00:00As an Android user, the more I learn about this iPhone 17 Pro, the more I like it.
00:05Rumor is that this orange iPhone 17 Pro has a new vapor chamber inside,
00:10and it's surprisingly repairable – with an asterisk of course.
00:15My new toolkit collab with iFixit has 32 high precision bits inside,
00:20and knowing Apple I'll probably have to use all of them.
00:23The most commonly repaired components like the screen and the battery are going to be
00:27accessible from the front. But since the back panel is made from glass, and as we know glass is
00:32glass, let's pop that off first to see how hard it'll be to fix. One thing I didn't immediately
00:37realize or recognize is that Apple has found a rather ingenious way to tie both the back glass
00:43and the front glass into the same set of pentalobe screws at the bottom of the phone. So as I'm
00:49heating up that back glass and carefully separating it from the aluminum frame with my suction cup
00:54and ultra thin pry tool, taking out those bottom two screws first would have made my life a whole
00:59lot easier. Learning from other people's mistakes though is quicker than making them all yourself,
01:04so I'm just helping future you out with your own repairs. With the back glass off, there's a thin
01:09ribbon cable in the upper left corner that connects the 25 watt wireless charger to the motherboard.
01:15We don't know the official cost of these replacement pieces just yet,
01:18but since Magnus lose about 1% of their strength every 10 years or so,
01:25pretty much all of these will need to be replaced by the year 3000. Just something to budget for.
01:31Taking out the two pentalobe screws is easy, something I should have done first thing. Another,
01:36you know, minorly catastrophic issue I had was that instead of lifting up as hard as I should have with
01:41the suction cup, I inserted my thin pry tool far too early and killed the screen. It looks like I won't be
01:48joining the blue bubble gang after all. I'll show you the damage here in a second, but I should have
01:52lifted up on the screen until a gap was clearly visible and then gently worked my way around the
01:57edges after that to slice away the adhesive. I'm obviously making these mistakes on purpose so as
02:02to demonstrate what not to do. This phone has given up the ghost so that others may live and there are
02:08plenty of nifty little noteworthy nuggets that we can still find on the inside. Luckily, if someone is
02:13removing the screen, there's a very good chance that it's already broken in the first place,
02:17so you won't have to worry as much about it surviving. Apple, in their wisdom to make repairs
02:23easier and more foolproof, have copied a page out of the Pixel's textbook and included a barrier between
02:28where the screen sits and the rest of the phone, protecting the battery. It's way harder to break
02:33something when it's protected by metal. I mean, look at Iron Man. You can see where I sliced into the
02:38screen on the lower portion when I inserted my tool in too early. The screen has two ribbons on
02:43the left side with a phillips head screw holding down the lego style ribbon connector. This iPhone
02:4817 Pro screen could be replaced by an experienced technician in about 2 minutes. Apple does now sell
02:54replacement parts directly to customers, which is pretty cool of them. Thumbs up for that. The front
02:59facing camera and face unlock hardware is still inside the phone. Something I've always wished these
03:04cameras could do though is take a picture of anyone who's attempted to unlock my phone without my
03:09permission. You know, for an extra layer of security. Luckily, my favorite security app and the sponsor of
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03:55good guys. You can ask the Scam Copilot chatbot questions or send it screenshots to see if a text or
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04:15you can try it free for 90 days. With the 17 T5 Torx screws gone, and the Phillips head screw holding
04:22the bracket on top of the battery plug removed, we can lift off the shield between the screen and the
04:27phone's internal hardware, where the battery...wait, the battery is missing. Oh, there it is. It's
04:33attached to the midframe. I'm shocked at how reasonable Apple is being with this whole repairability
04:38thing. If Apple sells this battery already attached to the tray, this is actually a pretty chill repair,
04:44assuming of course you can get the screen off in one piece. This is the same style of metal enclosed
04:49battery we saw last year, with the electrically debonding adhesive strip under the metal case. The
04:54metal case around the battery adds an extra layer of protection against puncturing, which as we saw
