X-ray images of two unannounced iPhones surfaced on Baidu Tieba’s Qualcomm forum on November 5, posted by a leaker who goes by Littertree66. Two codenames sit at the top of the frames: Taycan (V67 K) and Nevera (V69). Going by the poster’s notes, Taycan is the iPhone 18 and Nevera is the iPhone 18e, and the two boards look nearly identical. Apple works a reuse, reduce, recycle play here: one internal layout, two price points.
Treat the pair as unverified for now. Nothing about the images is confirmed, the units in them could be pre-production hardware, and the frames themselves carry signs they may not be genuine. What follows is what the images show, read with that caution attached.
X-rays earn their keep in leaks because they skip the render problem entirely. A marketing render can invent anything. An internal frame shows board shapes, screw posts, coil placement, and the empty pockets where parts were removed. These two frames carry annotations in the leaker’s hand, pointing at the changes instead of the carryovers.
One layout, two phones
Both boards run the same north and south logic-board split. Battery footprints match. MagSafe coil placement matches. Nevera simply adopts Taycan’s design wholesale, and the shared enclosure could even bring Camera Control to the budget model next year.
Taycan’s battery jump
Removing the physical SIM tray freed real space inside Taycan, and Apple spent it on battery. Annotated capacity climbs from 3,671 mAh to 4,430 mAh, roughly 20 percent up. Speaker and haptic motor housings at the bottom run wider too. That spread of changes points to eSIM-only configurations for the base phone, which already sits just under the 3,692 mAh Apple lists for the iPhone 17.
Battery footprints matching across the two phones is the detail with the longest tail. One battery program means one supplier run, one set of spares, and one repair procedure at two price points. Apple’s cheapest phone has historically shipped a smaller cell than the base model. These frames end that split, at least on paper.
Cameras shrink, mostly
Taycan’s wide camera module is physically smaller than the current one, while the sensor resolution looks unchanged. Below the two rear cameras sits a component the annotations call the BG1 Array. What it does isn’t stated anywhere in the post, so it stays a labeled mystery for now.
A smaller camera module with the same sensor resolution suggests packaging work rather than a downgrade. Shrink the housing, keep the sensor, and the space goes to the battery program above. It’s the same trade, repeated at every corner of the board: nothing here grows except the cell.
Nevera plays copycat
Nevera’s battery grows from the 4,005 mAh the iPhone 17e carries to the same 4,430 mAh, about 10 percent up. One rear camera does the work here: a single Wide unit sits where Taycan mounts its Super Wide, with plastic filler below it. Cost comes out of the camera count, not the chassis.
Poster notes add Dynamic Island and a steel-encased battery for both phones. One chip may not make the trip down: the U2 ultra-wideband chip could stay off the 18e. None of that is confirmed, and Apple has said nothing about either phone.
How much of this to bank on
Leaks at this distance from launch describe direction, not final hardware. Boards get revised, suppliers change, and features move between models late in the program. Frames can also be fabricated outright, which is why the watermark signs on these two carry weight. The battery and layout claims point straight at where Apple’s cost work goes, and they aren’t a spec sheet.
What checks out independently is the strategy. Apple has folded the e model closer to the base phone with each generation, and a shared internal layout is the logical end of that path. Even if the capacities move before launch, the reuse pattern in these frames fits the company’s recent behavior too well to dismiss.
Where this leaves the lineup
Shared internals across the base phone and the budget phone is a manufacturing story before it’s a features story. Fewer unique parts, one battery size, one enclosure program. Buyers feel it as a budget model that stops giving up battery life, which has been the e-series trade since it launched.
Current models stay the buyable ones until Apple announces anything. iPhone 17 starts at $799 direct from Apple, and the X-ray pair changes nothing about that today.
Price: $799 and up (current model)
Where to buy: Apple
