iPhone 3G dismantled: display & glass separate, battery not soldered

by Chris Davies on July 11, 2008





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If you're looking to dismantle your iPhone 3G but you'd rather have some pieces slightly larger than dust left over at the end of the process, than iFixit should be your first port of call.  The famed strippers - by which I mean they strip down gadgets to their constituent parts - have already taken out their screwdrivers and splayed out the second-gen iPhone's guts for all to see.

iPhone 3G dismantled

iPhone 3G dismantled

There's some good news in there too.  For a start, Apple have learnt from making the iPod Touch and refrained from bonding the glass and the LCD together.  In the original iPhone those two pieces were fixed, making repairs expensive.  The display itself now connects directly to the main board, rather than having numerous other components attached to it.

iPhone 3G dismantled

Further inside, and it turns out that the iPhone 3G's battery isn't actually soldered in place.  That's not quite as useful as a user-replaceable battery, but it does mean that if you're reluctant to send your cellphone off to Apple and pay them $86 to swap it out, you'll not need a soldering iron to do it yourself.  If you're interested in the specific chips used, iFixit are listing them as and when details emerge.

[via Core77]

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{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Alex 07.12.08 at 5:07 pm

will apple be selling the batteries???

2 Vincent Nguyen 07.12.08 at 5:17 pm

It’s hard to believe “that’s all there is” to such an amazing device!

3 darnell 07.13.08 at 6:41 pm

I Don’t know about yoll but my iPhone 3g battery life sucks by time 8pm hit my phone say ten percent dismiss and it’s starting to become a problem

4 Coco 07.15.08 at 11:44 pm

Sure the battery on iPhone 3G is not that great, but what can we do? We want small size phones, powerful features and lengthy battery life.

Just get a backup battery. I got mine from iPhoneck brands. Their new 3G backup battery is probably one of the better looking products in the market. Their website is http://www.iphoneck.com

5 kabukicho2001 07.16.08 at 7:32 pm

I’m interested only in the gps. Can it work without connection to AT&T?

6 GEEK 07.17.08 at 1:16 am

Anyone an idea who the producer of the touch-sensors might be? In the old iPhone it was BALDA/TPK.

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