Back to that 3D Touch-less display—we expected to find a slight but measurable difference in thinness, but it sure doesn't look that way from here. The iPhone 8 display (left) looks pretty much identical to the SE's (right). Are they secretly the same?

Not so fast! On 3D Touch screens, we'd normally find a chip on the back that drives the parallel plate capacitors (as seen in our 6S teardown). The iPhone SE display (on the right in this photo) doesn’t have that chip, just a blank window where the chip would be.

And the layer of capacitors? We start peeling off display parts in an attempt to confirm...

Confirmed. No 3D Touch.

On the bright side, the two displays are functionally interchangeable, which is kind of amazing considering the difference in hardware—the 8 display works on the SE, and vice versa.