There’s a wild new feature making repair jobs easier (not to mention less messy) and iFixit covers it in their roundup of the iPhone 16’s repairability: electrically-released adhesive.
Here’s how it works. The adhesive looks like a curved strip with what appears to be a thin film of aluminum embedded into it. It’s applied much like any other adhesive strip: peel away the film, and press it between whatever two things it needs to stick. But to release it, that’s where the magic happens. One applies a voltage (a 9 V battery will do the job) between the aluminum frame of the phone and a special tab on the battery. In about a minute the battery will come away with no force, and residue-free.
There is one catch: make sure the polarity is correct! The adhesive releases because applying voltage oxidizes aluminum a small amount, causing Al3+ to migrate into the adhesive and debond it. One wants the adhesive debonded from the phone’s frame (negative) and left on the battery. Flipping the polarity will debond the adhesive the wrong way around, leaving the adhesive on the phone instead.
Some months ago we shared that Apple was likely going to go in this direction but it’s great to see some hands-on and see it in action. This adhesive does seem to match electrical debonding offered by a company called Tesa, and there’s a research paper describing it.
A video embedded below goes through the iPhone 16’s repairability innovations, but if you’d like to skip straight to the nifty new battery adhesive, that starts at the 2:36 mark.
This should be made mandatory for all glues in phones, inc displays.
When will ifixit sell replacement tape :D
Id want this tape just because its friggin cool
I don’t get the impression that the adhesive is capable of replacing LOCA, and even if it did how would you debond it?
Dont worry, they will make impossible to find the compone to replace and lock all with software.. You still will be throwing this away after having nice look inside.
I’m sure they’re still using screws that are microscopically different lengths so that you brick the phone if you put the wrong screw back.
good thing i have calipers on my work bench.
Ice cube trays, my friend.
Egg carton
Sillicone work mats, and a video camera recording the entire workspace.
Good one [Mark S]!
this is probibly just to facilitate explosion free battery replacement at the factory. you can bet that you will never be able to obtain the strips they use or find them on after market parts.
Nope. It’s because the EU mandated that manufacturers are obliged to create new phones with easily replaceable batteries. To be honest, these batteries are still not easily replaceable imo, and Apple could have done even better. But at least now any non-technician who tries will not accidentally set fire to their house.
And indeed, where will we be able to obtain these strips? But that is not really something for Apple to care about, right? If you buy a replacement battery from Apple, it will have adhesive strips, I’m sure. And if you buy a replacement battery from a 3rd party, Apple does not have to care if it comes with old-school strips.
All in all, it could have been a bigger improvement imo, but we have to be supportive because it’s a big improvement already.
“If you buy a replacement battery from Apple” – wow, good one. As we all know it’s impossible for large technology companies to offer spare parts, especially when they have a relatively small set of hardware variants. No no, we just have to keep turning our phones into PCs with shoddy off market batteries.
As long as those companies want to sell their products in California, they have to make spare parts available.
@MattT, are parts available though? There’s a difference between making parts available and “available”.
Ten steps backwards, one step forward. Let’s celebrate!
Does this have any advantage over the stretch release strips in most other phones? It sounds a bit golderbegsque not knowing better
Yes. Bonding the battery in with glue allows it to have a structural role and contributes more rigidity against bending, versus just holding the battery in place with a strap.
Mainly, the stretch release adhesives are more elastic and require significant deformation before they start to carry forces across parts, so the battery is kinda just held in place by a thin elastic cushion. The electro-adhesive allows the glue material to have a greater Young’s modulus, or lower elasticity, giving you a more rigid contact between the parts and therefore less deformation of the structure under applied stress.
It’s what makes the difference between a phone that creaks and bends and feels like cheap plastic when you twist and bend it in your hand, and a phone that feels solid like it was made out of metal.
Am I the only one who prefer to NOT apply any kind of bending forces to a Lithium battery…?
It’s probably not so much a bending load as compression, which a bit of can be good for lithium batteries.
Idk if you’ve seen how foam core composites work but it might be similar.
thought the same thing….
Especially pouch cells need rigidity from outside don’t they?
