Image: iFixit
The iPhone 8 will officially go on sale Friday. But it's already Friday in the future, and by that we mean Australia, where iFixit sent its engineers in order to be the first to get their hands on Apple's latest device.
In a "live" teardown that iFixit's team is updating through the night (here in the US), you can check out the organization's first impressions of the device. Its engineers plan to send out a full release with all of its findings once the teardown is complete. The trip is part of an annual tradition in which iFixit races several other organizations (and individuals) to be the first to tear down Apple's new device.So far, at around 10:40 PM EDT when I wrote this post, iFixit had just started diving into the iPhone 8. The team had conducted an external evaluation, x-rayed the device, and removed its glass screen. The x-ray revealed the phone's brand new wireless charging coil.While the release of iPhone 7 was a major design change from the 6S in terms of opening the device (for the first time, the iPhone opened side-to-side instead of from the bottom), the iPhone 8 seems quite similar to the iPhone 7 in terms of opening technique. This is important, because opening up the phone is the most critical part of any repair.The iPhone 7 received a 7 out of 10 on iFixit's repairability scale when it performed a teardown last year. Update: The iPhone 8 received a 6 out of 10 on repairability. The drop was primarily due to the phone's new all-glass back.