iFixit has given Apple’s slimline new smartphone, the iPhone Air, a thumbs-up for repairability, praising its easy access to key components, despite being the thinnest handset Cupertino has built so far.

The iPhone Air is part of the iPhone 17 portfolio, unveiled at a media event earlier this month. It effectively replaces the Plus model seen in earlier Apple smartphone lineups, with more focus on a thin and light design.

Thinner often means flimsier, harder to fix, and more glued-down parts, according to the iFixit boffins. But after popping open the back of the latest device, they were pleased enough to award it a provisional repairability score of 7 out of 10. This means it is some way off being perfect (the Fairphone 6 recently scored 10), but better than many folks had anticipated.

“At 6.5 mm, the Air is a hair thinner than Samsung’s Galaxy S25 Edge, yet it manages to keep modular parts and early battery access,” says iFixit Director of Sustainability Elizabeth Chamberlain.

Apple has achieved this through some key design choices. These include using titanium for the frame, despite this material being phased out in other iPhone models, and shifting the tiny logic board up to the top of the case, which frees up space for the battery to form much of the middle of the device.

That change means the logic board is less vulnerable to damage, should the phone be subjected to bending while in a pocket, for example, and the metal casing for the battery makes it more bend-resistant as well.

That battery is smaller than those on most recent iPhones, iFixit notes, offering 12.26 Wh of capacity, but Apple gets brownie points for the unit being (relatively) easy to replace when it eventually wears out. The repair gurus claimed they found it simple to access via the back glass thanks to Apple’s dual entry design, and the battery itself is mounted using electrically debonding adhesive strips.

The latter is a new one on this writer, but such “smart” adhesives can be made to lose their bonding strength when a low-voltage electrical current is applied across them, allowing the battery to be easily detached and lifted out in this particular example.

It is a little more complicated than that, of course, as can be seen in the video that the iFixit team has produced to demonstrate how to access the key components tucked away inside the phone. You clearly need a steady hand and a fair amount of nerve to do this kind of stuff.

Apple has revived its MagSafe cling-on battery pack for the iPhone Air, most likely because of the relatively small capacity of the phone itself. According to iFixit, the battery inside this is identical to the one inside the iPhone Air, allowing users to swap the batteries if they wish.

Repairability even extends to the USB-C port, although the testers at iFixit warn this may not be so easy, with delicate flex cables, adhesive, and hard-to-reach screws, but conclude that replacing the port is still feasible with some care.

Apple does not provide USB-C port repairs in-house and doesn’t sell the replacement ports for iPhones either, but iFixit says it intends to offer these itself as soon as it can get hold of them.

That titanium USB-C port is also claimed by Apple to be 3D printed to fit into the slimline frame of the iPhone Air, while using 33 percent less material than a conventional forging process.

Overall, iFixit says the iPhone Air’s design makes battery swaps straightforward, with most other major components similarly easy to access and remove. Apple still uses the oft-criticized pentalobe screws to hold the case together, but the use of screws means that reassembly shouldn’t be a problem.

iFixit is still waiting on Apple to make good on their parts availability promises, but the org praised Cupertino for making repair manuals available from day one. ®