Smartphone screen and battery teardown: interactive 3D teardown

All 10 steps

1. 1Power off and remove the two P2 screws

   Hold the power button, slide to power off and unplug the charger. Then turn out the two P2 pentalobe screws in the bottom edge, one each side of the charging port. They are 6.8 mm long and hold the screen’s lower edge to the frame. Lay them in wells 1 and 2 of the magnetic tray.

2. 2Warm the edges to soften the adhesive

   Lay the warm heat pad along each edge of the screen in turn, about 2 minutes in all, until the edges reach about 65 °C, just too hot to keep a finger on. The heat softens the waterproof adhesive gasket under the screen’s rim. Do not go much hotter: the battery lies just under the screen.

3. 3Lift a gap and insert a pick

   Press the suction cup onto the glass just above the bottom edge and pull up with a steady force until the screen lifts about 1 mm off the frame. Slide the tip of a plastic opening pick into the gap, between the screen’s rim and the frame, no deeper than 3 mm: the line on the pick. Then let go of the cup and pull it off.

4. 4Slice round the edges and open the screen like a book trap

   Slide the pick along the bottom edge, round the corner, up the left edge and along the top, keeping it no deeper than 3 mm so that it cuts only the adhesive. Keep it off the right edge, where the screen’s flex cables run. Take the pick out and fold the screen open to the right like the cover of a book, until it lies face down beside the phone, its cables looped over the frame’s edge. Avoid this trap: The OLED display and touch digitizer flex cables leave the screen a few millimetres in from its right edge. Push a pick 8 mm in there and slide it along, and its tip cuts through both; lift the screen straight up instead of folding it over and the cut ends pull apart. The screen is then dead, with no picture and no touch, and only a new display assembly fixes it. Keep picks to 3 mm on the bottom, left and top edges, and fold the screen open over its right edge like a book.

5. 5Unscrew the connector cowling trap

   Turn out the four Y000 tri-point screws that hold the stainless steel cowling over the battery and display connectors: one 1.9 mm long at its top left corner and three 1.3 mm long. Lay each in its own well of the tray, 3 to 6, so that each goes back into the hole it came from. Lift the cowling off with tweezers. Avoid this trap: The cowling’s screws go into blind standoffs on the logic board, and their holes are not all as deep. Drive the 1.9 mm screw into a hole made for a 1.3 mm one and its last 0.6 mm has nowhere to go: it bores through the bottom of the standoff into the board and cuts the copper traces between its layers. The phone may never start again, and nothing shows from outside. Take each screw from its own well and put it back into the hole it came from.

6. 6Disconnect the battery first

   Before you touch any of the screen’s cables, pop the battery’s press connector off its socket: slide the flat end of the nylon spudger under the connector’s edge and lever it straight up. Bend its cable a little away from the board, so that it cannot spring back and touch. With the battery disconnected nothing inside is live.

7. 7Unplug the screen’s cables and lift it away

   With the spudger, pop off the screen’s three press connectors, levering each straight up from its socket: the OLED display, the touch digitizer and the front sensor cables. Then lift the screen assembly away and lay it face down on a clean, soft part of the mat.

8. 8Remove the bottom speaker and haptic module

   Turn out the two Y000 screws that hold the bottom speaker and haptic module to the frame, 1.3 mm long on the left and 1.9 mm on the right, into wells 7 and 8, and lift the module out with tweezers. It has no cable to undo: spring contacts under it press on the lower flex. With it out, the battery’s two bottom pull tabs have room to come out flat.

9. 9Pull the battery’s three adhesive strips trap

   Peel each black pull tab off the battery and wind it round the spudger, then pull slowly at a flat angle, keeping the strip low and level with the battery: it stretches to several times its length, thins and lets go of the battery bit by bit. Do the two bottom strips towards the bottom of the phone, then the top strip towards the top. Never lever the battery up. Avoid this trap: When a strip snaps it is tempting to lever the battery up with a flat-blade screwdriver. Its metal edge bends the soft pouch and pierces it: the layers inside short, the cell heats itself and vents hot, toxic smoke, and a charged one can catch fire within seconds. Never pry a battery with metal and never bend it. Soften the glue with isopropyl alcohol, or slide a plastic card under it, and if a cell starts to smoke get it out onto a non-flammable surface and keep away from the fumes.

