iPhone 16e Teardown: Never Before Has Skipping the Upgrade Made More Sense
Apple’s budget model iPhone just got a new entry in the lineup: the iPhone 16e.
We’re excited to see that repairability upgrades from other entries in the iPhone 16 lineup have made their way into the budget model. It has the cool electrically released adhesive under the battery that we saw in the vanilla and Plus iPhone 16 models. Thanks to Right to Repair laws that passed last year in Oregon and Colorado, Apple has backed off on blocking parts with software. We’re happy to report that we didn’t see any parts pairing issues when we swapped logic boards—at least with OEM parts, Repair Assistant worked as advertised.
And for the first time ever, Apple has released a repair procedure for the charging port, which is now USB-C, thanks to laws in Europe. But that repair isn’t for the faint of heart (more on that later).
So, if you’re on an old SE model, should you upgrade? Probably not, we still say, even after getting into the phone’s guts. A refurbished phone will get you more bang for your buck.
Still Loving the Easy-release Battery Adhesive
Best repairability news in this phone: It’s got the new generation of easy-release adhesive under the battery. In the iPhone 16 vanilla and Plus models, we were super excited to play with the electrically released adhesive, Apple’s new elegant solution to making adhesive sticky when you want it to be and letting go when you need.
iPhones have long had stretch-release adhesive under the battery. Cool in theory. Works great in Command Strips, which renters around the world know: The adhesive behind your jacket hook stays sticky until you stretch it, at which point it gives up, usually without damaging your paint or making any holes in your drywall.
But anyone who’s ever removed these strips from under a phone or laptop battery can tell you that they often don’t work as intended. They tend to break off, if your tweezer-wrapping procedure isn’t perfect, and they get more and more brittle over time. Then once they’ve snapped, you’ve got to work some rubbing alcohol under the battery and pry gently, carefully. It’s a somewhat finicky procedure, and if you pry too soon or too aggressively, you risk bending or even breaking the battery.
The new electrically released adhesive, on the other hand, is basically fool-proof: hook some alligator clips supplying 9–30V DC up to a special conductive tab and a screw post, and the adhesive disengages quickly and cleanly. With our VoltClip, supplying 12V from our FixHub Power Station, the battery is free in just 5 seconds.
Batteries are consumables. If you use a device for long enough, you’ll need to replace its battery. So it’s super important that batteries are easy to access and easy to change, and we’re glad to see real innovations in better adhesive, even if we still prefer fasteners instead.
The battery in this phone may actually last longer than the batteries in other 16e models, since it’s got longer battery life and therefore won’t undergo as many battery cycles—Apple promises up to 26 hours of video playback.
No MagSafe = Less Efficient Charging
On paper, the 16e looks a lot closer to the other current-gen models than the previous SEs did. That’s probably on purpose: Like the other 16 models, the 16e has a 12MP front camera, Apple Intelligence, a Ceramic Shield front (though worse than the other 16s), and an A18 chip (though with a 20% weaker GPU).
But it’s still missing MagSafe, for no obvious reason other than making the phone less appealing to consumers than the rest of the 16 lineup. Wireless charging without the perfect alignment that MagSafe allows is troubling.
When we tested last year, we found that charging via MagSafe is 35%–113.7% less efficient than wired charging. The lossiest chargers we tested wasted 17.54kWh per year, the equivalent of leaving a 10W LED light on for 73 days straight. The magnets of a MagSafe charger help reduce wireless charging losses, and without them, we expect a charger to perform worse.
Wireless charging also makes the battery run hotter, which is worse for longevity: All our wireless charging scenarios kept the battery well above 30°C, the threshold for “elevated temperature” that Battery University says will degrade the battery over time.
On the other hand, the 16e’s slower wireless charging may make for slightly slower degradation of the battery. The faster the battery is capable of charging, the higher those temperatures climb. That’s why slower charging speeds are better for battery longevity, so the iPhone 16e will probably hold onto the better battery life it boasts for longer, thanks to its slower 7.5W wireless charging capabilities.
First Look at the C1, Apple’s Own Modem
That better battery life is thanks in part to the only spec update that’s got the tech world buzzing. This is the first iPhone to have a modem designed in-house by Apple: they’re calling it the C1, and some folks expect we’ll see it in the iPhone 17 Air later this year (maybe also an in-house designed WiFi and Bluetooth chip).