05:01on the Pixel 10 Pro Fold, can be a pretty smoky experience. The midframe also has the first ever
05:07Apple vapor chamber attached to it. This vapor chamber sits on top of the new A19 processor and
05:12keeps it cool so you can scroll through fire memes more efficiently. If the chip overheats,
05:18it will throttle performance. Peeling back the graphite layer reveals that we still can't access
05:23the vapor chamber without pulling off the battery first. The vapor chamber appears to be very much
05:28a permanent part of that midframe though. Android users have been familiar with these things for
05:32the past 9 years. Samsung's had one in their phone since the Galaxy S7 back in 2016. But for the Apple
05:39users just joining the party, the way a vapor chamber works is that a small drop of water gets inserted
05:44inside the chamber and sealed up at the factory. You can see the little droplets of liquid still inside the
05:50chamber. Then as the processor heats up that drop of liquid, it evaporates, taking a lot of the heat
05:56energy at the hot end of the vapor chamber, traveling to the other side, condensing back into liquid,
06:01dispersing its heat, and gets ready to repeat the process. Very similar to how an air conditioner uses
06:07phase change to cool down your house. The metal mesh inside helps wick that liquid back to the hot
06:12end so it can happen over and over. Between the charging coil, metal battery, and new age vapor chamber,
06:18the iPhone 17 Pro is turning out to be even cooler on the inside than it is on the outside. Switching
06:24over to our fourth screwdriver bit, a flathead, to remove the standoff screw. These are basically a
06:29screw for holding a screw. A screw within a screw. Screwception. Where one screw screws into another
06:35screw for holding multiple layers of components. With the standoff screws removed, we can pop out the
06:41Taptic Engine vibrator. I do have a full vibrator review coming out soon, so keep an eye out for that one.
06:46I did some counting after this teardown was all over, and there are more than 70 different size
06:51screws in this iPhone 17 Pro. So forgive me if I don't mark the location of all of them this time
06:57around. If you ever happen to find yourself this deep in an iPhone 17 Pro, you need way more help
07:02than I can give. Or an extra assist. The front facing camera has the new square sensor inside.
07:08We ripped one of these open in the iPhone air teardown, so if you want to see the sensor you can check out
07:12that video. The rear facing cameras are all 48 megapixels and tied together in one large housing.
07:18Neither the ultrawide, the telephoto, nor the main camera have exterior optical image stabilization,
07:24but the main camera and telephoto both have sensor shift stabilization on the inside, which is just
07:30as if not more capable than regular OIS. Sensor shift is still a physical form of stabilization. The upper
07:37loudspeaker does look pretty normal. Remember the iPhone Air does not have stereo speakers while the
07:42iPhone 17 Pro does. It does not however have any windows where we can see the balls inside,
07:48which means we have to bust them open instead. And indeed, we do find balls inside. These give the
07:54speaker's sound wave something to bounce off of inside the box so the tiny speaker doesn't sound like a
07:59tin can. Balls make little speakers sound bigger and more full than they actually are. After a bunch more
08:05screws are removed, I can pull away the motherboard with its new A19 chip in it. It's always shocking
08:11how tiny these things are. The whole board is about the size of a quarter, or whatever coin this is.
08:17Sorry if I forget your name, I'm from the USA and we only care about Argentina for some reason.
08:23Finally, the last thing to come out of the phone is the charging port. And for some reason Apple has
08:28more screws holding in this singular port than Samsung uses in their whole phone. I do not understand it.
08:34The lower loudspeaker also has balls inside, which is nifty. And there you go. The whole iPhone torn
08:40down with its aluminum body and antenna line around the camera plateau. I think this is by far the
08:46coolest and most capable iPhone Apple has ever made. All of the main repairs are simple enough,
08:51like the screen, the back glass, and the battery. And if I was going to switch, this would be the one I
08:57would buy if. I'm not going to switch, but if I was. I'm just thinking about it. Grab one of my toolkits
09:04for your future self down in the description. And don't forget your free 90 days worth of Bitdefender,
09:09so you can keep yourself secure both at home and abroad. Thanks a ton for watching. I'll see you around.
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