iPhone SE (2022) teardown surprisingly reveals bigger battery inside
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The first teardowns of the brand new iPhone SE (2022), aka the third-generation iPhone SE, have now surfaced on YouTube, revealing a few interesting details around the budget iPhone that Apple won't tell you about.
The big news is that we now know the iPhone SE (2022) battery capacity, and surprisingly, we have a larger capacity on this newer model compared to the previous generation one.
iPhone SE battery sizes
iPhone SE (2022): 2,018 mAh
iPhone SE (2020): 1,821 mAh
iPhone SE (2016): 1,624 mAh
That works out to a nearly 10% larger battery cell on the new SE, a neat improvement that is also the main reason why Apple quotes 2 hours of additional video playback on it compared to the previous model.
The teardown also answers one important question: will the battery from the 2020 iPhone SE work on the new, 2022 model? And the answer is a "no" since Apple has ever so slightly changed the connector to the battery, and even though it physically fits in the same spot, the connector won't allow it to be used.
The other question you might be wondering is whether the screen assembly from the older model would work on the newer one? And the answer is again a "no". The connectors are the same, but it seems that Apple recognizes when you try using a screen from the older phone and software disables the touch input, so the display becomes useless.
Another interesting detail is that the 2022 iPhone SE now comes with a Qualcomm Snapdragon X57 modem, according to Nikkei xTECH. We could not find this modem listed on Qualcomm's website, so it could well be a custom model designed for Apple. This is the modem that brings one of the big new features in the SE, 5G connectivity which includes support for the new C-band spectrum in the US (but no mmWave support).
For all else, the iPhone SE (2022) appears remarkably similar to the 2020 version, with only minute differences to the size of various components.
Things that are NOT allowed: