Three of four iPhone 18 Pros tore a plastic screen frame when iFixit opened them

Each blade pivots on its outermost round hole, slides along a pin in the middle slot, and catches on a notch cut into its edge ^[8]. All six have to move past one another without snagging ^[8]. The blades are about as thin as a human hair under iFixit's Evident DSX2000 microscope ^[7]. Magnets do the driving, and iFixit opened and closed the aperture by holding a magnet near it after stripping the supporting hardware away ^[6]. Six blades keep the opening almost perfectly round, minor imperfections show up as a starburst, and more blades would give a smoother circle ^[13].

Getting in took heat and prying, then more heat and prying, until the lens cover popped off and the blades flew across the teardown room ^[9]. The tolerances are tight and the glues are gummy ^[10]. iFixit said it is reluctant to call any repair impossible, but that this one comes about as close as it gets ^[10]. Damage to the main camera therefore means a new assembly ^[11].

Three of four is 75 percent of the units opened ^[20], and the sample is four phones, taken apart by people who take phones apart for a living ^[1]. iFixit set the tearing aside with "More on that later," and the portion of the teardown published so far does not attribute it to the relocated chip or the bigger cooling system ^[21]. For that rate to transfer to a repair bench, the cause has to sit in the frame and its adhesive. If it is technique, or one bad batch of frames, four units will not tell you which.

Variable aperture in a phone is old news. Nokia shipped it in the N86 in 2009, Samsung in the Galaxy S9 in 2018, and it has appeared in more recent Huawei and Xiaomi models, which is why iFixit writes that "Apple's a little late to the game" ^[14]. The shop dates the overlapping-blade diaphragm to an 1858 patent by Harrison and Schnitzer, the same year John Mason patented the jars in your grandma's pantry ^[15].

As a reason to buy, iFixit is blunt: the variable aperture is unlikely to be worth an upgrade, and the photo quality difference from other recent iPhones is small enough that most people probably will not notice ^[18]. "The most sustainable phone is the one already in your pocket," the teardown says ^[19].