The first iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max deliveries are underway, so it’s only appropriate that iFixit has already stripped them down to their frames. Their latest teardowns show an L-shaped battery with improved thermal expansion protection, Apple designed chips, and more.
Apple announced the new iPhone models at a media event on September 12th with pre-orders on September 14th. They’re available in Apple’s retail stores today, and pre-order deliveries are already arriving.
iFixit notes the corner notches in the battery look like a smart move because the corners at the “L” bend could otherwise be prone to dangerous expansion issues. Apple doesn’t want Samsung-style exploding phones in customer’s hands or pockets.
The iPhone XS Max also has a new Apple designed power management chip, lager haptic engine, and a louder speaker. Repairability in both models is reasonable getting a 6 out of 10 score.
The iPhone XS and iPhone XS Max look like the iPhone X they replace. Both include an OLED Super Retina screen, front-facing Face ID camera, dual rear-facing cameras, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0, stereo speakers, dual-SIM support, and NFC support for Apple Pay contactless payments.
The new models sport an A12 Bionic processor with a 6-core CPU and 4-core GPU, plus a Neural Engine. The GPU is up to 50% faster than the GPU in the A11 Bionic processor Apple uses in the iPhone X. The A12 Bionic chip can handle up to 5 trillion operations per second, compared to the 600 billion for the iPhone X.
This year’s iPhone models are more of an interave improvement over the iPhone X. Odds are next year will see more significant changes.
You can check out the full teardown at the iFixit website.