The iFixit team is back at it again, and they have torn down the iPhone 4S for us all to see. Want to know what that A5 chip looks like inside the device, or that new 8MP camera? They take us through it step by step.

• Apple A5 Dual-core Processor (more on this later)
• Qualcomm RTR8605 Multi-band/mode RF Transceiver. Chipworks has provided us with a die photo.
• Skyworks 77464-20 Load-Insensitive Power Amplifier (LIPA®) module developed for WCDMA applications
• Avago ACPM-7181 Power Amplifier
• TriQuint TQM9M9030 Multi-Mode Quad-Band Power Amplifier Module.
• TriQuint TQM66052 (possibly a PA-Duplexer Module)

And yes, 512MB of RAM. So no huge surprises, but hit the links below for more from both iFixit and Chipworks.

Source: iFixit, Chipworks

Yes iFixit went there — they not only did a teardown of iPad 2 they tore down the Smart Cover as well! Here are the highlights:

• There are a total of THIRTY ONE magnets within the iPad 2 and Smart Cover: 10 magnets in the iPad 2, and a whopping 21 magnets inside the Smart Cover. They’re the reason why the cover works so well with the iPad 2.
• We used magnetic viewing film to reveal the magnets before taking our stuff apart. The film has special properties that allow it to react to a magnet’s poles, and it worked wonders in showing the magnets hidden beneath the Smart Cover and iPad 2.
• Sadly, none of the 31 magnets inside the devices had any special properties. All of them were the standard, two-pole kind, but they were arrayed in such a way that made clamping the Smart Cover to the iPad 2 quite easy.
• The Smart Cover has one dedicated magnet that turns off the iPad 2′s screen. The rest are used to either clamp to the iPad on the right side (the far-right column of magnets), or to form the triangular shape used to create a stand for the iPad 2.
• A steel plate on the far-left side of the Smart Cover attaches to 15 of the cover’s magnets (on the far-right) in order to form the triangular base. In fact, the majority of those 15 magnets are specifically there to assemble the triangular base. Only four of them actually clamp to the iPad 2 when the cover is in place. A steel-to-magnet bond is weaker than a magnet-to-magnet bond, and so they needed lots more magnets to prevent the case from literally falling apart during use.
• The far-right row of magnets clamps the Smart Cover to the iPad 2. The magnets in the iPad 2 had their polarity displayed: + – + – . The alternating polarity of the magnets in the iPad 2 was complemented by the opposite alternating polarity of the magnets in the Smart Cover (- + – +), ensuring that the Smart Cover always sits in the same orientation on the iPad 2.
• There’s also a row of magnets on the left side of both products. The iPad 2′s magnets are actually encased into the side of the device, and are used to securely clamp the iPad 2 to the Smart Cover’s frame. Interestingly, these magnets’ polarities were manually marked — a blue dash written with a marker — instead of having a machine stamp/engrave the polarity into them.
• We just can’t keep these magnets off of one another! The iPad 2′s frame magnets made a solid two inch leap across the photo table towards the Smart Cover by the time we snapped a photo. Their attraction for one another is amazing!
• It turns out that the Smart Cover doesn’t work nearly as well once you remove the magnets, steel plate, and plastic structural supports. Go figure!

Anyone surprised by these results?

[iFixit]

The frenzied folks over at iFixit have torn down the iPod touch 4 and the big news — or rather small news — is that it only has 256MB of RAM, the same as the iPad and iPhone 3GS, but half what the iPhone 4 has.

Along with the tiny .7mp camera, lack of IPS display, and lack of a 128GB option, this feels like a cost-savings measure by Apple.

An unsubsidized iPhone 4 will run you over $600 or $700. No one would pay that for an iPod touch, so are lower specs worth the lower price?

The almost forgotten Zune HD aside, iPod touch pretty much has its product category to itself. However, as we start seeing 7-inch and smaller “tablets” start to hit the market, the iPod touch begins to compete with them as well. Being relatively cheap is a huge advantage there, probably as much as access to the iTunes App Store is.

What do you think? 256MB a deal-breaker for anyone? Last straw? Or still not an issue at that price?

[iFixit]

We previously mentioned iFixit was tearing down the iPhone 4, and had confirmed 512MB of RAM and said the front and back displays were Corning Gorilla Glass. Well they’re done with the teardown now and here are some more details.

The only area where we’re still unclear is the Apple A4 system-on-chip. iFixit says 1GHz below but Engagdet thought that, while faster than iPhone 3GS, it was slower than the confirmed 1GHz iPad, and MacRumors rough benchmarks bear that out. So what’s the deal on the chip? Is it doing more or did Apple clock it down to get that amazing battery life and lower the thermal impact?

More from iFixit after the break.

