JerryRigEverything has posted an iPhone 18 Pro teardown that covers the larger vapor chamber, the variable aperture camera, and how repairable the phone is. The outside looks the same as last year’s iPhone 17 Pro, so most of the changes are inside.
The iPhone 18 Pro has a 6.3-inch display, starts at $1,199 in the U.S., and went on sale on September 18. Apple’s iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max announcement covered the new hardware, and the teardown shows the parts themselves.
The Screen Comes Off in Minutes and the Battery Ships Attached to the Mid-Frame
The teardown starts at the back, two pentalobe screws at the bottom of the frame come out first, since the same long screws hold both the back glass and the front glass. Heat softens the adhesive, and a thin pry tool slices through it.
The back panel gives access to nothing else. The glass is the only repairable part on that side, and it includes the 25-watt wireless charging coil. Apple charges $159 to replace it, so a case from the best Spigen iPhone 18 Pro cases list is worth a look.
Going in from the front is the better route. The video applies heat, slips a pry tool between the metal frame and the plastic screen bezel, and slices under the pixel panel to lift the whole display unit. The iPhone 18 Pro was still running when the screen came up.
One battery connector on the right and two screen ribbons on the left are all that hold the display. The video says an experienced technician could swap the screen in about five minutes and gives the design a thumbs up for repairability. Apple has not published a replacement part cost yet, and its out-of-warranty screen repair costs $329.
These are the out-of-warranty repair prices Apple charges for the parts covered in the video.
- Back glass panel with the 25-watt wireless charging coil: $159
- Screen: $329
- Rear camera module with all three cameras: about $249
The battery sits behind the mid-frame, ten screws around the edge and three larger screws in the middle hold it in place. Removing it shows the metal-encased battery glued to the back of the mid-frame, and Apple’s official procedure ships the replacement battery already attached to a new mid-frame that screws into place.
Getting to that point through the screen is the hard part, and the screen will probably break along the way. Once inside, a battery swap takes a screwdriver. For anyone who wants the battery off the mid-frame, the adhesive is the same electrically debonding tape as last year. A small battery connected to the silver tab, with a ground on the metal frame, makes the tape lose its grip if you wait long enough.
Battery capacity depends on where the phone is sold. Models sold as eSIM-only, such as those in the U.S., Canada, and Japan, drop the SIM tray and use that market for a larger cell.
- iPhone 18 Pro, eSIM-only: 4,288 mAh (iPhone 17 Pro eSIM-only: 4,252 mAh)
- iPhone 18 Pro, SIM tray: 4,056 mAh (iPhone 17 Pro SIM tray: 3,988 mAh)
Apple makes every repair beyond the screen and battery hard. Every screw is a different size and type, and some ribbon cables are soldered onto the back of the motherboard. Camera repairs run about $249 because all three rear cameras share one housing and have to be replaced together.
Apple Used Stainless Steel for the Vapor Chamber and Left Out the Thermal Paste
Apple says the new vapor chamber has three times the surface area of the one in the iPhone 17 Pro and delivers up to 40 percent better sustained performance. The video shows it under the graphite on the right side of the phone once the screen is off. Reaching it fully means removing the mid-frame.
The chamber is stainless steel, the video points out that copper conducts heat about 20 times better, but stainless costs less, and Apple says the chamber uses 80 percent recycled material. Small divots on the surface, similar to golf ball dimples, keep the chamber from collapsing under vacuum so the vapor inside has room to move.
These are the parts of the cooling stack the video identified.
- Vapor chamber: stainless steel, with a copper mesh inside that wicks liquid around and spreads heat from the A20 Pro over a wider area
- Processor contact: thermal foil and a puffy metallic sticker made of copper and stainless material
- Thermal paste: none between the A20 Pro and the back of the mid-frame
- Graphite: more sheets on the left side of the phone, next to the vapor chamber side
The video notes that two metal surfaces only touch at microscopic high points, so a dab of thermal paste could displace the trapped air and improve cooling. It also suggests the puffy sticker is there to keep contact with the vapor chamber while the materials expand and contract, and that Apple may expect it to outlast paste over five or ten years.
Apple also mentioned a nano twin copper layer on the left side of the phone. The video could not see it and guesses it is one of the panels there. The A20 Pro itself has an Apple logo laser-etched on top, and our A20 Pro benchmarks cover how the chip performs.
The Variable Aperture Is a Ring of Paper-Thin Blades Moved by Electromagnets
Three screws hold the main rear camera unit, and a few ribbon cables release it from the phone. The front camera unit only needs ribbon cables unplugged. It has an 18-megapixel selfie camera on the right, with the light sensors and the under-screen infrared Face ID camera on the left, and the hole under the screen still shows a dark patch in the center. Our coverage of the Dynamic Island teardown shows how Apple shrunk the cutout.
The variable aperture hardware lives inside the 48-megapixel main camera, and no fins are visible from the outside. A razor blade or a magnetic screwdriver touched to the outside of the camera opened and closed the aperture, while tweezers did nothing. That points to magnets inside. Apple lists a six-blade aperture that moves between f/1.48 and f/4.
Taking the camera apart shows the sensor and the sensor-shift mechanism behind the lens. The aperture blades sit inside a black ring, and removing the plastic shroud made the assembly come apart. The fins are paper-thin individual slices resting on a circular ring around the glass, and tiny electromagnets rotate that ring to open and close them.
The video also calls Apple’s sensor-shift stabilization probably the best of any smartphone, since moving a light sensor is faster than moving a heavy lens array. The wide-angle camera has no optical image stabilization, while the telephoto has internal sensor shift. What photographers think of the new variable aperture is covered in our look at some of their iPhone 18 Pro camera reviews.
Our Take
I think the screen and battery details are the most useful part of this teardown for anyone buying an iPhone 18 Pro. A screen swap that takes an experienced technician about five minutes and a battery that arrives on a new mid-frame keep the two most common repairs simple. Getting the display off cleanly is the difficult step. With regards to the vapor chamber, the video does not test Apple’s 40 percent sustained performance claim, and the missing thermal paste means the sticker has to hold contact for years.
