iPhone Air at 5.6mm thinness stays repairable, iFixit finds

A teardown by repair site iFixit released this week shows that Apple’s thinnest iPhone yet, the 5.6 millimeter iPhone Air, manages to keep repairability while pushing a notably slim profile, earning a provisional 7 out of 10 on iFixit’s scale. The findings, combined with durability and reviewer tests, suggest Apple balanced extreme thinness with design choices that make common repairs — especially battery swaps — more straightforward than many expected.

iFixit’s disassembly and CT scans show how Apple achieved the slimness without stacking components over the battery: the logic board and most chips sit in a raised camera plateau at the top, while the center of the phone is largely battery. That layout produces a flatter internal assembly that iFixit described as making repairs “more approachable, not less,” and concluded “thin does not have to mean unfixable.” Apple retained the electrically debonding adhesive introduced with the iPhone 16 line, allowing technicians to remove the battery by applying a low-voltage feed to dissolve the adhesive, and preserved dual-entry access so the battery can be reached through the back glass rather than risking the OLED display during a swap.