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Apple iPhone Dissected

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the better-them-than-you dept.

Conch writes "Only hours after the launch, the Apple iPhone has been dissected. The good folks at AnandTech violated one of the first iPhones to still our curiosity about whats inside the aluminum shell. 'Please note that we're doing this so you are not tempted to on your recent $500/$600 expenditure, while it is quite possible to take apart using easy to find tools we'd recommend against it as it will undoubtedly void your warranty and will most likely mar up the beautiful gadget's exterior.'"

18 of 338 comments (clear)

  1. Wow by niceone · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Obviously you can't change the battery yourself, but from those pictures it looks like even Apple couldn't change it. That can't be so, can it?

    --
    ccalam - acoustic versions of new songs.
    1. Re:Wow by Wdomburg · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Hell, I can't even buy a $2500 COMPUTER that can keep pace with technology that long.

      Some people use their electronics to do things, not "keep pace with technology". My last $600 computer lasted me seven years.

    2. Re:Wow by antime · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Will the data on my iPhone be preserved?

      No, the repair process will clear all data from your iPhone.

      How much do you want to bet they're not repairing jack shit, just giving you a new phone?
    3. Re:Wow by fermion · · Score: 3, Interesting
      You would be amazed at how long an Mac can last. Macs tend to be designed for power and durability, not to meet some arbitrary low price point. This means that Apple can pay suppliers for first pick parts, and not just settle for the parts that fell off the truck.

      So I have an Apple cube running a smartboard, a powerbook from around 2000 that is my home entertainment setup, a powermac from around 1998 that isn't used much but still works very well, not to mention sundry mac classics, etc, that had to go away because they were not OS X capable.

      My ipods still work, though I never was impressed with the battery life in them, nor do I like the Apple replacement policy, which is why I am hesitant about the iPhone. But the still work, compared to my Nomad, which has little plastic pieces broken off, which means that I paid about the same amount of money for a device that does not work.

      The same applies to my high price phone. Battery lasted a year, then had to charge it every day if I used it, then had to pay $50 for a new one. OTOH, a few years on, my iPod battery is still tolerable. Hopefully, like the iPod, I can send in the iPhone for a battery swap. I think the issue is not going to be the value of the phone, but the value of the time to wait to swap out the phone. If one can't be without a phone for a couple days, and I know many people, even children, who can't, then those will be the ones who will have the new phone. The rest of us, trying to get the full value out of the product, will just eventually have two phones. One for every day, and one for sunday best.

      --
      "She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
    4. Re:Wow by fbartho · · Score: 2, Interesting

      ...Till Later. If they had to wait till every phone was received, then send it to whereever they process the phones as a big batch (Mexico? China?) Then wait until they are batch shipped back, then finally send it back to you, I bet it would take way too long. However if they just wait until the device is received at a preprocessing center, they verify the serial and model details, then they can just toss it into a container and pick out an identical, tested, refurb unit that they send to you, immediately. The container gets sent off eventually, for much cheaper shipping for them. And the service center guts those units, takes all the working parts, and puts them back together into a unit that gets tagged as refurb, certified new battery, and gets sent back to the preprocessing center as a big batch.

      Better experience all around, and probably cheaper operating costs. But that's just my guess.

      --
      Gravity Sucks
  2. The software by yohanes · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I am more interested in someone hacking the software (is it really OSX?, can you flash it, etc). But this may provide a good start, because they give quite detailed photos of most of the hardware.

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    -- tinyhack.com
    1. Re:The software by heinousjay · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm such a huge fan of people who assert, even indirectly as you did, that anyone who doesn't agree with their opinion must be stupid.

      --
      Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
    2. Re:The software by kchrist · · Score: 2, Interesting

      It looks like it really is OS X. John Gruber posted a Mail.app (actually called MobileMail.app on the iPhone) crash log that reveals all sorts of interesting about the filesystem layout, including the existence of /Applications, /System/Library/Frameworks, /usr/lib, and so on. MobileMail is using sqlite for storage, apparently.

      --
      Web consulting +
  3. Re:What's that? by Svippy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    More planned obsolescence. Pity. I'd like to see Apple go a little greener. A non-user replaceable battery limits the life of a device substantially.

    You know as well as I, that Apple likes to keep control of their own things. And besides, it is not like there would be any business in a normal mobile store to sell iPhone batteries, whereas selling for instance Nokia batteries could be a good idea, because a lot of phones from Nokia uses the same batteries. I think even across brand names are the same battery used. Not until the iPhone becomes popular enough or Apple makes more phones that uses the same battery (and of course make it easy to exchange battery) will any other store consider selling them, and Apple knows that.

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    Clicked pie.
  4. What do all those parts actually cost? by fedxone-v86 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Mod me flamebait but I'm always interested in comparing the estimated manufacturing costs to the price tags Apple puts on its gadgets.

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    (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
  5. Re:SIM by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    You can also change the SIM easily in most US GSM phones. (not CDMA, of course) The iPhone is special.

  6. Why not just one chip? by Chemisor · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder if some EE guru could answer me what might be a stupid question: what's the point of using a PCB these days instead of just putting everything on the same chip? I highly doubt that anyone would try to repair an iPhone by substituting some component. Hell, we don't even fix TVs any more. There might be some advantage to using a generic component, but once you are making a custom chip, it would seem to be no harder to merge all the others into it. With the architecture being mostly virtual, I doubt there would be any physical design revisions that could be corrected by revising the layout. So why the PCB?

    1. Re:Why not just one chip? by catwh0re · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Many reasons for keeping away from a giant mother chip vs chip division by their function:

      1. Lots of proprietary chips from lots of vendors.
      2. You lose greater economies of scale when engineering custom silicon. Instead of buying existing chips.
      3. It's often easier to contain clock speeds and single-ended capacitance within the boundaries of a chip. Extra electronics is required to buffer the effects of clock/capacitance etc from other components. (I.E. Interference.)
      4. If all the chips are together, then you can't upgrade anything in the next model.
      5. Similar to point 4, if there is a fault, you can't flunk or swap out a chip on the assembly.
      6. Various stability, heat and power savings by using a different chip for each function, e.g. h264 decoding will be on a different chip than the GSM functions.

  7. Re:Hooray Apple released a phone! by gb506 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Yeah, status symbols for hipsters. And scientists, graphic artists, video producers, health care imaging professionals, audio engineers, photographers, radio broadcasters, software engineers, web developers, former VPs of the United States of America, etc. I suppose those folks could use your platform of choice to do their jobs, but they probably don't want to *need* people like you around to keep them patched and semi-secure. Nor do they want to associate with you, what with the food stained shirts, bad haircuts, and poor overall disposition due to your invariable inability to secure a sex partner.

    STFU and go back to your bag of cheetos.

  8. Re:What's that? by rbanffy · · Score: 1, Interesting

    When was the last time you replaced a smartphone battery?

    I had a couple, the current being a Nokia E62 I got for free from the phone company after my faithful Sony Ericsson P-800 died. My SE P-800 was my phone, PDA, camera (for emergencies, because it was a lousy one) and MP3 player for over 3 years and its battery was still strong (a single charge gave it 48 hours) the day it died the bad checksum death.

    It's been since the early 90s the last time I saw a phone whose useful life did outlast its battery.

    By the time the first iPhone batteries start dying, there will be a better model and you will want to move on to it.

    For me, the AT&T tie-in and the ban on installing homebrew software (I need SSH) make the iPhone an unpractical choice. Too bad, because it's really beautiful.

    --
    http://www.dieblinkenlights.com
  9. Greenphone by root_42 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And while we're at it: Trolltech also sells the Greenphone, a Linux-based phone running Qtopia. This is not really for end-users, but meant as a development platform for Qtopia applications. I find it very neat. Smaller screen than iPhone and the NEO, but still very nice! Have a look at:

      http://trolltech.com/products/qtopia/greenphone

    And yes, the software is GPL'ed when you buy the community edition of the phone.

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    [--- PGP key and more on http://www.root42.de ---]
  10. 3G version launch for UK on Monday by nighty5 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "A new 3G (European) version of the iPhone will be launched Monday in the UK by Apple - in a join promotion with Vodafone, T-Mobile of Germany, and Carphone Warehouse. It should answer the disappointment with the US version of the iPhone which has been widely slammed for its poor performance as a phone."

    http://www.newswireless.net/index.cfm/article/3466

    If this is indeed true, it will certainly be what the market needs. I am surprised the US market would tolerate paying so much for a 2G phone.

    Sounds like the US market is behind the 8 ball, with a couple of years to wait for a 3G - time will be indeed telling.

  11. Re:The battery is not replaceable by design. by rtechie · · Score: 2, Interesting
    So it takes a soldering iron to change the battery. That's not exactly making it a challenge for most people on Slashdot, right?

    No, this is a major hassle and introduces the distinct possibility of frying the motherboard when trying to change the battery. You'll probably be able to send it off to Apple for a nominal fee (or third parties) but it's still hassle. There's also the critical issue of not being able to swap batteries if necessary. For an MP3 player, this doesn't mean much. For a critical business tool like a cellphone/PDA, this is much more significant.

    Not enough storage capacity to be useful as an iPod. I wouldn't mind at all having a hard drive in my phone, I want 80GB, not 8. Weight. Try holding an iPod up to your head (in most respects the form factor is similar to the iPhone). The only HD-based cellphones we are likely to see will be "media" devices (a bit like the iPhone) that REQUIRE a Bluetooth headset.