The iPhone 18 Pro and 18 Pro Max went on sale today, and a teardown was already online within hours. REWA Technology got there first, pulling apart the physical SIM version rather than the eSIM-only models. Fair warning if you watch it: the narration is an AI voice.
How Apple Made The Dynamic Island Smaller
It starts the usual way, pentalobe screws at the bottom, then heat, a suction cup and alcohol to lift the display off. That’s when the interesting part shows up. Apple shrank the Dynamic Island by moving the Face ID infrared camera underneath the screen, into the top left corner. The pixels sitting above it use a different pattern that lets infrared light through, and at normal viewing angles you can’t tell anything is there. The camera now sits further from the rest of the front module, linked by three separate cables instead of being bundled together.
A Bigger Main Camera And Three Times The Cooling
The 48MP Fusion main camera is physically larger this year, with the connection rerouted around the board. The extra size comes from the variable aperture hardware rather than a bigger sensor. Further in, the A20 Pro chip presses directly against a vapor chamber that measures roughly three times the size of the one in the iPhone 17 Pro, with a new thermal material filling the gap between them.
Battery Size Depends On Where You Bought It
The teardown confirms 4,056 mAh in the physical SIM model, about 1.7% more than the iPhone 17 Pro. Phones sold in the US, Canada, Japan and a few other markets ship without a SIM tray and get a slightly larger cell in that space. REWA also spotted a bigger battery connector, a multi layer flex cable and a change of battery supplier, which together hint at faster charging.
Repairs Look Harder This Year
Not great news for anyone who fixes phones. The relocated infrared camera cutout will be tough for third party display makers to copy, and the NAND storage and power IC now sit sandwiched between motherboard layers that have to be separated to reach them. A logic EEPROM chip lost its shield too, so it’s more exposed to damage. The charging port flex dropped from two cables to one. iFixit’s proper repairability verdict should follow in the next few days.
