The iPhone 18 Pro has landed on the iFixit teardown table for a detailed look inside Apple's newest flagship. The teardown reveals a 6 blade variable aperture camera, a revised cooling system, and under display Face ID components. However, delicate plastic screen bezels and complicated port repairs hold the phone back from an easy fix.
Apple added a mechanical aperture system to the main camera using 6 miniature blades. Electromagnets control these blades separately from the optical stabilization hardware. During the teardown process, 1 blade broke away from the lens assembly. iFixit points out that if this mechanism fails in daily use, technicians will likely have to replace the entire camera unit rather than repair individual parts.
Face ID also gets a major internal shift. Apple moved the infrared camera beneath the screen while keeping the selfie shooter and dot projector inside a smaller Dynamic Island cutout. To allow light through the screen, every 2nd row of pixels is omitted directly above the sensor. A specialized filter sits beneath the OLED panel to let infrared light pass straight through while blocking visible light from distorting the scan.
Thermal management looks quite different inside this chassis. The processor silicon sits directly beside the memory, transferring heat straight into a vapor chamber. This direct contact helps pull thermal energy away from the primary processor during heavy workloads.
Opening the phone revealed unexpected points of failure. The plastic frame surrounding the display suffered damage on 3 out of 4 test units during disassembly. A warped or cracked frame prevents the screen from seating flush during reassembly, which compromises water resistance. Replacing the USB C charging port also requires technicians to pull out most of the internal components first.
iFixit awarded the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max a provisional repair score of 7 out of 10. The team plans to issue a final verdict after completing further tests on the display border problem. For now, the hardware shows clever engineering alongside a few stubborn repair hurdles.
