iFixit has published its traditional teardown of the iPhone 18 Pro, which shows the variable aperture mechanism up close and explores a potential issue involving display repairs. Watch it below.
During the teardown, one of the tiny aperture blades flew out as iFixit dismantled the lens stack, underscoring how impractical a component-level repair would be. For this year’s Pro devices, Apple moved the infrared camera beneath the display, while keeping the selfie camera and IR dot projector within the smaller Dynamic Island. Under a microscope, iFixit found that Apple hides the relocated infrared camera by removing every other row of pixels above the sensor. iFixit notes that the effect fades toward the edges, and that there is an IR-pass filter beneath the OLED layer to block visible light.
iFixit’s teardown of the iPhone 18 Pro is now live, exploring not just the variable aperture, this year’s biggest camera upgrade, but also the device’s larger vapor chamber, the new under-display Face ID camera, and more. Another highlight of the new iPhone 18 Pro is its under-display Face ID infrared camera. Apple also said the new vapor chamber has three times the surface area of the one in the iPhone 17 Pro.
The group says that if the aperture gets stuck, it would likely require replacing the entire main camera assembly. As the company explained during its “Surprise and Shine” event, the A20 Pro uses a new package that places the silicon die side-by-side with the memory, removing the latter from the SoC’s thermal path and allowing the chip to connect directly to the vapor chamber. Now for the concerning part: iFixit says the plastic frame around the display was damaged on three of the four iPhones its team opened.