[iFixit, MacRumors, Engadget]

• Like the iPhone 3G and 3GS, there are two silver Phillips screws at the bottom of the phone. But removing these screws releases the rear case instead of the front glass, giving you immediate access to the battery.

• Unfortunately, the LCD panel is very securely glued to the glass and digitizer. If you break the glass, you’ll have to replace the glass, digitizer, and LCD as a single assembly.

• The 3.7V, 1420 mAh Li-Polymer battery is not soldered in place, and very easy to remove.

• The iPhone 4 sports two cameras — a 1.3 MP front-facer, and a 5 MP beauty on the back. Both are located on their own independent boards, making it possible to physically remove the cameras without damaging the phone.

• The phone uses the 1 GHz ARM Cortex A8 core, much like its bigger sibling, the iPad.

• Unlike the iPhone 3GS and iPad — which are both equipped with 256 MB of RAM — the iPhone 4 has a whopping 512 MB.

• The AGD1 is the new 3 axis gyroscope that we believe is designed and manufactured by ST Micro for Apple. The package marks on this device do not appear to be the currently available commercial part, L3G4200D.

• In what can only be described as a work of genius, Apple has integrated the UMTS, GSM, GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth antennas into the stainless steel inner frame.

• Broadcom provides both a BCM4329FKUBG 802.11n with Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR and FM receiver and a BCM4750IUB8 single-chip GPS receiver.

• We’ve identified chips from Broadcom, Cirrus Logic, Numonyx, Samsung, ST Micro, Skyworks, Texas Instruments, and TriQuint.

As expected, the moment Apple’s new iPhone 4 hit the streets, iFixit nabbed it, took it back to the lab, and proceeded with an iPhone 4 teardown. Especially exciting:

We have confirmed that the iPhone’s A4 processor has 512 MB RAM, unlike the iPad’s more limited 256 MB. This decision may have been made fairly late in Apple’s development cycle, because early leaked prototype phones only had 256 MB.

UPDATE: Looks like the Retina Display may indeed be protected by Gorilla Glass!

The front glass panel of the iPhone is constructed of Corning Gorilla Glass, a chemically strengthened alkali-aluminosilicate thin sheet glass that is reported to be 20 times stiffer and 30 times harder than plastic.

Gorilla Glass holds many advantages as the iPhone 4′s front panel including its high resistance to wear and increased strength from a strengthening process.

The teardown is still underway and we’ll update when they’re done, but in the meantime you can catch the action via the link below.

[iFixit]

Another iPhone HD/iPhone 4G prototype has shown up on the internet and has been posed, torn-down, and shown off on video. This Taoviet prototype is similar to the Gizmodo prototype seen earlier in most respects, but is clearly labeled when it comes to storage — 16GB — and lacks the two screws on the bottom seen on the previous prototype as well as current iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS models.

Reportedly a Vietnamese businessman bought the 4th gen iPhone in the US for $4000 but how Apple lost control of it remains unknown. The screen looks stuck on a firmware test reading Inferno and calling itself Bonfire!, so no bootable iPhone OS 4 or special feature hints yet (sorry iChat video fans).

Unlike Gizmodo, Taoviet tore their prototype down to the system-on-chip (SoC) and the chipset looks to be an Apple A4 similar to the blazingly fast 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 and PowerVR SGX chip found in the iPad. (We’re still holding some hope for a multicore Cortex A9, but we’re never satisfied).

More pictures and video after the break!

UPDATE: iFixit sent us word that, based on analyzing the part numbers, it looks like this A4 chipset has the same amount of RAM as the iPad. 256MB. Drat.

[Taoviet via Macrumors, Engadget]

YouTube link

Bookending the iPad Wi-Fi + 3G unboxing from earlier today is the other classic staple of geekdom: the tear-down. As usual iFixit did the deed, and here’s what they uncovered:

• There are actually FIVE antennas in this iPad. Two antennas handle the cell reception — one is in the RF window on top, the other attaches to the LCD frame. A single GPS antenna is also housed in the RF window on top. Just like the iPad Wi-Fi, there are two antennas that handle Wi-Fi / Bluetooth connectivity, one in the Apple logo and another to the left of the dock connector.

• Apple looks to be using the entire LCD frame as an antenna!

• Apple uses the same 3G baseband processor in both the iPhone 3GS and the iPad 3G.

• The baseband processor in question is the Infineon 337S3754 PMB 8878 X-Gold IC. It was actually white-labeled on the production unit, but with enough sleuthing we were able to confirm its true identity.

• The iPad 3G has a Broadcom BCM4750UBG Single-Chip AGPS Solution, whereas the iPhone 3GS uses an Infineon Hammerhead II package. Big win for Broadcom!

Head on over if you want to see the whole, sordid strip-down…

[iFixit, thanks Gregg for the tip!]

