iFixit Tears Down the iPhone Air, Finds That It's Mostly Battery

iFixit's teardown of Apple's iPhone Air reveals a device dominated by its battery, which occupies approximately two-thirds of the internal space while critical components including the logic board cluster at the top. The battery matches the component used in Apple's iPhone Air MagSafe battery pack and can be swapped between devices.

The top-heavy component layout addresses the bendgate vulnerability that damaged logic boards in previous thin iPhone models when pressure was applied to the device's middle section. Despite the iPhone Air's thinner profile, iFixit awarded it a 7 out of 10 repairability score, citing reduced component layering that provides more direct access to the USB-C connector, battery, and other serviceable parts compared to standard iPhone models. The dual-entry system further contributes to the device's serviceability.

That's not bad

[Z80a]

If you could make it 99% battery and still perform well, that would be great, because its just more battery time.

Re:

[korgitser]

Oh they could easily make it more battery by making a bigger battery. But thinner better, so we get this instead.

As to the interpretation of the problem of bendgate, that's a bit rich. Nobody cared about the logic board bending and breaking, the issue was all of the phone bending and breaking. Which is going to happen again with this one.

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[cmseagle]

Check out the JerryRigEverything durability test [youtu.be]. You're not bending that thing on accident.

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[necro81]

+1 Informative.

(No mod points today...)

Re:That's not bad

[king*jojo]

If you could make it 99% battery and still perform well, that would be great, because its just more battery time.

I dunno, I just read the NYtimes review, and if you disregard all the attempts at some balance so that Apple doesn't stop giving them ad dollars, it's a straight up bad review.

The review was saying they couldn't even get 12 hours out of that 99%, they could barely get 10 (Apple claims 27). And that it was getting red hot just having a normal phone call.

Re:That's not bad

[BoogieChile]

They were probably just holding it wrong

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[joh]

There's absolutely no point in comparing different battery tests of the same phone. Comparing different phones with the same test, this makes sense.

Apple claims 27 hours video, this is a very different thing than using it actively. Others on YouTube have run it for 5 hours with YT streaming at 50% brightness and the battery dropping from 100% to 80% with that. That's just because video decoding is fully hardware-based these days and the SoC is nearly dormant then.

Whenever I hear someone talking about "x hou

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[RitchCraft]

In the video the tear down tech stated people are just barely getting a day out of the battery life. I would much rather have a phone 3 times as thick with a battery to match. I miss the days of being able to carry extra phone batteries when needed. Bring back a phone in the style of the LG enV3; that was my favorite phone ever.

Re: That's not bad

[LindleyF]

I carry extra batteries all the time. Anker makes them.

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[RitchCraft]

Not the same. I'm referring to a complete battery swap like one could do years ago.

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[ctilsie242]

Things like this make me miss my HTC Wizard. Easily a week of battery life.

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[cmseagle]

I would much rather have a phone 3 times as thick with a battery to match

So, the Pro models with a MagSafe battery stuck to the back? Against all odds, Apple does seem to have listened to those who say they aren't interested in the tradeoffs that come with a thinner phone.

Bendgate

[devslash0]

Why don't we stop calling every single scandal "*gate" and just start calling them what they are - total fuck-ups?

Re:

[RitchCraft]

"Watergate involved Nixon, dumbass." LOL

Re:

[RitchCraft]

Who down mods someone laughing? LOL The reply was correct, Nixon not Clinton.

Re:Bendgate

[ceoyoyo]

Yes, the -gate habit comes from the Watergate scandal. Watergate was during Richard Nixon's second term as president, in 1972-4. He was a Republican, and resigned the presidency before he could be impeached. The name comes from an attempted break in at the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington DC that ended up uncovering a whole pile of shady stuff Nixon had been up to.

Are Americans actually this ignorant of their own history?

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[thegarbz]

Are Americans actually this ignorant of their own history?

What do you mean "own" and what do you mean "history". Delete the second half of the sentence and ... yes the answer is yes.

