The first iPhone 14 units are shipping today, but a YouTuber has already posted a teardown (and assembly) of the most expensive member of the lineup.
In fact, PBKreviews posted the video on Thursday and it has already racked up over 150,000 views. That’s despite the teardown revealing relatively few surprises in the iPhone 14 Pro Max.
The most interesting revelation may be the lack of change in a specific area. The teardown features the US version of the iPhone 14 Pro Max, which means there’s no SIM tray, but the space freed up by that absence contains what appears to be plastic padding rather than any additional components.
The original version of the video claimed that space contained a satellite module. But that claim was removed in a later edit following viewer feedback. You can see more discussion of the “filling” in a Reddit thread about the video. It’s likely that Apple will do away with physical SIM trays entirely at some point in the near future, but as long as it makes two versions, eSIM only in the US and physical SIM everywhere else, it makes a lot more sense logistically to keep them as similar as possible.
There are a few changes worth checking out in teardown, such as the repositioning of the TrueDepth camera to match the pill cutout on the dynamic island and the appearance of a metal plate for heat dissipation the heat. And the details of the new camera setup are interesting and informative. But most viewers are likely to remember what hasn’t changed more than what has.