GoKawiilAfter opening up the MacBook Neo a few days ago, iFixit is back with a full teardown of the new iPhone 17e, revealing a few surprising repair-friendly changes inside. Watch it below.
Cross-compatibility renders it a 7 out of 10 repairability score
One of the biggest knocks against the iPhone 16e was its lack of MagSafe support.
Despite the widely circulated notion that this wouldn’t be a big issue for the device’s target audience, Apple did introduce MagSafe support with the iPhone 17e.
Today, iFixit published its teardown of the iPhone 17e and showed that the device’s MagSafe-enabled back panel is fully compatible with the iPhone 16e.
In practice, that means iPhone 16e owners may be able to add MagSafe support to their devices by simply swapping the back panel, with a few caveats:
“The 16e doesn’t seem to have the software to recognise the MagSafe attachment, so the signature “thunk” and animation I expected to see is missing. The jury is out on whether a 16e with a 17e back cover can achieve the 15W charge speeds of the 17e, we’ll test and report back once we know.”
In fact, iFixit notes that most components are cross-compatible between the iPhone 16e and iPhone 17e. They even managed to boot an iPhone 17e using an iPhone 16e logic board, although Face ID did not work.
As iFixit notes:
“That kind of cross-compatibility matters. It makes repairs easier, parts easier to source, and upgrades cheaper.”
... continue reading