iPhone 12 Anti Repair Design - Teardown and Repair Assessment By Hugh Jeffreys

Hi guys welcome back to another Hugh Jeffries video in this video, I'm going to be tearing down apple's new iPhone 12 to see how repairable the device is apple's been known in the past to lock down parts inside their devices to prevent third-party repair according to apple, their offices stores and data centers run on 100 renewable energy and by 2030 apple is aiming for a zero climate impact. So to me that says, a device should be able to be repaired when the time comes to prevent it from becoming e-waste to test this out. I've purchased two iPhone 12s, which I'm going to be swapping and interchanging parts on to see taking the blue, iPhone 12 out of the box. First, you can see included with it was an USB c to lightning cable with no power. Adapter apple says: they've removed the charger and headphones to cut waste, also stating that there was already 2 billion apple power adapters in the world, not including third-party charges. The problem with almost all of those charges is that they have a different plug on the end of them, meaning you can't connect the USB-C cable, so you'll need to go out and buy the apple power adapter or a similar third party, one to make that work apple has only recently switched to the USB power adapter, with it first shipping with the iPhone 11.

However, many people are going to be upgrading from older phones and their charges will no longer work with this cable, while apple likely switched to an USB cable, so it could connect to their computers, which don't have a regular USB port. However, we are now stuck with this odd situation, with no power adapter or headphones included. All that really comes with the phone is some paperwork and one apple sticker. I can remove the protective film from the display panel and I can move across to our second iPhone 12. That's right.

I had to buy two of them for this video, as these phones are so new that there isn't any parts available on the market so to get some parts to test on this phone. I have to use an entire donor phone, which is brand new. This phone includes the exact same accessories as the blue one we previously unboxed with both iPhones out of the box. We can take a quick look at them. Thankfully, down at the bottom, I can see two screws which should get us into the phone for those wondering these two phones are both 64 gig units.

Before I can open them up I'll need to set up each phone and ensure it's working from a factory state with both phones fully functioning it's time to crack them open. Removing the two security pantalone screws. I can heat up the phone using a heat mat. I use the 80 degrees setting for this proceeding. Furthermore, I then tried to separate the display using this eye slack.

However, I was having a lot of difficulty in opening. This phone apple has increased the water resistant rating, so the adhesive used must be stronger than before. I even tried a single suction cup, applying as much upward force as I possibly could and that still didn't work. I repeated the heating process a few times and even broke my tool once luckily, though, it just screwed right back together and finally, I was able to get a starting pick under the display from here. Getting the display off is a pretty straightforward process.

I can simply run the picks up the sides and around the top of the phone until it unlatches, then I can simply lift the display to the left-hand side. That's right this year. The iPhone's logic board is on the opposite side. Getting a first look at the internals. We find a 2 815 William hour battery, which is much smaller than many other phones.

I work on with our blue phone open it's time to crack open the red, iPhone 12, removing those pantalone screws and repeating the same heating process, but this time I heated the phone for five minutes on 120 degrees. This time around the display practically popped right off of the phone, while I'm not sure how temperature accurate my heat mat is. This definitely worked much better than the 80 degrees that I tried previously with both phones open. We can finally start messing around with the internals to see how repairable this new phone is to be able to test changing every part inside this phone easily I'll, just swap the logic boards between the two phones. I will start by removing the original OLED display panel.

One possible repair mistake. I see people doing is breaking this earpiece cable, given how the flex cable is folded. I can see it getting ripped very easy to avoid causing any damage to the internal components. Furthermore, I will first disconnect the battery before removing the display cables, after which I can remove the OLED display panel from the phone next, it's time to get a little deeper inside this phone I'll start by disconnecting all the flex cables that I can see connecting to this logic board. There is quite a number of these and some of them aren't actually populated.

