Gadgetory

on the outside the iPhone six-plus looks like a scaled up iPhone 6 but the internal hardware tells a slightly different story as I'll show you today the phones are very similar but far from identical I'm buildin Waller and this is cracking open as Apple will tell you the iPhone 6 plus is big it's noticeably larger than the regular iPhone 6 and in my opinion it's 5.5 inch screen puts it very close to phablet territory now luckily cracking open the 6 plus is identical to opening the regular 6 which means it's easier to open than previous iPhones now you'll still need to remove the two pentalobe screws along the bottom edge with a special screwdriver but Apple relocated the ribbon cable on the home button which means you no longer need to worry about tearing it when popping open the front panel now with the front panel open the first thing we're going to do is remove several metal plates which cover connectors for the battery front panel and other components then we'll disconnect the battery and remove the front panel the overall hardware layout is the same as on the regular iPhone 6 there's a speaker and lightning connector assembly at the bottom battery along the left side motherboard along the right and the camera assembly at the top now attach the front panel are the display front camera and sensors earpiece speaker and the home button now there's also a new metal plate that sits behind the screen while I would usually begin our teardown by removing the battery I'm going to leave it in place as I remove the other components now this will keep me from having to glue it back in later on so the first piece to come out is the new rear facing camera it has the same 8 megapixel count as the camera in the regular iPhone 6 but it also has optical image stabilization the vibration mechanism comes out next and after removing a few screws and standoffs and detaching the remaining connectors we can lift out the logic board now unfortunately the shields that cover the 6 pluses logic border soldered in place obscuring our view of the new a 8 processor in 8 motion tracking chip and NFC chips as I want to put this phone back together in working order I'm going to leave the shields in place so the last piece to come out is the speaker assembly still attached to the case are the headphone and lightning connector assembly volume buttons ringer switch power button a small antenna and a slew of ribbon cables now most of these components are held to the case with both screws and adhesive if any of these pieces were damaged removing and replacing them wouldn't be too difficult but I don't want to risk damaging them during removal so I'm going to leave them where they are now as I said at the beginning although the iPhone six-plus may look like an oversized six there are some significant differences inside the case now first off the overall layout is very similar but not identical for example the vibration mechanisms are different and are located in different spots likewise the external speakers are different now the pluses 11.1 watt our battery is also much larger than the regular sixes six point nine one watt hour unit and the logic boards are different as with the regular iPhone 6 if you only looked at the 6 plus on the outside you'd miss some really interesting and important design changes that lurk inside the phone now for a complete list of specs pricing and real-world tests check out Tim Stevens's full CNET review and to see more teardown photos and read my full Hardware analysis go to TechRepublic comm forward slash cracking