[intoverflow2]

Apart from that it was a great design, very user serviceable. Whole thing comes apart with just two screws, glass isn't part of the touch screen so smashed phones can be fixed for <$10 in < 10 minutes.

Apple likes to bleat on about how environmentally sound they are but glueing everything together and making it disposable piece of electro-garbage just makes that whole spiel ridiculous to me.

[jandrese]

Having replaced the screen on a 4s myself, I can say your 10 minute estimate was way off. You could replace the back glass in 2 minutes flat, but the front glass was much much more involved.

Replacing the front glass required you to disassemble every 0.something mm screw in the thing and pull all of the parts out. It took me over an hour, partially because I had to carefully document each and every screw to make sure they go back in the right place (I didn't want to swap a 0.7mm and a 0.8mm screw somewhere).

[collyw]

You mean the one that they choose the most obscure pentalobe screws on the market for?

[zaroth]

I think the screw heads are a red herring. The screwdriver costs next to nothing, it's really not a problem spending a few dollars on tools for a phone that comes apart well. I think there are much more relevant things to complain about as far as actual "serviceability" goes.

The reality is, if you aren't the kind of person who can spend a few minutes researching and procuring the correct set of screwdrivers, you really should not be opening the case anyway. If you've ever opened up an iPhone and for example replaced the battery I think you would agree, the pentalobe screws are just the appropriate level of deterrent. Crucially, there's no DRM on the battery preventing me from swapping it out myself.

[jrowley]

The iphone 4 originally shipped with regular phillips head screws on the outside, but Apple quietly switched those out to the pentalobe head screws sometime after the initial batches of phones came out.

[rsynnott]

Most iPhone 4s had tiny phillips screws; the pentalobe ones were introduced towards the end of its run.