The
iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus use smaller batteries than their predecessors, teardowns of the smartphones have revealed. A customary part of major device launches, the
teardown by
iFixit has discovered the battery inside the iPhone 6s is a 1,715mAh unit, slightly smaller than the 1,810mAh version used in the
iPhone 6, with the addition of the new Taptic engine to the device likely to have forced Apple to reduce the physical size of the battery itself.
Both internally and externally, there are relatively few differences between the iPhone 6s and the iPhone 6. The display assembly is a heavier unit, weighing in at 60 grams compared to 45 grams, due to the new capacitive sensors used for 3D Touch, with Apple improving the component by reducing the number of connecting cables down from four to three. Despite the upgrade for the FaceTime from 1.2MP to 5MP, the increase in resolution does not appear to have affected the size of the component, with the display assembly as a whole looking very similar to the iPhone 6 version.
The team took an X-ray image of the iPhone 6s to see how the Taptic engine works. Inside the tube is a long cylinder taking up the majority of space inside the component, flanked by springs on each end. The linear oscillating mechanism is claimed to reach its peak output after a single oscillation. The length of the component is the same as the width of the battery, allowing the Taptic engine to slot in just below it.
The core components on the logic board include the Apple A9 APL0898 system on chip, paired with a Samsung 2GB RAM chip that doubles the 1GB from the iPhone 6. Qualcomm provides the Cat 6 LTE modem, envelope tracking, power management, and radio frequency transceiver chips, with InvenSense powering the combined six-axis gyroscope and accelerometer, Toshiba creating the NAND flash module, and Universal Scientific Industrial producing the Wi-Fi module. Dialog and Texas Instruments produce other power management components, with power amplifier modules from TriQuint, Skyworks, and Avago all making an appearance.
The iPhone 6s has been given an
iFixit repairability score of seven out of ten. While the display is the first component to come out of the iPhone, simplifying repairs, the adhesive applied to the battery along with the use of Pentalobe screws and the Touch ID cable being pared to the logic board complicates the repair process, lowering the score.
A
teardown of the iPhone 6s Plus shows it to have an extremely similar construction to the iPhone 6s, albeit scaled up in size. Just like its stablemate, the battery in the Plus model has a slightly smaller capacity compared to the iPhone 6 Plus, down 165mAh to 2,750mA. The display has also increased in size by 20 grams to 80 grams, again because of the extra components used to power 3D Touch.
While the Taptic engine in the iPhone 6s is long and thin, the Plus version is shorter, wider, and thicker. Though the 12MP iSight camera on the back appears at first glance to be the same component, the Plus version is slightly larger in order to house the optical image stabilization system.
Just as with the iPhone 6s, the iPhone 6s Plus scores a repairability of seven out of ten, for exactly the same reasoning.
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