iFixit teardown of iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max finds a few differences from the X

We’ve already seen one iPhone XS teardown from a Dutch company who managed to get their hands on one early, but now iFixit is here with its usual detailed breakdown of what it has found inside.

The company reports that while much is unchanged from the iPhone X, there are a few differences, not all of them yet mentioned by Apple …

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• The Taptic Engine inside the XS Max has been resized—big phone, bigger vibrations
• The XS Max also gets an extended logic board, with one of the display connectors moved to the bottom.
• Camera: the wide-angle sensor size has been increased by 32%. Pixel size has also been bumped, bringing better low-light performance and contributing to the new “Smart HDR” feature.
• There was one thing Apple forgot to mention about the new camera: all that 32% had to go somewhere, and it turns out the camera bump had to grow a little—your iPhone X case may not fit your iPhone XS.
• The XS packs a 10.13 Wh battery (2,659 mAh at 3.81 V), weighing 39.5 g—slightly downgraded from last year’s X. But this decrease in capacity comes with a wild new battery configuration. Rather than using two cells to fill this L-shaped recess, Apple has constructed an all-new single-cell battery.
• The XS Max battery unsurprisingly comes out on top capacity-wise, with 12.08 Wh (3,179 mAh at 3.80 V), and weighing 46.6 g. No single-cell here, though!

iFixit gives the new models a surprisingly good repairability score of 6/10, the main problem identified being the glass back carried over from last year’s model.

Glass on front and back doubles the likelihood of drop damage—and if the back glass breaks, you’ll be removing every component and replacing the entire chassis.

Check out the full set of photos over at iFixit.

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