iPhone 3G S – Disassembled
Well that didn’t take long. RapidRepair.com just let us know they’ve already gotten their iPhone 3G S and rendered it directly down to its component parts.
Let the analysis begin!
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Well these are pretty poor pictures, and I expect better ones to surface sooner or later. The photographer did not control lighting very well, and as such its hard to read some of the chip engraving, and some of that appears to have been obscured by Apple. (Why do they bother?).
The one think you can see is that the upper half (sim end) of mobo is pretty much a total re-design and has fewer small components, which means some of those new large chips are consolidating functionality. This leads to lower costs of manufacture, fewer steps.
The build quality appears to be somewhat lower, with indications of circuit board over-heat in some areas, indicating that the solder wave is running too hot (or too slow).
The lower half of the board is virtually identical, with some minor re-routing to accommodate the one new replacement IC in the lower left.
Internal shielding is also beefed up, which may help the phone to keep from killing its own sensitivity when all radios are on.
I’m eager to have the IC gurus start posting their analysis of all the chips on board.
I’m also betting that even with an improved camera, compass and faster processor that the 16gig models come in within $10 of each other in manufacturing costs. I’ll even go out on a limb and wager the 3Gs is cheaper.