It’s not an ideal use of a battery, but they manage it just fine. The battery will experience bending anyways – if it was not glued in, the phone around it would simply flex more until it takes up the slack and starts bending the battery.
So… let me make sure I understand the problem and Apple’s solution:
They developed a revolutionary new kind of match to light the candle, that burns the string, that releases the spring, that tips the watering can, that makes the daisy grow, that toggles the lever, that releases the battery…. and no doubt proprietary and patented to boot. Rube Goldberg would have been proud.
Pardon my skepticism, but how is it that the same “technology” company that can develop a self-releasing battery glue based on the transfer of metal ions can’t figure out how to build a cell phone with a user swappable battery pack (a feature all cell phones once had)?
not without making excessive compromises on size and water proofing
No offense intended, but the waterproofing argument is absolute bullshit, propagated by companies whose glued-in-battery designs exist to assure a new customer every 2-3 years.
As to the “compromise on size” argument, I say “who cares?” The whole ergonomics of the modern cell phone is stupid. Beyond certain limits, making a phone thinner is a “feature” with diminishing returns… they’re already too skinny to be held securely by anyone but teenage girls, and I know more than one person who placed such a phone on a back pocket, and later broke it, sitting down. Add the trendy slippery smooth case and protruding camera lenses and the odds are 2:1 you’ll drop and smash the thing even before the glued-in battery fails.
The first thing I’ve done with every smartphone I’ve owned it stick it in an otter case. That increases the depth of the phone to a tactile advantage. Molded in grooves means the thing won’t slip out of your hand. If it does, the cushioning effects of the bumpered case protects the phone. I’ve have never broken a phone….I have had insurance replace phones a half-dozen times as batteries swelled and blew the phone backs out.
If they designed a proper phone to the dimensions of an otter-cased phone ( with built-in bumpers, etc), the phone would be easier to hold, less likely to be dropped, more likely to survive even if you did drop it, AND there would be plenty of room for a slim, removable battery pack. It would still be plenty thin enough to be handy.
…not to mention a corresponding reduction in global e-waste.
Why are you complaining about this? As you imply, you should only need to do this every 2-3 years, and applying 9v is trivial for someone who’s comfortable breaking the back off of one of these things.
There are plenty of other things to complain about, like the ever-troublesome to reapply ring of tape that holds the back on, or the camera control button that you have to break two spot welds to remove.
But then, you’re asking for phones to be designed to otter case sizes while saying maintaining waterproof ratings is trivial, so meh.
My remarks centered on utility and ergonomic short-comings in the modern smart phone.
If you are happy to have to break into your own phone every 2-3 years (or replace the phone entirely) to address the failure of a consumable component, more power to you. I conceed that a lot of people subscribe to the modern debt-slave mindset (you’ll own nothing and be happy…to paraphrase Klaus Schwab) so long as they have a current model iPhone in their pocket. My remarks about poor engineering, however, stand.
“There are plenty of other things to complain about, like the ever-troublesome…”
Indeed. I left those for you.
“But then, you’re asking for phones to be designed to otter case sizes while saying maintaining waterproof ratings is trivial, so meh.”
Maybe after Lawrence Livermore has succeeded achieving sustained over-unity fusion, they will have built a sufficient scientific knowledge to tackle the apparently insurmountable challenge of designing a water-resistance phone with a removable battery.
“Why are you complaining about this? As you imply, you should only need to do this every 2-3 years”
Because I want my cell phone to last 10-15 years?
@ren yes, and I agree batteries will never last that long. In my opinion, applying 9v for half a minute is not significantly more arduous than popping the battery out on that timeframe. In my opinion, this specific technology is only a good thing, as long as it works as advertised, even after 8 years or whatever the 99% battery replacement interval is. Complaining about this battery technology relative to pop-out is, IMO, pure luddism.
As I said before, I think the only thing worth complaining about with this battery replacement scheme is the difficulty of properly reinstalling the back panel. I think there’s reasonable room for debate on whether the repair kits available for lease that apple has made available are good enough. I’m inclined to say no, and would personally prefer a perimeter o-ring and FHCS, along with the slight increase in size (pretending it wouldn’t relative to a paper-thin strip of adhesive is simply foolish) and manufacturing cost that entails, but I think the arguments in favor of Apple’s current strategy are legitimate.
