iPhone 17e Teardown Shows How Apple Made It An Effortless Process To Add MagSafe Charging To The iPhone 16e In A Few Minutes

The iPhone 16e and iPhone 17e share practically the same chassis and design, with Apple only having to give its newest iteration a chipset upgrade paired with MagSafe charging capabilities, which was a feature sorely missed on the company’s previous-generation low-cost offering. Fortunately, a new teardown video from iFixit shows how easy it is to add wireless charging to the older model. With sufficient practice and the right tools, this process takes mere minutes.

New disassembly shows that the MagSafe charging coil is about the only prominent difference separating the iPhone 17e and iPhone 16e

Apple has issued ‘day one’ manuals to authorized repair experts, including iFixit, making it a piece of cake to get inside the iPhone 17e. Reaching the battery was thoroughly simple, with the Cupertino firm retaining the use of an electrically-released adhesive that separates the cell from the chassis, making replacements a breeze. A closer look at the battery reveals a 15.556WHr capacity, or 4,005mAh, which remains unchanged from the unit powering the iPhone 16e’s innards.

Despite various components easily separable from the iPhone 17e’s housing, a ton of effort is required to get to the USB-C charging port. In the video below, iFixit’s host rants about this specific difficult process since the charging port is often the first to fail due to continuous wear and tear. Apple made the required changes on the iPhone 16 to ensure that swapping the USB-C port takes a minimum amount of time, but it is disappointing to see that the same approach hasn’t been applied to the iPhone 17e.

Does adding the iPhone 17e’s MagSafe part to the iPhone 16e actually work?

The million-dollar question that iPhone 16e owners are practically dying to find out is shown in the iFixit teardown. It is important to note that although the components are cross-swappable between the two devices, Face ID will cease to work because each TrueDepth camera is registered separately. As for MagSafe wireless charging, the iPhone 16e doesn’t have the required software to recognize this part, which is why it doesn’t trigger the animation.

As for whether the iPhone 16e can top up at the same 15W as the iPhone 17e remains unanswered, meaning that further testing will be necessary. Overall, iFixit gave Apple’s latest low-cost device a repairability score of 7 out of 10, and while the video states that the California-based giant would be leaning towards a more repair-friendly product line, these new changes have more to do with manufacturing efficiency and cost reduction rather than anything else.

News Source: iFixit

Follow Wccftech on Google to get more of our news coverage in your feeds.