iFixit has torn down the iPhone 18 Pro and Pro Max, and the result is a mixed scorecard: a genuine repair improvement on the battery, alongside a camera mechanism the site says almost nobody will be able to fix.
Both models score a provisional 7 out of 10 for repairability. iFixit’s Elizabeth Chamberlain and Carsten Frauenheim opened four units and found the battery tray now held down by screws instead of glue — the same setup iFixit praised on last year’s model — meaning a battery swap no longer requires fighting adhesive once the tray is exposed. The eSIM iPhone 18 Pro’s battery is rated 16.76 Wh (4,288 mAh), and the Pro Max’s is 21.751 Wh (5,567 mAh).
The New Camera Is the Tradeoff
The headline camera feature this year is a variable aperture main lens, using six polymer composite blades thinner than a human hair to adjust the opening between f/1.48 and f/4.0. iFixit calls it a feat of precision engineering, but also concludes that repairing it isn’t realistic for almost anyone outside Apple’s own service network:
“very few repair enthusiasts on this planet will have the tools, techniques, or knowledge to get this variable aperture mechanism apart”
In practice, that means any damage to the main camera likely means replacing the entire assembly rather than fixing the specific broken part — an expensive repair, since Apple charged $249 for the equivalent camera assembly on the iPhone 17 Pro, before whatever premium the new mechanism adds. iFixit is also skeptical the feature earns its keep: with a sensor under half an inch across and a 6.8mm lens, the site argues the background-blur difference between apertures is small enough that most people won’t notice it in everyday photos.
A Repair Risk iFixit Didn’t Expect
Three of the four phones iFixit opened suffered a cracked or torn white plastic display frame during teardown — a component present since the iPhone 15 Pro that hadn’t caused this much trouble in past years. iFixit isn’t certain why, floating the redesigned cooling system’s heat distribution as one possible factor, and cautions that four units is too small a sample to call this a widespread failure rate. It does mean, though, that the routine step of opening the phone to reach the battery now carries a real risk of damaging the screen assembly around it.
Elsewhere, the A20 Pro chip has moved to the outside of the logic board sandwich, next to a vapor chamber iFixit measures as three times larger than before, improving cooling. The tradeoff is on the inside: NAND storage now sits within the board sandwich, making data-recovery work that needs direct chip access more involved than before.
iFixit’s closing take is a reminder that a camera spec bump alone isn’t a reason to upgrade — the site’s long-running position is that the phone you already own is usually the more sustainable choice.
Source: iFixit
