Teardowns

iPhone 8 Plus Teardown: Just How Difficult Is That Glass Back Panel?

With our iPhone 8 teardown out of the way, we turn our attention to its (larger) brother: The iPhone 8 Plus. As expected, the Plus has roughly the same architecture we found in our iPhone 8 teardown, with just a little more room to stretch your thumbs. For an authentic repair experience, we tried prying out a broken rear panel—nobody will be removing an intact panel. Our results were… not good. Replacing a broken back is going to be a very, very difficult (and expensive) job.

iPhone 8 plus teardown

But that’s not all we tested! Being the curious cats that we are, we ran a series of compatibility tests across a variety of iPhones. Here’s what we found:

  • iPhone 8 and 8 Plus home buttons are the same Apple part number.
  • An iPhone 7 display assembly will partially work in an iPhone 8 (or 7 Plus in an 8 Plus)—the display works, but the digitizer doesn’t function.
  • Many of the upper components are compatible across generations. Earpiece speakers are cross-compatible 7 to 8 and 7 Plus to 8 Plus.

iPhone 8 Plus Teardown Highlights:

  • Replacing the iPhone 8’s back glass is going to cost you a pretty penny, and will probably leave you with some glass shards where you don’t want them.
  • The 8 Plus packs less of a punch (10.28 Wh) than its 7 Plus predecessor, which boasted 11.1 Wh. It’s also a lightweight stacked up against the Galaxy Note8, which sports a 12.71 Wh whopper.
  • Apple’s number one priority for this device—wireless charging—shows all the way down to the battery adhesive. The switch to four tabs from two probably prevents a sticky situation for that new wireless charging coil.
  • As with the iPhone 8, the 8 Plus features a sticky opening procedure and back glass that’s gonna be nightmarish to remove if it breaks—so the iPhone 8 Plus earns the same score as its smaller twin: a 6/10 for repairability.

PS, this is a teardown recap. To see the full iPhone 8 Plus teardown, head over to iFixit.com.