“School is a brutal place for electronics—they need to be long-lived and fixable on the cheap for most education budgets,” iFixit told me in an email Tuesday.
iFixit
Video: behind the scenes of iFixit’s iPhone X teardown
When a new iPhone launches, iFixit goes to work performing its ritual teardown dance so all of us can marvel at Apple's latest technology and peek at it from the inside.
HomePod teardown: 16GB onboard storage, 14-pin diagnostic port, LED array & more
iFixit used knives and a hacksaw to pry open their HomePod so you don't have to.
iFixit’s iMac Pro teardown shows off redesigned internals and modular components
With their usual degree of pomp and circumstance, iFixit has performed a teardown of the new iMac Pro. Based on their results, it now appears that the iMac Pro will be at least somewhat upgradable.
In wake of iPhone throttling drama, iFixit drops prices on battery replacement kits
In the wake of all the iPhone throttling drama, iFixit has announced that it is dropping the price on all of its DIY iPhone battery fix kits to $29 or less. The news follows Apple's own announcement yesterday that it is going to be discounting out-of-warranty battery replacements to $29 in 2018.
iPhone X internals wallpaper
iFixit today shared some wallpapers designed for that edge-to-edge OLED display on iPhone X.
Break the glass backing of your iPhone X and you’ll be replacing the entire chassis
What if you drop your brand spanking new iPhone X and its glass backing shatters to pieces?
What’s that mystery chip in your iPhone X?
Your iPhone X has a “mystery chip” under its hood, according to repair experts at iFixit.
iPhone X teardown: 3GB RAM, two-cell 2,716 mAh battery, stacked logic board & more
iPhone X went on sale around the world today and iFixit this morning published their teardown analysis of the handset, revealing the internal design radically different from prior models.
Here’s how Google Pixel 2’s Active Edge sensors work
iFixit tore apart the new Pixel 2 phone, subjecting it to X-rays to reveal the inner workings of Google's signature feature—the pressure-sensing bezels, called Active Edge.
Apple TV 4K uses a cool new cooling system
Repair wizards over at iFixit have torn apart the new Apple TV 4K set-top box and discovered 3GB of RAM, all-new thermal vents and a huge new fan, among other features.
iFixit gives Surface Laptop repairability score 0/10: “It’s a glue-filled monstrosity”
Microsoft's Surface Book notebook/tablet hybrid from a couple of years ago scored a 1/10 rating on iFixit's repairability scale, but the company's new $999 Surface Laptop, introduced in May, scores even worse: 0/10. According to the repair experts over at iFixit, a teardown analysis of Microsoft Laptop has found an utterly unrepairable device.
“It’s a Russian nesting doll from hell with everything hidden under adhesive and plastic spot welds,” wrote iFixit. “It is physically impossible to nondestructively open this device.”
Not only are there no screws holding the case together, meaning prying apart the Alcantara fabric damages it permanently, but the internals are glued down as well, including the keyboard, the motherboard and even the battery, which is glued directly to the case.
Speaking of which, the battery was boosted from a two-cell 38.2 Wh battery to a four-cell 45 Wh one, a nearly 18 percent increase in battery capacity over the previous model. To squeeze in a bigger battery, Microsoft's engineers have ditched the removable blade SSD.
“Good luck if you need to recover your data from a bricked device,” warns iFixit.
According to iFixit:
Verdict: The Surface Laptop is not a laptop. It’s a glue-filled monstrosity. There is nothing about it that is upgradable or long-lasting, and it literally can’t be opened without destroying it. (Show us the procedure, Microsoft, we’d love to be wrong.)
The device's redesigned passive cooling and a four-armed “beast of a heat sink” allow Intel's Core i5 to run fanless. iFixit has also determined that Alcantara, the fabric used on the keyboard, is not “as stinky as rumors claim,” but cautions that the material looks liable to get nasty once your hands start sweating all over it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAI6yIZI3rg
Bottom line: no matter how hard you try, you’ll never be able to fix or change the components because Surface Laptop is totally unrepairable and non-upgradable.