New iPhone 13 teardown images show a dramatically smaller Taptic Engine & Face ID system

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Iphone 13 Teardown
Iphone 13 Teardown (Image credit: Sonny Dickson)

What you need to know

  • New images show the iPhone 13 disasembled.
  • A smaller Taptic Engine and Face ID system are obvious.

Apple's brand new iPhone 13 lineup will go on sale tomorrow and someone has already had a go at taking a couple of those devices apart. Just as expected, we can now see the smaller Face ID system and larger battery, but there's a surprise as well — a much smaller Taptic Engine compared to previous models.

The Taptic Engine is used for vibration, including haptic feedback. It isn't yet clear whether the smaller part means that vibrations will be less powerful, although we haven't heard that mentioned in any early reviews.

The smaller Face ID TrueDepth system makes sense given the 20% smaller notch on this year's iPhone, while a larger battery was already a known quantity as well. However, it's still interesting to see inside the new iPhones for the first time. We don't know where these images originally came from, although we can look forward to a thorough teardown from the folks at iFixit in the coming days.

Apple's iPhone 13 mini, iPhone 13, iPhone 13 Pro, and iPhone 13 Pro Max all go on sale tomorrow and immediately replace the iPhone 12 lineup as the best iPhone to get for those who want the latest and greatest that Apple has to offer. People who placed pre-orders quickly last week should receive their new iPhones tomorrow, while those ordering today will have to wait a little while to take delivery.

Alternatively, Apple Stores will have stock so taking your chances there could be an option if you don't have a pre-order en-route.

Oliver Haslam
Oliver Haslam
Contributor

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.