iPhone 7 Plus teardown reveals 2,900 mAh battery, 3GB RAM, bigger Taptic Engine occupying space created by removal of headphone jack
As it does every year, device repair site iFixit is putting all of Apple's new devices through the teardown process. This year, the site is tearing down the iPhone 7 …
Context & Ripple Effects
iFixit's annual teardown ritual is the one consistent X-ray of Apple's hardware decisions, and the iPhone 7 Plus is the first generation where the trade is explicit: the headphone jack comes out, and the recovered volume goes straight into a larger Taptic Engine plus a 2,900 mAh battery with 3GB of RAM. That reverses the direction from last year, when the iPhone 6s teardown showed Apple shrinking the battery to 1,715 mAh to make room for 3D Touch.
The companion teardown coverage also flags an Intel modem in some iPhone 7 units alongside Qualcomm parts, meaning Apple is now dual-sourcing radios within a single product line — a detail that matters as much for supply leverage as the battery numbers do.
First-order effects
- Repairability scoring and third-party repair shops get their annual data point on Apple's internals, while buyers of the 7 Plus get roughly double the 6s-generation battery capacity in exchange for losing wired-audio compatibility without an adapter.
- Apple's dual modem sourcing means two otherwise-identical iPhone 7 variants ship with different radio silicon, complicating carrier certification and any future baseband comparison testing.
Second-order effects
- Accessory makers who built around the 3.5mm jack are pushed toward Lightning and Bluetooth audio lines, since the largest iPhone no longer ships with analog output natively.
- Rival Android flagships face a template decision: Apple just demonstrated that removing a legacy port can fund better haptics and battery life, giving competitors cover to make the same cut.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Apple keeps converting port volume into componentry — the following year's iPhone X teardown shows the same logic at its extreme, with an L-shaped dual-cell battery and stacked logic board squeezing every millimeter — pointing toward iPhones designed around sealed, densely packed internals rather than expandable interfaces.
- Annual teardowns harden into the de facto public audit of Apple's supply chain, surfacing supplier splits like the Intel/Qualcomm modem divide that Apple itself never announces.
The trend: Apple is systematically trading legacy ports for internal volume — haptics, battery, and denser boards — with iFixit's yearly teardowns serving as the running public record of that reallocation.