Hasta La Gadget!

Since it’s already Friday, September 21st in Australia, the guys over at iFixit decided to take a trip down under, and already have their hands on a shiny new iPhone 5. As is their tradition, they’ve started the process of ripping it apart to show us what’s inside. With so many early leaks of the iPhone 5′s parts, I’m guessing there won’t be too many surprises, but it’s still always fun to get a bit of geek porn whenever a new gadget comes out anyhow.

Image Credit: iFixit

What we know so far is that the new phone looks as nice as it does in Apple’s beauty shots, and that it’s still sealed tight by their annoying pentalobe screws. On the plus side, it looks like the screen module will be much, much easier to replace than the one on the iPhone 4/4S. As already suspected, the battery is only a tiny bit more powerful than the one in the iPhone 4S, so we can only hope that the phone performs as well as Apple claims on the power-sucking 4G network. Hopefully, the new CPU and display sip less power than the prior models.

Image Credit: iFixit

Thusfar, iFixit hasn’t finished identifying all the chips inside the iPhone 5, but they have posted some images in case you’d like to start your own detective work right now. Every time I see one of these tiny motherboards, I’m blown away by the incredible advances in miniaturization over the last few years. Just think, this thing is more powerful than any PowerBook Apple ever released.

Image Credit: iFixit

You can check out the iPhone 5 teardown in progress over at iFixit right now. Be sure to refresh often as they finish up their disassembly if you want to find out all the other gory details of the internals of the latest iPhone.

As we briefly mentioned in our EarPods review, iFixit was able to teardown Apple’s latest generation of earbuds, which are currently shipping with the iPhone 5. While we weren’t quite sure what was going on with their insides, the site has confirmed some of our suspicions and detailed a few other fun facts. As it turns out, the internal layout of each earpiece is essentially that of an average ‘bud with a forward-facing driver. The new top section, with its side-facing audio port, is apparently a good chunk of what affects the sound in unison with those strategically placed vents. The improved bass and low-mid response we noted in our review falls in line with iFixit’s confirmation that the new driver in each Pod is made with a paper speaker cone — in contrast to the plastic used on the older model.

As the site notes, those driver diaphragms should be less likely to blow-out, and the basket behind ’em have also been updated with a cleaner fit and finish. Aside from that, you’ll be pleased to know that the inline remote appears to have an improved seal for protection from the elements, and it’ll hold up better to cable snags. As you might imagine, the $29 headphones have been deemed as disposable rather than repairable. Don’t take our word for it however — you can read the teardown for yourself at the source link below.

Filed under: Portable Audio/Video, Wearables

Apple’s EarPods get the iFixit teardown treatment, found to basically be earbuds originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Sep 2012 07:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Amazon Kindle Fire HD 7 – that being the 7-inch display toting version of the tablet experience – has received its first official teardown, straight from the folks at iFixit. This teardown shows a rather clean looking construction complete with the Texas Instruments OMAP 4460 dual-core processor powering the whole beast – the first big note here is the fact that the machine has a 1.2Ghz processor though TI claims it’ll operate at up to 1.5Ghz. Also under the hood you’ll find a Texas Instruments TWL6032 Fully Integrated Power Management IC and Samsung KLMAG2GE4A eMMC 16 GB Flash Memory and Flash Memory Controller as well.

This Kindle Fire HD 7 machine works with Elpida B8164B3PF-1D-F 8 Gb (1 GB) DDR2 RAM for your high-power needs and does indeed bring Bluetooth 4.0 and an PF radio as well- tune in! It’s discovered in this teardown that the display is made by LG and that the LCD and front glass panel are fused together. This means that replacing one means replacing the other – not an easy thing to deal with even if you’re a regular repairer.

The good news for repairers out there is that the back panel is relatively easy to remove, the battery isn’t held with adhesive, and the simplicity of the entire machine means you’ll be able to take it apart with ease. Most of the screws inside the machine are the same and only a bit of copper tape over the processor was difficult for the iFixit team to work with. The headphone jack is separate from the rest of the motherboard, this allowing easy replacement, and the screws only range between Philips #00 screws and a single T5 Torx screw.

Have a peek at our hands-on and featured posts from the past week in the timeline below, and stay tuned for our full review of the Kindle Fire HD 7 soon. Don’t scrimp on the questions, also – let us know what else you want to know!

Kindle Fire HD 7 gets teardown and components detail is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

While new tablets and smartphones are almost always great, there are users out there who might be more concerned over other aspects of the device and not just on its features and hardware specs. These other aspects includes issues such as how easy would it be to repair, are the parts all customized and will need specially made equipment to fix and etc. Well the good news is that if you’ve always wondered how the innards of Amazon’s new Kindle Fire HD looks like, the folks at iFixit have posted their tear down of Amazon’s latest tablet.

Thanks to their teardown, they have confirmed that the Kindle Fire HD is powered by the TI OMAP 4460 processor and comes with 1GB of Elpida RAM. They have also discovered that the Kindle Fire HD measures 0.1mm thinner than its competitor, the Google Nexus 7 and is apparently a lot easier to open, hence a lot more repairable as well. If you’re interested in checking out the rest of the components within the Kindle Fire HD and see how they are laid out, head on over to iFixit’s website in the source link below. In the meantime if you’re trying to decide if the Kindle Fire HD is the tablet for you, check out our hands-on here.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Amazon’s new Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD might be hack resistant, Kindle Fire HD update arrives shortly after release,

So, you probably didn’t even get the cellophane off your Xperia Tablet S yet (for those in the UK at least), but Sony has already beaten the likes of iFixit to the strip-down post. It’s one of the firm’s own engineers, Takuya Inaba, who takes a knife to the minty-fresh tablet — revealing its NVIDIA innards for all to see. Of course, we could tell you all about how he opened up the tablet, removing 10 screws, and breaking the splash-proof internal seal, but we gather you’d probably rather see the deed for yourselves. Full gory video after the break, but just remember, don’t try this at home or you might as well tear up that warranty, too.

Continue reading Sony Xperia Tablet S gets the full teardown, shows its NVIDIA heart (video)

Filed under: Tablets

Sony Xperia Tablet S gets the full teardown, shows its NVIDIA heart (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Sep 2012 14:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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