{"id":224714,"date":"2026-03-17T15:51:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T19:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/17\/ifixit-teardown-shows-iphone-17e-back-panel-can-add-magsafe-to-iphone-16e\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T15:55:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T19:55:09","slug":"ifixit-teardown-shows-iphone-17e-back-panel-can-add-magsafe-to-iphone-16e","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/17\/ifixit-teardown-shows-iphone-17e-back-panel-can-add-magsafe-to-iphone-16e\/","title":{"rendered":"iFixit teardown shows iPhone 17e back panel can add MagSafe to iPhone 16e"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/2026\/03\/17\/ifixit-teardown-shows-iphone-17e-back-panel-can-add-magsafe-to-iphone-16e\/\">iFixit teardown shows iPhone 17e back panel can add MagSafe to iPhone 16e<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/2026\/03\/17\/ifixit-teardown-shows-iphone-17e-back-panel-can-add-magsafe-to-iphone-16e\/\">https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/2026\/03\/17\/ifixit-teardown-shows-iphone-17e-back-panel-can-add-magsafe-to-iphone-16e\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Publish Date: <a href=\"publish_date]\">2026-03-17 15:51:00<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Source Domain: <a href=\"9to5mac.com\">9to5mac.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p>After opening up the MacBook Neo a few days ago, iFixit is back with a full teardown of the new iPhone 17e, revealing a few surprising repair-friendly changes inside. Watch it below.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-1043926\"\/><\/p>\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\" id=\"h-cross-compatibility-renders-it-a-7-out-of-10-repairability-score\">Cross-compatibility renders it a 7 out of 10 repairability score<\/h2>\n<p>One of the biggest knocks against the iPhone 16e was its lack of MagSafe support.<\/p>\n<p>Despite the widely circulated notion that this wouldn\u2019t be a big issue for the device\u2019s target audience, Apple did introduce MagSafe support with the iPhone 17e.<\/p>\n<p>Today, iFixit published its teardown of the iPhone 17e and showed that the device\u2019s MagSafe-enabled back panel is fully compatible with the iPhone 16e.<\/p>\n<p>In practice, that means iPhone 16e owners may be able to add MagSafe support to their devices by simply swapping the back panel, with a few caveats:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe 16e doesn\u2019t seem to have the software to recognise the MagSafe attachment, so the signature \u201cthunk\u201d and animation I expected to see is missing. The jury is out on whether a 16e with a 17e back cover can achieve the 15W charge speeds of the 17e, we\u2019ll test and report back once we know.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In fact, iFixit notes that most components are cross-compatible between the iPhone 16e and iPhone 17e. They even managed to boot an iPhone 17e using an iPhone 16e logic board, although Face ID did not work.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" height=\"576\" width=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/03\/ifixit-iphone17e-16e.jpg?quality=82&#038;strip=all&#038;w=1024\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-1043929\" srcset=\"https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/03\/ifixit-iphone17e-16e.jpg 1700w, https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/03\/ifixit-iphone17e-16e.jpg?resize=155,87 155w, https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/03\/ifixit-iphone17e-16e.jpg?resize=655,368 655w, https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/03\/ifixit-iphone17e-16e.jpg?resize=768,432 768w, https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/03\/ifixit-iphone17e-16e.jpg?resize=1024,576 1024w, https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/03\/ifixit-iphone17e-16e.jpg?resize=1536,864 1536w, https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/03\/ifixit-iphone17e-16e.jpg?resize=350,197 350w, https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/03\/ifixit-iphone17e-16e.jpg?resize=140,79 140w, https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/03\/ifixit-iphone17e-16e.jpg?resize=1600,900 1600w, https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/03\/ifixit-iphone17e-16e.jpg?resize=150,84 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\"\/><\/p>\n<p>As iFixit notes:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThat kind of cross-compatibility matters. It makes repairs easier, parts easier to source, and upgrades cheaper.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In the teardown, iFixit notes that the iPhone 17e\u2019s disassembly process is very similar to that of the iPhone 16e and other recent iPhones, in which the front and back panels can be opened independently. This, in turn, means \u201cyou can swap a battery without having to go through a fragile screen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, iFixit notes that removing the USB-C port is still a much more complicated process than it should be, given that it needs to be replaced or repaired far more often than&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/2026\/03\/17\/ifixit-teardown-shows-iphone-17e-back-panel-can-add-magsafe-to-iphone-16e\/\">Source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>iFixit teardown shows iPhone 17e back panel can add MagSafe to iPhone 16e https:\/\/9to5mac.com\/2026\/03\/17\/ifixit-teardown-shows-iphone-17e-back-panel-can-add-magsafe-to-iphone-16e\/ Publish&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":224715,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/9to5mac.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2026\/03\/ifixit-iphone17-back-panel.jpg?resize=1200%2C628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[120],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-224714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-iphone"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224714"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224714"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224714\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":224716,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224714\/revisions\/224716"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}