iPhone SE Teardown Reveals Some Fun Surprises

iPhone SE Teardown Reveals Some Fun Surprises

Our review of the iPhone SE 2020 demonstrates that Apple's $399 phone is one of the best phones of the year in terms of pure value, but we didn't have a chance to look inside this phone to see how easy (or not) repairs are I could not.

The good news is that iFixit is already hard at work disassembling the iPhone SE and has already revealed that some parts are borrowed from the iPhone 8. This should make finding replacement parts easier and hopefully cheaper.

According to iFixit, the iPhone SE's camera, SIM tray, Taptic Engine, and display assembly, including the microphone and proximity sensor, are all interchangeable with iPhone 8 parts. In fact, the site claims that "the screen replacement should be cheaper than any new iPhone we've seen in years."

There is a caveat to replacing the display, however. Unless you have access to a screen programmer, you will lose the True Tone feature. Since True Tone only changes the color temperature of the screen in response to ambient light, we do not consider this a significant loss. It is nice to have, but not essential.

Another trade-off is that the home button is not replaceable according to iFixit. Therefore, if it needs to be replaced, one must pay Apple. Yes, there is a chance to use an aftermarket home button, but you lose access to Touch ID.

The biggest surprise is that the 1,821 mAh battery is not backward compatible with the iPhone 8 despite the same capacity. iFixit says that replacing the iPhone SE 2020 battery with another battery is not a genuine Apple battery They say you cannot do this unless you want to see a service warning.

As iFixit notes, a complete disassembly of the iPhone SE 2020 is still in progress. We will follow up with additional information as it becomes available.

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