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iFixit's iPhone X Teardown Reveals Two Battery Cells, 'Unprecedented' Logic Board (macrumors.com)
iFixit has posted its teardown of the iPhone X, revealing a new TrueDepth camera system, stacked logic board, L-shaped two-cell battery pack, and Qi-based inductive charging coil. Mac Rumors reports: Like every other model since the iPhone 7 Plus, the iPhone X is a sideways-opening device. A single bracket covers every logic board connector. iFixit said the miniaturized logic board design is incredibly space efficient, with an unprecedented density of connectors and components. It noted the iPhone X logic board is about 70 percent of the size of the iPhone 8 Plus logic board. The extra room allows for a new L-shaped two-cell battery pack rated for 2,716 mAh, which is slightly larger than the iPhone 8 Plus battery. iFixit's teardown includes some high-resolution photos of the iPhone X's new TrueDepth camera system that powers Face ID and Animoji. For those unfamiliar, a flood illuminator covers your face with infrared light. Next, the front-facing camera confirms a face. Then the IR dot projector projects a grid of dots over your face to create a three-dimensional map. Last, the infrared camera reads this map and sends the data to the iPhone X for authentication. Like the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, the inside of the iPhone X's rear shell is affixed with an inductive charging coil based on the Qi standard. iFixit gave the iPhone X a so-called repairability score of six out of a possible 10 points. It said a cracked display can be replaced without removing Face ID's biometric hardware, but it added that fussy cables tie unrelated components together into complex assemblies that are expensive and troublesome to replace.
It sort of strange that gold and diamonds, which have very limited usage in large quantities, are considered intrinsicly valuable, while a pocket computer with thousands of man-years of effort behind it, and craftsmanship down to the nanometer is thought of as something that should be dirt cheap.
The answer is simple. It's supply and demand. The why is complex and requires more time and effort to fully understand:
The total quantity of gold that has ever been mined, which is somewhat less than what remains today in human hands, wouldn't fill the volume of an Olympic sized swimming pool and yet, because it was scarce, easy to recognize, hard to counterfeit, portable and resistant to corrosion it served mankind as a primary monetary commodity for millennia. The present value of gold is closely intertwined with it's long history as a money. Today it serves mostly as an alternative and contrarian currency which, despite sincere efforts by the governments of this world, maintains some degree of autonomy as a store of wealth and medium of exchange. There are other practical uses, in electronics or dentistry for example, but these uses are dwarfed by the amount of gold held for monetary reasons.
Diamonds used to be valuable because of their extreme rarity because until the about 1725 the only known source was in India and diamonds, especially large ones, were extreme luxury goods of the sort that were enjoyed mostly by the nobility and royalty. By the late 19th century this had changed as more sources were found, the science of geology advanced to the point where the conditions that formed diamonds were much better understood and could be used to seek out new sources and places with mining potential. It wasn't long before the De Beers company was founded and consolidated control to monopolize diamond mining and production. This was necessary because without a monopoly to control supply, prices would have collapsed since diamonds are not nearly as rare as gold in the natural environment. However, the popularity of the diamond as an engagement gift was the result of what is widely considered to be on of the most clever marketing campaigns ever conceived, but which didn't begin until 1938. You've heard the slogan "A diamond is forever?", yeah that's the one. So in actuality the modern perception of diamonds as a thing of value was largely a creation of late 19th and early 20th century marketing combined with artificial scarcity imposed by monopoly and therefore a modern creation. Compare this to gold which was has been valued as money for thousands of years before anyone thought to pick up or polish a diamond.
Of course, these are not exhaustive explanations, but I think that they capture the essence of why diamonds and gold remain relatively valuable today despite their limited more practical uses.