Let’s not make perfect the enemy of good, especially if it’s an extremely niche idea of perfect.
agree about the ergonomics. there seems to be no way to hold a phone that doesn’t make you accidentally interact with the touch screen and which doesn’t destroy your wrists and hands. phone designers have questionable priorities.
I find it the opposite. Any company that claims to make a phone with a back cover that comes off for battery replacement, and claims IP68 or better water resistance, is lying to you. It doesn’t take much to break the seal, it will start leaking after a while, and the back cover comes off when the phone falls into a puddle because it’s designed to do so to save the snap-fit tabs from shearing off.
So while you could in theory wash your entirely new IP68 phone with a user-accessible battery in the sink, a few months in the pocket and flexing and getting dust between the seams makes it no longer water-proof. This has been the problem with e.g. Samsung’s Xcover series – if you drop them in water while you’re out and about, they’re more likely to just die.
“No offense intended, but the waterproofing argument is absolute bullshit,”
Not really. If you have an easily swappable battery that clicks into place, you also have to provide an easily removable back to access that battery. And there is where your waterproofing problem rears its ugly head…
So, the waterproofing requires a back that is sealed shut waterproof and will always be hard to open. And if that is unavoidable anyway, it doesn’t make sense anymore to create a special inner frame, connector and battery that enable the battery to securely click into place and be held tightly.
So you might as well glue the battery in. But in such a way that removing it can be done by anyone who is not a trained professional, with a fireproof lab, or at least a metal bucket to throw the phone in if the battery would accidentally ignite.
“Not really. If you have an easily swappable battery that clicks into place, you also have to provide an easily removable back to access that battery. And there is where your waterproofing problem rears its ugly head…”
The entire design of contemporary phones pre-supposes a glued-in battery. If your point is that such a design can’t be modified to feature a field-swappable battery and still remain water-tight… you may be correct.
But I never made that argument.
Designing a waterproof phone with a removable battery requires that this be a design constraint up front. From there, it’s a simple matter of segregating the phone electronics (in a cavity you can glue shut, if you insist) from a compartment in which the battery pack can slide.
For crying out loud, your average LG flip phone, decades ago, was at least as “waterproof” as any modern smart phone, yet featured a removable battery. (I can personally vouch for the one that plunged to the bottom of our swimming pool, and was recovered intact.) The case design methodology was just as I’ve outlined.
You forget that the battery too has to be sealed from water.
Everyone knows how to make a phone with user swappable batteries. Very few consumers actually want them. Most want a thin, waterproof device, with a battery which lasts for as long as the device is useful. It’s software updates which push us to replace phones.
(Apologies, pressed report comment by mistake and muscle memory)
[Very few consumers actually want them] Citation needed.
[Most want a thin, wat……] Citation needed.
[……the device is useful] Define (duration of) useful.
I would LOVE a swappable battery. I miss them.
I would easily trade my current phone for a phone 1 cm thick, with replaceable batteries, and kick arse performance.
useful should be defined by consumers.
Your wishes are not aligned with the wishes of the average consumer. Most people don’t care about having user replaceable batteries and you can rest assured that Apple has done the market research to prove it.
You want a replaceable battery, I want a replaceable battery, most of the readers of this forum want one. I rest assured that Apple has done the market research and most of the short-sighted consumers want thin and water resistant instead.
I say it’s possible to have both.
Want it because it’s the only way to guarantee, off.
The thing is that Apple, Samsung and so on all have moderated the “wish of the average consumer” in exactly that direction…
– No Updates for older phones.
– so you need to buy newer hardware.
– but you cant get that with a previously available default feature (eg. battery compartment, sim card, TRRS jack, …) for a reasonable price.
Via advertising, influencers (I assume) and what not.
They steered the marked so they could increase their profit margins (cheap production, less support I think, no replacement parts), integrate a bit of planned obsolescence and sell more phones overall.