Before giving the iPhone HD/iPhone 4G back to Apple, Gizmodo have done a tear-down and provided plenty of pictures of what they’ve found inside, including 50% of the space being taken up by the battery (which is not user-removable), and a drastically smaller, metal cased logic board. (Not to mention screws aplenty).

They didn’t want to break open the board, so no word on whether it has an Apple A4 or related system-on-chip (SoC) like the iPad, or how much RAM is inside, and no word yet on NAND Flash storage capacity either.

(And yes, they did put it back together again, dozens and dozens of screws and all).

Anyone see anything else interesting in the parts?

iFixit has performed their traditional tear-down of new Apple gear, this time taking the iPad apart piece by gloriously crafted piece, and here’s what they found:

The iPad’s battery has 5.5x the capacity of the battery in the iPhone! The iPad actually has two batteries wired in parallel, for a total of 24.8 Watt-hours. On average, the iPad sips just 2.5 Watts. That’s 1/5 the power of a compact fluorescent bulb!

The rear case is machined from a single billet of aluminum, increasing weight but greatly improving the rigidity of the device.

The empty void in the upper right corner is where the cellular communications board would go in the 3G iPad.

The A4 is a Package-on-Package (PoP), with at least three layers of circuitry layered on top of each other. A4 is packaged just like the iPhone processors, microprocessor in one package and two memory modules in the other package. They’re all sandwiched together in a very nice and thin PoP.

The iPad RAM is INSIDE the A4 processor package. Confirming this took quite a bit of sleuthing: we had to partner with Chipworks to X-ray the processor. The X-ray revealed two layers of RAM. In addition to the ARM processor, the A4 package contains two stacked Samsung dies.

We will be releasing a detailed analysis of the A4 in conjunction with Chipworks in a few days.

The rumored slot for a camera is actually taken up by the ambient light sensor.

The glass panel is quite thick: about 1.18 mm, compared to the iPhone’s 1.02 mm thick glass. This is necessitated by the panel’s large size.

The touch circuit design is more similar to the old 2G and early 3G iPhones than the current 3GS. Chipworks informed us that “there is so much room in the iPad that Apple didn’t need to use small chips, just the right ones and cheap ones.”

Disappointingly, especially for those hoping for iPhone 4.0 multitasking miracles, Furbo.org tests show iPad is using the same 256MB of RAM as the iPhone 3GS. We were hoping for me — as in double. If true, there are other ways to handle the demands of multiple apps, but there’s no such thing as too much RAM when we’re still talking MBs…

iFixit has gotten their hands on a brand new Apple Magic Mouse and… torn it apart!

Not much else to say really, but if you want your gadget porn fix of the day, check it — and it’s orange capacitive inner wear — out. (CNet also has a video review posted).

[via 9to5mac]

We’d heard rumors that the iPhone 3GS would be getting fast 802.11n Wi-Fi to go along with that S for Speed, but that never panned out — except for the new third generation iPod touch.

iFixit has been doing their prerequisite tear-down of the brand new device, and MacRumors says:

One of the more intriguing differences uncovered so far is the inclusion of a Broadcom BCM4329 combination Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chip, which supports the 802.11n Wi-Fi standard in addition to 802.11a/b/g standards. The iPhone 3GS and the second-generation iPod touch utilize a different BCM4325 chip, which supports only the 802.11a/b/g standards. While Apple has apparently not activated 802.11n capability in the iPod touch and it is unknown whether it will choose to do so in the future, the new iPod touch hardware does appear to be capable of supporting the standard.

Speaking of rumored-but-not-delivered:

iFixit has also revealed that there is a small empty space at the top of the device (approximately 6 mm x 6 mm x 3 mm) where an iPod nano-style camera could fit. The iPod touch does not appear to be thick enough to adequately house an autofocus camera as found in the iPhone 3GS.

Would we have wanted an iPod touch with VGA video like the nano, but no 3mp stills like the iPhone 3GS?

Engadget reports — based on the tear-downs we’ve seen — that the iPhone 3G S’ ARM Cortex A8 processor is capable of a wee bit more than Apple has thus far enabled.

Currently running at 600MHz, it actually supports a top clock speed of 833MHz and here are the kickers: 720p video recording and real-time video conferencing.

We’ll likely not see the clock speed ramped up for power-saving reasons, nor the video conferencing due to the lack of front-facing camera. But the 720p video recording?

Apple, flip the switch!

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!

What Jobs puts together, iFixit will tear asunder. Live. On the interwebs.

Seems like they got their hands on a New Zealand unit and promptly began to rip it apart for their — and our — education. Sadly, and iPhone 3G was harmed in the making of their post, but if you want to see the guts and maybe do a little iPhonemancy, check it out.

Via