Re:

[bn-7bc]

You are technically right, but here is the thing, people from the US are not exectly famous for knowing much about thing happening outside the US, ok there are ofc exceptions (WW1, WW2, the cold war and aby war they started) can you see any commonalities, that is correct All of this ecaples involved People from the os in one way or another. What People from the US seam to wave missed are thing that did not involve them directly ie no us boots on the ground. So the point of the " their own history" comment

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[ceoyoyo]

Being ignorant of history in general is one thing. Being ignorant of your own history, especially relatively recent history, especially when you're from as supposedly patriotic a country as the US is another.

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[sabbede]

That's where the -gate comes from, but it wasn't applied to other scandals until the Clinton administration when he was involved in the Whitewater scandal. The American press, being the geniuses they are, saw the word 'water' and appended the 'gate'. We had a good twenty years between Watergate and Whitewatergate where scandals were just scandals.

Someday, we will be free of it again.

Re:

[ceoyoyo]

it wasn't applied to other scandals until the Clinton administration when he was involved in the Whitewater scandal.

Well, give or take a couple dozen -gates. [wikipedia.org]

And by "Clinton administration when he was involved in the Whitewater scandal" I guess you mean Bill Clinton's state governorship in the early 80s, when Whitewater corp was active? Because the actual scandal broke when he was a presidential candidate in 1992, not president.

Re:

[sabbede]

It broke then but continued for a few years after that, having a major impact on his administration (I'm taking your word on the dates). Still, fair and valid point.

It may be due to my age at the time, but I don't recall any of those scandals being called -gates until the 90's. That linked article talks about "contragate", for example, but I've only ever heard that referred to as "Iran-Contra". Maybe I didn't notice because I was a kid more interested in cartoons than the news, that's entirely likely.

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[laddiebuck]

Ah yes, the famous Watergate-gate.

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[ceoyoyo]

The journalist who popularized the "-gate" suffix regards "doublebillingsgate" as his greatest creation.

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[sabbede]

I think you meant it started during the Clinton administration when the press called his Whitewater scandal "Whitewatergate".

Moores's law works on all but the battery

[gurps_npc]

Everything else has been shrunk down to microscopic levels.

While we have had significant progress in batteries, battery improvements have been linear, while most of the rest of the components have had exponential improvements.

So the battery grows while everything else shrinks. Now the battery is the largest component. Likely to stay that way, too.

Re:

[Gabest]

If they made the first iphone with the latest tech, a coin cell could probably run it for a day.

Apple is a cult

[Vranitzky]

If you want longer battery life, then don't get an iPhone. There are plenty of bigger phones with batteries that last for days. They are not Apple. They work. They are cheaper. Or are you in a cult, where only iPhones are allowed? Then stop complaining and follow your Apple guru and buy a new phone every year. Apple needs money!

Gimmicks for fools with more money than sense

[DrXym]

The thinness is irrelevant when there is a chunk of mainboard and cameras above which isn't thin. It might as well have been more uniformly thick all over and allow for a better battery. But that would make sense and that's the last thing people buying this phone are in possession of. I'm sure they'll be splurging for a nice chunky otter box to keep their gimped thin phone safe.

Expensive battery!

[Gabest]

I can buy a battery for less than $50. I think the phone should not cost more than $100.

Re: Expensive battery!

[jockm]

Ok assuming a retail price to bom ratio of 2:1, and you said less than $50, so letâ(TM)s call that $40. So youâ(TM)re saying all the other parts of a phone cost $10?

But being generous and assuming you were saying that the total cost of the phone before retail is $100, then youâ(TM)re still asserting that everything else in the phone can cost $55. Youâ(TM)re not getting a premium phone for that.

I still think I'll wait for the next SE.

[sabbede]

As I'm trying to demonstrate having more sense than money.

Still too big

[necro81]

They can go on and on about how thin it is. It's substantially larger in my pocket compared to my current iPhone mini. Alas, that size phone (~5" screen) has been killed off - it's phablets as far as the eye can see. It's not just an Apple thing - all the major manufacturers [youtube.com] have decided that small form factors aren't worth having around.

Compared to iPhone 17 Pro

[TwistedGreen]

If you want more, Hugh Jeffreys comparative teardown of the iPhone 17 Air and Pro was very interesting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

Working their way to an unwanted razer-blade phone

[BrendaEM]

Is there anything they could do to make a phone more unwieldy?