The C1 has been rumored to be in development for at least a decade. Apple bought chip designer PA Semi in 2008 and Infineon in 2011. In 2017, Apple sued Qualcomm for $1 billion, alleging anti-competitive patent licensing. We covered the full play-by-play of Apple’s long path to the C1 on Friday.
Over the weekend, we put the chip in our Lumafield Neptune CT scanner, and our friends over at the semiconductor delayering analysis lab Yole Group were able to pull the chip apart and give us some sweet photos.
The new package is located on the underside of the RF board. Yole Group’s die shots reveal that the Apple C1 replaces Qualcomm’s SDX71M modem entirely, but maintains the same package structure of integrating the 4nm modem with DRAM.
The 7nm transceiver is not located in the same package as the modem, and can instead be found on the reverse side of the RF board.
Apple’s steady progress towards replacing every IC on the logic board with its own in-house designs is apparent, and Qualcomm will no doubt feel the threat to its own revenue stream given its current monopoly in the cellular modem space.
But Apple’s moved away from proprietary hardware in one important space: Thanks to the passing of a law in Europe requiring electronics to charge via standard USB-C ports, the iPhone 16e, like the rest of the 16 lineup, comes with a USB-C port.
Finally, an Official Charging Port Repair Manual!
Under the hood, the 16e actually has a slightly higher repairability score than the rest of the 16s for one important reason: finally, Apple has given us a manual for repairing broken charging ports.
It’s great to see Apple’s official instructions here, not just because it boosts the repairability score of the phone, but also because it confirms there’s no Apple internal secret to making this repair less of a beast.
Before you can even start the official guide, you’ve got to remove the back glass, selfie camera, top earpiece speaker, battery, Taptic Engine, bottom speaker, main microphone, and SIM assembly. Only then can you get to the actual port replacement—which still involves lifting up the logic board.
You’ve basically got to strip the case of components before you can get to the charging port. Charging ports are important components when it comes to repair, because they take a lot of daily wear and tear. It’s wild to bury such an important part under essentially every other component, but now at least Apple spells out the process.
We saw some improvements to this procedure in the 16 Pro and Pro Max models. Here’s hoping the whole lineup gets the easier-port-replacement treatment when the 17s come out later this year.
There was one small improvement in the opening procedure: One of the metal clips holding on the back cover now protects the flex cable for the flash assembly, which will save people from accidentally slicing through it with opening picks.
No Home Button: Probably a Repairability Win
There’s another big physical change to the 16e, though it’s not exactly a surprise: It doesn’t have a home button.
The SE line was the last holdout when it comes to the home button. Every other model of iPhone has long since done away with a button at the bottom of the screen, whether a physical or virtual button. The SE’s physical clicky home button was a bit of a vestigial organ in iPhone design, supporting Touch ID and bringing users back to the home screen.
Just like the USB-C port, the home button was a high wear and tear component. It would break a fair bit, and it was a potential ingress point for water and dust.
And because it had Touch ID, it has remained untouched by parts pairing limitations in Right to Repair laws that exempt biometric authentication components. So you can’t replace your own iPhone SE home button and expect your Touch ID to still work. Instead, all we can do is sell this “universal home button”—we try to warn customers that the fingerprint reader won’t work after the repair, but some still miss it.
We won’t be crying any tears for the home button. It’s a fragile, often damaged component that’s got frustrating software limitations on repair. In favor of simplification, good riddance.
Respectable 7/10 Repairability Score
In all, and maybe as expected, the iPhone 16e ranks with the rest of the 16 lineup in repairability score, earning a provisional 7 out of 10 (pending the expected release of spare parts).
We love seeing the dual-entry design become the iPhone standard since its introduction in the 14. The electrically releasable adhesive is a clean solution to the sticky problem of battery repairs. And the C1 chip means the 16e may have the longest-lifespan battery in an iPhone yet—though only time will tell, of course. We’re crossing our fingers for a simpler USB-C replacement procedure in the 17 lineup this fall.
Still, there’s not much worth writing home about here, especially with the increased price. All the more reason to skip the upgrade and, when you do eventually replace your phone, buy refurbished.
Source:iPhone 16e Teardown: Never Before Has Skipping the Upgrade Made More Sense – iFixit
