Some IPhone 16s Use a Special Glue That Makes Repairs Easier
All batteries age, and your iPhone’s lithium-ion battery is no exception. Over time, the battery degrades, meaning that it can no longer hold as much charge as it could when it was new. After a few years of using your phone, you may notice that your phone requires charging more frequently throughout the day.
When the inevitable happens to you, you don’t need to buy a new iPhone. Instead, you can simply replace the battery at a relatively inexpensive cost . Depending on your iPhone, you may not only notice an increase in the amount of time you spend without charging, but also an increase in performance as iOS slows down your iPhone’s processing power when its battery is too low.
While replacing the battery is possible, it could certainly be easier. Apple secures the battery inside most iPhones with a strong adhesive . To remove it, you need to pull on several tabs, which are easy to break, making the removal process more dangerous than it needs to be. The battery itself is also fragile, so you’ll have to disconnect and reconnect some very thin cables. Despite all this, you can replace the battery yourself, but it is easier to take it to a repair shop. (Apple would prefer that you use its own.)
However, the process is significantly easier with three iPhone 16 devices, including the recently released iPhone 16e .
Some iPhone 16s use a different adhesive.
All iPhone 16, 16 Plus and 16e come with a new type of battery adhesive that makes repairs much easier. At first glance, it seems that little has changed: when you open the back cover of your iPhone, you will still find a tab on its battery. However, this tab should not be deleted just yet. Instead, you need to apply an electrical current through the adhesive that holds the battery to the device for 60 seconds. The current is enough to release the battery, at which point you use the pull tab to carefully pull the battery out of the iPhone. You don’t have to worry about damaging the battery because it will be so weakened that gravity can rip it out .
As iFixit explains , the technology works by oxidizing the adhesive with an electrical current. This breaks the bonds that actually make the glue sticky, and it no longer sticks to the surface it was attached to. It’s quite a technical task and I’m no expert, but it’s a really cool technology that makes replacing the battery in your iPhone 16, 16 Plus or 16e safer and easier.
Apple probably didn’t make these changes out of concern for customers. Instead, it is most likely a response to an EU law that requires smartphones to have “replaceable batteries” by 2027. Europe has had a significant influence on Apple’s decisions in recent years, requiring the company to open up many of its closed platforms , including allowing independent app stores and browsers on iOS.
However, if you have an iPhone 16 Pro or 16 Pro Max, you won’t have an easier time getting your batteries repaired. These devices still come with Apple’s traditional battery adhesive, so their batteries are just as difficult to replace as before. It’s unclear why Apple decided to skip this new glue on the Pro phones, but it’s possible that it’s simply testing the new technology on some of its devices rather than all of them, especially while there’s still time before the EU law comes into force. It’s possible that the entire iPhone 17 lineup, including the iPhone Pro and everything else, will feature easily removable batteries. For now, it seems like only the less expensive models benefit from this.
iPhone 16e has additional repairability
In addition to this new glue, Apple has added several additional repairability benefits to the 16e. The most important thing is that Apple now has a repair guide for the USB-C charging port on this particular iPhone. This is the first time the company has issued guidelines for such repairs.
However, according to iFixit, this repair is not easy . It involves removing a number of iPhone components on the way to the port, including the back glass, front camera, top speaker, battery, and others; lift the motherboard, then access the USB-C port to repair it. Apparently, there was such a procedure before, but now Apple has a step-by-step guide confirming the complexity of the repair.
Finally, you don’t have to be careful when opening the 16e’s back cover: one of the metal clips holding the back cover in place now protects the important flex cable. On other iPhones, you can easily cut this cable by inserting gripping tools into the back case when opening it, but the clamp here ensures you don’t damage the cable in the process.