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Apple Watch Series 10 teardown shows progress in everything except repairability

Apple Watch Series 10

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After a decade of iteration, Apple Watch Series 10 is a testament to Apple's miniaturization and display technology, but a teardown shows that it's still terribly difficult to repair.

As is tradition, iFixit is working its way through all of Apple's latest gadgets, this time the Apple Watch Series 10. The enclosed case keeps all the components watertight, and the sensor housing can't be removed easily.

Apple Watch Series 10 is yet another iterative product with a bigger display and faster chipset. It isn't surprising that a teardown didn't find much difference overall.

In iFixit's style, the Apple Watch came apart with seemingly little effort, but glue, lack of pull tabs, and no display cable for removing the display leave a lot to be desired. It rated the Apple Watch a 3 out of 10 on the repairability scale.



4 Comments

Xed 4 Years · 2896 comments

Good luck on that shapable battery. I mean it, good luck, but I don't see how the engineering could reasonably allow for that in the next decade.

muso 15 Years · 33 comments

This is kind of stupid.  Of course you can't repair the bloody thing.  If it were fully and easily repairable, it would be five times the size, and then we'd all be bitc... uh... griping about that.  It's dispos... uh... recyclable.  Get over it.  

avon b7 20 Years · 8046 comments

muso said:
This is kind of stupid.  Of course you can't repair the bloody thing.  If it were fully and easily repairable, it would be five times the size, and then we'd all be bitc... uh... griping about that.  It's dispos... uh... recyclable.  Get over it.  

It definitely wouldn't be five times the size and could be repairable for certain elements like the battery and screen. It just wasn't designed for that. 

Depending on your interpretation of the EU batteries directive, the Apple Watch might just find itself exempt from a user replaceable battery. If it isn't, that particular side of things will change in 2027.

williamlondon 14 Years · 1426 comments

How many ordinary people repair their own mechanical watches? How many complain they can't?