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This year, with the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, Apple is really leaning on the fact that they used Titanium for the side rails. This is an upgrade over the Stainless Steel that they’ve been using for the last few years. The move to Titanium was done for two main reasons, the first being the weight of the phone, and the second being durability.
Now there’s been many durability tests on the iPhone 15 Pro over the weekend, and it doesn’t seem to fair as well as the Stainless Steel models. Some believe this is due to the fact that Apple made the phone more repairable, and so the glass is only glued to the frame, versus the entire back.
Then there’s JerryRigEverything who tore down the phone (as well as doing a durability test). He wanted to see how much titanium is actually in the iPhone 15 Pro. And honestly, it’s about what we expected to see.
Titanium is melded with Aluminum for the frame
Given the price of titanium, no one really expected that the entire frame was made out of it. So it is not a big surprise to see Apple using both Titanium and Aluminum here. In the teardown, you can see where the aluminum meets the titanium. As Zack says in the video, you can see the change in color there.
So to answer the question of how much Titanium is in the iPhone 15 Pro? Well, it’s about 1mm all around the frame. So there’s not a lot here. That’s roughly about $30 of Titanium by weight. Which also explains why the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max haven’t really gone up in price (technically the iPhone 15 Pro Max did, but they also eliminated the 128GB model).
You can watch the full JerryRigEverything teardown video down below. It’s quite interesting to see all of the internal parts of Apple’s newest iPhone.