I believe this is for the US iPhone 12, which has an extra 5g antenna on the side of the phone. Another potential repair mistake is ripping this flex cable, which is hidden underneath this sticker down at the lower portion of the logic board. There is also some shielding which I'll need to remove to be able to access two more flex cables. After disconnecting those, I can remove the four screws holding in place the logic board for the iPhone 12. There is also one screw connecting to the camera assembly, which I'll need to remove.

I thought I would remove the sim card mechanism to be able to get more clearance to remove the logic board. However, one of the screws was already rounded from the factory, so my screwdriver wouldn't grip it. Luckily, I was able to get the logic board out without the need to remove the sim card mechanism. Now that we've got one phone out of the way, it's time to move across to our red iPhone 12, where I'm going to repeat the exact same process, the second time around, it's much easier, as I know where all the screws are that need to be removed and the flex cables that I'll need to disconnect lifting off the display. All that we need to take out now is the logic board.

So far, I have to say this phone is quite modular with most components that I can see being easy to access and remove. We have seen this in the past. However, Apple has been pairing components, so even with the iPhone's great modularity, you still can't replace the part yourself as for screws. So far, we've come across pantalone, Phillips, tricking and a standoff bit so quite a lot of screwdrivers to keep track of when you're performing a repair on this device. With the logic board removed, we can see both of our iPhone 12s have been disassembled part way.

Whilst I won't be doing a complete teardown of the device, I am testing its repair ability, so I'm going to swap the iPhone 12 logic board from our red phone into this blue one. While this doesn't sound like I've done a lot here, Apple's known for pairing everything inside their phones. So if my theory is correct, this phone isn't going to be very happy when I reconnect everything back up and power it on after reinstalling the logic board, I'll connect up the display, cables and any other flex cables required, pressing and holding the power button. Nothing happened, so I lifted the display panel and reseeded my connections for the display, after which I could press and hold the power button, and I still got nothing, however, plugging in the charger the phone booted right up straight up, I was bombarded with notifications, saying face ID couldn't be activated and that there was an important display and battery message. As you can see here, my power button is functioning, so I'm not quite sure why the phone wouldn't turn on earlier.

The phone won't, let you do anything until you tap learn more here. It tells you it cannot verify the display and battery is genuine navigating into the battery section. It says the device needs to be serviced and disables. The battery capacity reading tapping learn more, takes you to Apple's website informing you of the message and that you can get your phone serviced at apple. One amusing thing I found is apple telling you not to replace the battery yourself trying to log in with face ID.

You can see it just times out and requires a password if I try and reset the face ID and set it up again with a fresh face, you can see that it says it's not available and to try setting it up later, but we've seen this in the past few iPhones. What changes now is the camera has been affected. It's completely unstable and broken with the camera freezing in photo mode when switched to the 0.5 x zoom in video mode, both cameras and zoom work, fine after returning to photo mode from video. The 0.5 x zoom now functions. However, after changing the camera, two functions are now completely unusable.

Portrait mode only works for the front camera, with the back one, only flashing, still images and a black screen. As you can see, the camera app tends to lock up relaunching it. You can see panoramas also don't work when using the.5x zoom. However, you can still see the cameras working fine in the small viewfinder, but it's blocked and won't actually let you take a panorama. I tested this with both of these phones, and they have the exact same symptoms when the rear camera has been swapped.

I thought maybe this was just a software issue, so I factory reset one of the devices through settings and, as you can see, it's still complaining that face ID cannot be activated and is still displaying messages that the display and battery aren't genuine. After I can get past those messages and launch into the camera app you can see. The issue is still there. I also tried restoring the other phone with iTunes just to check if it connected with apple servers that somehow made this issue go away. However, we can see here with the red iPhone 12.

