IFixit has, once again, managed to shove its way to the front of the Apple Store queue, buy the latest hardware and bring it back to the iFixit Lair, a workshop so efficiently designed and well equipped for ripping things apart that the owners constantly get sales queries from serial killers.
This time the mystery-meat on the slab is the new iPod Touch, the runt of Apple’s iPod upgrades last week and notable mostly for what it didn’t get: no camera, no FM radio (no that you’d want it) and no Nike+ pedometer.
But according to iFixit’s be-scalpelled surgeons, there are a few surprises inside. First, wireless n. We knew the Touch had gotten a a new CPU (a newer hardware revision than the iPhone 3GS, although the actual speed is still unknown), but it turns out that it also has faster Wi-Fi, with 802.11n joining a,b and g. The chip is the Broadcom BCM4329, and we reported back in April that this chip had been listed in a resource file deep within the iPhone 3.0 software.
Don’t get too excited yet. The faster Wi-Fi isn’t switched on, but remember that the previous iPod Touch shipped with a Bluetooth chip inside that remained dormant until the 3.0 OS update finally woke it up, and the original MacBooks also contained n-capable wireless chipsets which later got switched on with a $2 download. The same could happen with this faster Wi-Fi in the Touch, and it wouldn’t be the first time the Touch has had better hardware than the iPhone.
Also on this Broadcom chip is an FM transmitter and receiver. The transmitter will likely remain off forever, but the FM radio could certainly be useful for those in the US who can’t get Spotify, and could be switched on in software if there is an FM antenna inside there too.
Third, and most interesting, is the inclusion of a 6mm x 6mm x 3mm hole. What? A hole? In something as tightly packed as an iPod Touch, even a hole can hold meaning, and this hole could be where the camera was supposed to go. IFixit points out, and our own Brian Chen reported last week, that this hole isn’t big enough to fit an autofocus iPhone camera, but there is space for a new Nano video camera in there.
Could these be the “technical difficulties” which prevented Apple from including a camera in the Touch? A simple lack of space? It’s possible, and the leaked case designs showed a camera in the center like this. And after all, the Touch is a lot slimmer than the iPhone. One thing is sure: if Apple did include either the 1G iPhone’s crap-cam, or the 640 x 480 video camera from the Nano, there would be loud complaints. Apple needs to find a way to fit the iPhone’s camera into this tiny space. And if I had to put money on it, I’d say we’ll see one in a few months time, perhaps even as an attention-getting announcement during January’s CES.
iPod touch 3rd Generation Teardown [iFixit. Thanks, Kyle!]
Photos: iFixit
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