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We recently wrote about potential improvements to iPhone repairability, and it stirred hope that the Apple Watch Series 10 might also see some of those improvements. Traditionally, the Apple Watch has been a bit of a bugbear when it comes to repair. Sadly, the Series 10 is no different.
Apple has been in a multi-year-long hokey pokey session concerning the right to repair. It will throw its hat in the ring for a little bit, then withdraw it with the following product iteration. So on and so forth. Now that iFixit has released its Apple Watch Series 10 teardown, we get a good look at its inner components.
Though the Series 10 comes with quite a few upgrades and improvements, it still holds the course in other aspects. It still has a fully enclosed case, but that isn’t a bad thing. It enables it to be water resistant up to 50 meters while being thinner than the Series 9. You can access the interior of the case through the screen, but it took iFixit quite a bit of time with a pry tool and a heat gun to get inside.
The battery doesn’t have any of the improvements the iPhone received. It’s still attached with insanely sticky adhesive, which makes getting it out a messy prospect. There are a lot of small components involved. Disassembling and/or repairing the Series 10 takes a steady hand, solid eyesight, and a lot of patience.
You’ll also need more tools than just an iFixit kit to gain entry. In short, it’s not the repairable wonder we hoped for. It looks like we’re in the “take your left foot out” part of the dance.
After testing, iFixit gave the Series 10 a repairability score of 3 out of 10. That’s the same score as the Series 9 and actually one point lower than the Apple Watch Ultra. In the video, iFixit said it’s “impressive” that Apple can make so many iterative improvements and still be in roughly the same place (repair-wise) it was ten years ago.
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