Today I can still use a few 15year old Nokia phone batteries (eg. BL-5C) in eg. a tiny multimedia remote control and I’ve seen a small digital radio using the same battery.
Now imagine Samsung, … had used the same battery (not the Nokia one) for more than a few phones over several generations. Maybe even with increasing capacity…
I’ve got a few older Samsung S3’s, S4’s and other which all use almost exactly the same battery – almost because a few are 1mm thicker or a few mm bigger/smaller in another direction.
I don’t necessarily want a replaceable battery.
By the time the battery needs replacing, the model of phone it was made for is EOL and can only find inferior aftermarket replacements. If I buy one before I need it, it will simply expire on the shelf.
It doesn’t make sense for the company to keep making the same battery for newer phones, because the battery technology moves on and the newer chemistries require different charging considerations, so they may or may not be compatible with the older phones.
i’m curious how thinness will continue evolving. 15 years ago, the race to the thinnest phone was truly awe-inspiring. but now every phone is about 7mm thick with an awful camera bulge. phones are so thin that i buy the chapest thinnest ‘tpu’ case and it still doubles the thickness of the phone (i miss the plastic phones that didn’t require a case). the vendors feel the need to iterate every year but with every new phone my user experience is just a list of “things that used to work that don’t anymore because of pointless API churn.”
on star trek the next generation, the PADDs appear to be about 5mm thick but with a 15mm bezel all around. that actually makes a lot of sense to me — a lot of trends have made phones hard to grip, or hard to grip without a case. it doesn’t make sense anymore to bump against the limits of what the technology allows. we need to design phones around hands and pockets.
surely no one appreciates the carnage that an un-cased bulging camera lens does to your pockets??
but who knows what the next trend will be
“i’m curious how thinness will continue evolving. 15 years ago, the race to the thinnest phone”
Fingers getting cut by razor thin edges?
For love of god, just use android!
LOL No.
Android is an Operating System, this is about smartphone hardware and serviceability .
Android is a way of living..
What aout no adhesive at all ?
Nail it?
lick it and stick it
Toad mucus!
it’s neat. personally, i’ve gotten used to destroying the old battery on the way out and installing the new battery without adhesive. luckily i have only done it a handful of times
Why are they doing this?
No, I’m not asking why we would want it. Now that I know about it I really want all phones and other too-miniaturized-for-screws devices to have this yesterday!
But Apple has always been so strongly against DIY repair or really any repair at all of their product. They want their users sending more money on a regular basis.
So why are they doing this? What is the catch?
EU is raining down new laws on big tech, one of them is right to repair: https://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/en/press-room/20240419IPR20590/right-to-repair-making-repair-easier-and-more-appealing-to-consumers
So, if it doesn’t get perverted into accomplishing the opposite, the EU is doing something good for a change?
B^)
At least my android has a removable battery
Like how phones used to be
Take the battery cover off and boom no bullshit
Accidentally drop it in your toilet and boom no bullshit. New phone. Hope you backed up the old one.
Do a search on Google and you will find that about 20% of mobile phone owners have dropped their phone in the toilet at least once in their lifetime. Seriously: 1 in 5 people.
Having dunked a few removable back + battery phones a few times each, I have to say that this is not the case. Rinse with clean water (distilled ideally but I didn’t) and let dry and they’ve been recovered. Heck, I’ve even gone straight back to using the Motorolas and they lasted years more.
Yep just someone acting like they know something
Typical Apple fanboy
I paid 30 USD for it
It’s has survived more drops than my Samsung Galaxy I had
Just buy another phone duh
I don’t need to back upy phones I don’t keep important shit on a mobile phone like that
Never dropped a phone in a toilet
Or really anything electronic like that so I’m not worried 🤷♂️
Won’t go buy an iPhone
Android is better IMHO
You have to wait an entire minute at 12 volt, probably longer with 9 volt. That’s quite a long time. Like someone else wrote: this is 10 steps back and 1 step forward.
Oh no, you’re completely prevented from doing literally anything else for the couple of minutes it takes for the debonding to happen! You have to just sit there perfectly still, you’re not even allowed to BREATHE!