Transparent iPhone 6 Plus Lets You Look Straight Through Its Own Screen

A plastic frame now holds an entire iPhone 6 Plus together in plain view. Every internal piece sits where it belongs, yet nothing blocks the line of sight from one side of the device to the other. The screen itself no longer acts as a solid barrier. Light and glances pass through it, revealing the battery, logic board, and other components depending on what appears on the display.

This is the result of an intended switch, which swapped in and then disassembled the display stack. The frame arrived at jOhnZoid’s desk as a finished product, molded in translucent plastic rather than the usual opaque substance. Suppliers in China and Japan were making housings with laser-cut button holes, screw posts, and cutouts. If I could find one, you could repair it like this: install the logic board, batteries, cameras, and flex cables from a standard 6 Plus into this new housing. The home button, volume rocker, and silent switch all transfer across, and the click and feel are same.

The screen needed some effort, as regular iPhone 6 Plus LCD panels contain multiple reflecting layers behind the main image part. Those layers bounce light forward, keeping the image brilliant in normal lighting and making it appear brand new. If you remove five to ten of those reflecting layers, the lighting remains functional, but the image becomes less brilliant. What remains is the diffusion material and the LEDs along the edges. The adhesive used to fix the glass has remained in place. So, while the resulting screen can still display images, if the room is nice and bright or the material is boring, you can see right through it.

Angle the device just so, and you can see all of the internal components through the display. Tilt it differently, and the image on the screen takes over. Users can play games like Doom or Subway Surfers without problems, but the strange lighting and narrow view cone become tedious after a while. The rear camera is still doing its job. Because the frame adds almost no weight, the entire design stays thin and light.

Daily use was never the plan, as past versions of this same concept had a terrible habit of dying due to all of the electromagnetic interference reaching the electronics. This one provides the same risk but lacks the metal barrier that normally protects goods. Pleb from Plebempire sourced the frame and conducted the delicate screen surgery, while John Zoid came down to film the finished product, sharing a video of how it all came together.