@tomchai's answer is, as is his wont, correct, short and to the point.
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To elaborate on it a bit, most of Apple's portable devices contain memory that is soldered onto the motherboard, unlike things like laptops that sometimes have slots the memory fits into.
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To elaborate on it a bit, most of Apple's portable devices contain memory devices (storage) that are soldered onto the motherboard, unlike things like laptops that sometimes have slots the memory device fits into.
To make matters worse, many, if not most, small chips with lots of pins nowadays are using a connection type called a Ball Grid Array, or BGA. That's a grid of solder dots on the bottom of the chip that get melted onto a matching set of dots on the circuit board. So it's physically impossible to put a soldering iron on them, and they must be removed and installed using a heat gun that blasts the entire chip until it's hot enough to melt the solder.
Once you have the chip off, you have to use a stencil to coat the dots with solder paste, then melt it to reform the balls before you can put another chip on that space.
So yeah, it is possible, but requires equipment and expertise that is outside the range of most of us, myself included.
@tomchai's answer is, as is his wont, correct, short and to the point.
To elaborate on it a bit, most of Apple's portable devices contain memory that is soldered onto the motherboard, unlike things like laptops that sometimes have slots the memory fits into.
To make matters worse, many, if not most, small chips with lots of pins nowadays are using a connection type called a Ball Grid Array, or BGA. That's a grid of solder dots on the bottom of the chip that get melted onto a matching set of dots on the circuit board. So it's physically impossible to put a soldering iron on them, and they must be removed and installed using a heat gun that blasts the entire chip until it's hot enough to melt the solder.
Once you have the chip off, you have to use a stencil to coat the dots with solder paste, then melt it to reform the balls before you can put another chip on that space.
So yeah, it is possible, but requires equipment and expertise that is outside the range of most of us, myself included.