We get the exact same issues as the other iPhone, while I believe I'm the first one to discover this issue. I don't believe it's a software bug, it's the exact same camera, but just from another brand new iPhone 12. These issues would likely mean there's some form of pairing, serialization or bond with the original camera, while this isn't confirmed by apple camera, replacements on the iPhone 12 are currently not possible. As for the display and battery messages, I understand the benefits to these, as it can inform a user if someone has sold a refurbished phone as new, but Apple has taken it a step further by disabling other features as a result of the new part, including true tone, which just disappears from the phone without warning, and the battery health reading, which is disabled for any battery other than the original factory part, with only apple having the tools to pair the new part, and this camera issue is taking it to another level, even face ID and apple's touch ID in their home. Buttons is also paired to the device, as I have not heard of anybody that has run into this issue.

Given this phone is only a couple of days old, I wanted to be a hundred percent certain that I didn't just damage the camera installing it and messing around inside the phone. So what I'm going to do is swap the original boards back into the correct housings, so everything will be a factory and original that means it'll have the original battery camera face ID and other aspects of the phone after reconnecting all the flex cables, I will leave the screws unattached in case. I need to do any further work to this phone. I'll reconnect our original display panel to the blue phone, and we can test it out going into the camera. We can see straight away.

Our camera app is a lot more responsive and everything is working as it should. Switching over to panorama. You can see it's also working on the 0.5x zoom. All of our battery warning display warnings and face ID messages have disappeared. True tone has reappeared as well as our battery health is back at 100 to ensure nothing inside the phone was conflicting with the camera after we replaced absolutely everything by simply swapping the logic board between the two phones, I'm going to be swapping the cameras between the two phones, so everything inside this blue, iPhone and red iPhone are going to be absolutely original, except the cameras which I'll be swapping out between the two phones, it's hard to believe even using genuine parts from two brand-new phones causes so many issues with our cameras swapped across between the two devices, I'm going to reassemble the phone and see whether this fixes the issue.

Yet again, I ran into the issue where the phone wouldn't turn on with the power button, and I had to use the charger it's almost like. It knows that I've been messing around with the inside, so it refuses to turn on using the charger, though it fired right back up into action, and you can see the portrait mode is now just like it was before completely unusable. So nothing else is affecting that camera. It's purely just not compatible between different iPhones. I did run it through a factory reset using iTunes for windows, and you can see the same issue occurs.

I think by now you get the point that the camera doesn't work when you replace it, and then I don't believe that this is a software bug, but rather apple locking down more components inside their phone. Furthermore, I can't confirm that, as Apple hasn't publicly stated anything about it, but for now it's time to reassemble this iPhone with its original parts, and hopefully we haven't damaged anything between the two phones in all of this messing around and will still have two working iPhone 12s by the end of it reconnecting our front OLED display panel and battery, I can reinstall the two metal brackets, which cover the many flex cables underneath using a microfiber cloth with some alcohol on it. Furthermore, I can clean away any of the dust or fingerprints that I've left inside the device. All that's left to do is to reassemble the red iPhone 12 similarly, to what we just did with the blue one. Finally, I can close up the display attaching it to the frame, ideally you'd want to replace the water resistant seals.

However, there's none of those available on the market just yet, so I won't be doing that after reinstalling, the pantalone screws we're done, so this is it apple's latest iPhone 12. Both phones survive just fine with all features working correctly again. What we've learned is that this iPhone is more locked down than ever before. If you want to keep full functionality of this device, you basically have no choice but to take it to apple for repair despite having to pay whatever apple is charging for repair if they even offer it for the issue, a device might have what happens when they stop servicing a device in a few years. No one will be able to fix it.

Apple is doing some things to reduce emissions and help the environment sure, but remember they are one of the biggest companies lobbying against right to repair. Even though I spent almost three thousand dollars on these two phones, I don't even have the ability to fix them. Recycling shouldn't be the first or only option, repair and reuse is most important, and on that note this has been a huge Jeffries video if you like what you saw hit that subscribe button and consider checking out the phone restoration playlist for more videos. Just like this one and if you're looking for any tips or what tools I used to repair devices be sure to check out my website, link for which is down in the description. That's all for this video, and I'll catch.

You guys next time.

Source : Hugh Jeffreys