10. 10Lift the old battery out

    With the strips out, the battery lies loose in the frame. Lift it straight out by its edges without bending it and lay it on the mat, away from the phone. A battery that is swollen, dented or warm goes outside on a non-flammable surface, and every old battery goes to a battery recycling point, never in the bin. Press Reassemble to fit the new battery and seal the screen.

What you need

• P2 pentalobe screwdriver · for the two bottom screws
• Y000 tri-point screwdriver · for the six screws inside
• Heat pad or hair dryer · to about 65 °C
• Suction cup lifter and plastic opening picks · picks marked at 3 mm
• Nylon spudger and ESD-safe tweezers · no metal near the battery
• A magnetic screw tray · a well for every screw
• Replacement battery and screen adhesive gasket · and isopropyl alcohol, 90% or stronger

Questions

Safety

Run the battery down below 25% and switch the phone off before you start. Never puncture, bend or pry the battery with metal; if it swells, smokes or gets hot, stop, move it onto a non-flammable surface and keep away from the fumes.

• Lithium-ion batteries: never bend, puncture or pry a battery with metal. A damaged cell can go into thermal runaway: it smokes, catches fire and can explode. Discharge it below 25% first; if it swells, hisses, smokes or gets hot, stop and move it somewhere safe.
• Static (ESD): work on an anti-static mat with a grounded wrist strap; a spark you cannot feel can kill a chip.
• Power off: switch the device off and unplug its charger before you open it, and disconnect the battery before touching anything else inside.

About this teardown

3D Spatial Reconstruction: Models are engineered from factual hardware measurements to visualize internal layouts, screw lengths, and hidden cable traps before you open your device. Always verify cable routing on your specific hardware revision.

The phone is a generic flagship of our own design: a 147 × 71.5 × 7.8 mm aluminium frame, an OLED screen glued to its rim, a 3,500 mAh pouch battery on three stretch-release strips and a stainless cowling over its four press connectors. The order, the screw types and lengths and the tools follow iFixit’s screen and battery guides for recent iPhones, the iPhone 14 Pro’s above all: two 6.8 mm P2 screws at the bottom, picks kept to 3 mm, the battery disconnected before the screen’s cables, and three pull tabs pulled at a low angle, which can be wound round a spudger.

Where ours differs from those phones: the iPhone 13 and 14 Pro screens swing open from their right side like a book’s front cover, hinged on their left edge, where iFixit warns of delicate cables; ours hinges on its right edge, a mirror image. The iPhone 14 Pro’s connector cover is held by eight Y000 screws (1.3, 1.6 and 1.9 mm) and the iPhone 13’s by one, and the iPhone 14 Pro’s loudspeaker by four Phillips screws; our cowling has four Y000 screws and our speaker module two. Some recent models, the iPhone 15 among them, open from the back glass instead.

Our estimates, not measured figures: the 65 °C edge temperature (iFixit says only “slightly too hot to touch”), the 2 minutes of heat, the 3,500 mAh capacity (typical of a flagship: the iPhone 14 Pro’s is about 3,200 mAh, 12.38 Wh) and the sizes of the inner parts. The 3D runs faster than real hands do.

Sources: iFixit: iPhone 14 Pro Battery Replacement, iFixit: iPhone 13 Battery Replacement, iFixit: iPhone 15 Battery Replacement, iFixit: opening procedure with an iOpener, two minutes an edge, The Register: iFixit punctures phone batteries with metal and plastic tools, Notebookcheck: iPhone 14 Pro battery, 12.38 Wh (about 3,200 mAh).

The 3D models, drawings and text are our own. The device shown is a generic one of our own design, not any one maker’s model.