Following the first day of availability of the iPhone SE, iFixit has completed its own teardown of the device, and its findings show that the new device includes several components that are interchangeable with iPhone 5s parts.
The iFixit teardown comes a day after Chipworks’ version, which revealed a lot of familiar parts in the iPhone SE that could be found in previous iPhone models, such as the 5s, 6, and 6s.
This means that you can easily use the display from your old iPhone 5s on your iPhone SE, in case you somehow break it down the line. However, despite coming with same camera setup as the iPhone 6s, the 12MP camera on the iPhone SE is not interchangeable with the former.
iFixit found that the iPhone SE’s speaker, chassis, vibrator, SIM tray and display assembly, which includes the LCD, digitizer, front camera, earpiece speaker and proximity sensor are the same parts used in the iPhone 5s. According to iFixit’s testing, the components are easily swappable and work in a “plug and play” fashion.
The non-swappable parts include the logic board, rear-facing camera, Lightning connector assembly and battery. The iPhone SE’s battery comes in at 1,624 mAh, which is up from the iPhone 5s’ 1,560 mAh battery. However, iFixit notes that the SE’s battery comes with a different battery connector, so iPhone 5s users hoping to install a larger battery in their phones are out of luck.
iFixit always rates its teardowns with a repairability score that gives potential do-it-yourselfers something to go by in terms of how hard the replacement project will be. The iPhone SE gets a not-too-horrible repairability score of 6 out of 10, which is the same as the iPhone 5s, but lower than the iPhone 6s, which received a 7.
Source: iFixit