Isn’t today the D-Day? Well not to confuse anyone, it is actually Apple Watch D-Day. Yes, Cupertino is finally shipping the first batch of its debut wearables to buyers.
With the shipping comes the big role of iFixit into action to crack open its sealed box and take a detailed look inside the 38mm and 42mm devices of the Apple Watches.
The dinky wrist computer seems fairly difficult to break down completely. Swapping out the S1 processor chip is not a simple job, even for the iFixit guys. It took them 20 steps with a few steps including destructive procedures.
The difficulty in doing so brings doubt whether the internals would be of simple swapping nature. The S1 chip is encased in a solid block of plasticky resin. The reason for this would probably be to make tearing down harder for component intel.
Earlier, Apple had confirmed the smartwatch battery would be replaceable. iFixit finds the same. It showed replacing the battery is far simpler.
Only light adhesive was used to fix the battery to secure its place. Simply lifting and disconnecting the display was enough to do so.
According to TechCrunch, the life of an Apple Watch battery is probably around three years. As there are no upgrading and swapping out of the internals, it is guessed users would be likely to push towards a complete device upgrade and go for the next-generation processor.
If you want to fix an Apple device yourself, then you more than likely have the wrong device. The company has always made it difficult to repair devices yourself and virtually impossible to upgrade them. However, that’s why the company is so successful because it has trained people to expect to upgrade a device rather than do much other than replace the battery. I don’t have a problem with that because it’s good business.
Also, I read the Apple Watch costs 29% of its retail value to make, which is an incredible margin!