Teardown of the HTC One M9: streamlined design makes some parts more accessible, but battery is buried, and display would be very hard to repair
Context & Ripple Effects
iFixit's verdict on the HTC One M9 lands in the middle of its flagship-teardown run: within months, the OnePlus 2 would score better on battery access and the Nexus 6P would rate among the worst for repairability, making the M9 one data point in a season when buried batteries and fragile glass were becoming the norm rather than the exception.
What makes the M9 notable is the split verdict — a streamlined chassis that helps some component swaps while burying the battery and effectively locking out display repair — a trade-off HTC's own later devices and Google's Pixel XL, built with HTC at a 6/10 with a fragile screen would keep echoing.
First-order effects
- M9 owners needing a battery or screen replacement face a disproportionate bill relative to the phone's value, since both parts sit behind the hardest disassembly steps in the device.
Second-order effects
- Repairability becomes a competitive talking point: OnePlus could market its successor's easily removable battery directly against flagships like the M9 whose batteries require near-full teardowns.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, teardown scores harden into a public design feedback loop — Apple's iPhone 14 midframe redesign explicitly engineered for front-and-back access shows manufacturers eventually reversing the glue-heavy 2015-era choices once repair cost becomes visible to buyers.
The trend: Smartphone repairability is moving from accidental consequence of industrial design to a deliberate, scored engineering target, with iFixit teardowns as the scoreboard.