compatible with apple's new magsafe
accessories
those are trapped underneath the
wireless charging coil as we discussed
in our written teardown
linked in the description below
thankfully we have friends at creative
electron with really awesome x-ray
machines that allow us to see through
the case
and spot the magnets inside we've run
out of things to take out of this iphone
so let's talk repairability
not much has changed with the iphone 12
pro displaying battery replacements
remain a priority and most other
important components are modular
but the iphone 12 pro still uses a ton
of tiny screws that require special
drivers to remove
and the glass on the front and back
doubles the likelihood of drop damage
all that in mind the iphone 12 pro
scores a 6 out of 10 on a repairability
scale
if you're looking for more tear down
content check out our live tear down of
the iphone 12
and make sure you're subscribed to our
channel we have a ton of really cool
teardowns coming up that you won't want
to miss