No need to twist our arm to get a confession: we absolutely enjoy seeing ultra-complex hardware getting dissected bit by bit. But sometimes — particularly on cold and unwelcoming mornings with no coffee in the cupboard — we prefer to keep things simple by just cracking open a shockingly rudimentary MP3 player. The spartan Sansa Clip+, which you may know as the Sansa Clipplus a microSD slot, turned out to be a doddle to undress, and its insides were about as uncomplicated as they come. Two SanDisk chips dominate the miniature motherboard, and the fabled marathon-running battery also makes an appearance. If you’re not 1) disgusted or 2) confounded by the details we just discussed, you owe it to yourself to check out all the bare naked circuitry in the read link.
If you’re wanting some quality analysis of what’s under the PlayStation 3 Slim‘s hood, you’re still gonna have to wait for that. However, if you’re the sort that just needs to see hardware broken down into as many simple pieces as possible, boy have we got some pictures for you.
Update: The results are in and well, there isn’t a lot of excitement to show for it except for maybe the large 17-blade fan that stretches 95mm in diameter. There’s also a video slideshow of the process, seen after the break.
iSuppli’s just released its estimated cost of Apple’s newest offering, the iPhone 3GS. Total costs for the 16GB model costs $178.96 to manufacture, according to them — give or take $4.63 more than the 8GB iPhone 3G estimate from last year. It’s also about $40 more than iSuppli’s most recent manufacturing estimate for the Palm Pre. The estimate covers only materials, and doesn’t take into account various costs such as shipping and distribution, packaging, royalty fees or all the miscellaneous accessories included with each handset. Regardless, it definitely looks like Apple’s managed to step up the innards of the phone without a significant bump in costs.
If you love something, take it apart and see what’s inside. That’s the geek mantra that some zealous gadgeteers are applying to the iPhone 3GS today. Their biggest discovery: a CPU that’s running at just 72% of its capacity.
Both iFixit and Rapid Repair, companies that specialize in repairing broken gadgets, have got their hands on the new iPhone 3GS, torn it apart, and photographed the process. They were good enough to share their photos with us so we can bring them to you here. IFixit even sent its teardown supremo Kyle Wiens 5,400 miles across the Atlantic to sunny England in order to exploit time-zones and get the job started a few hours early.
Here’s a selection of images from the first frenzied moments in the life of the iPhone 3G S (and the last few moments in the life of two specific units).
Got any more details about what you see in the photos here? Let us know in the comments. We’ll update the story as we get more info.
What’s in the box? This is everything, including Apple’s custom “paperclip” SIM card key, a UK power charger and the UK O2 SIM. Of course, everything shown here is usually sold in a more fully-assembled form. If you open the box and see this, you should be worried. Image credit: iFixit.
The old and the new
There is no visible difference between the 3G and the 3GS other than the model number and, if you opt for the 32GB iPhone, the number 32 on the back. This is good news for 3G owners — you won’t look as goofy as those cheapskates still on the chunky 2G version. Image credit: iFixit.
Removing the brain
This is the real guts of the machine, the logic board which contains the Samsung CPU and other electronics. There are plenty of connectors to release, but you’ll see this view after removing just two screws. Image credit: iFixit.
iPhone 3G S logic board close-up and personal
The heart of the logic board is the CPU, the Samsung S5PC100 (both previous iPhones used the Samsung S3C6400). It runs at 600MHz, just as T-Mobile let slip last week, but according to Samsung’s spec sheet it can run at up to 833MHz and its native speed is 667MHz. This means that Apple is underclocking, presumably for better battery life. The chip also has built-in 720p video, and the memory for use by the OS has been doubled to 256MB. Image credit: iFixit.
iPhone 3G S (left) and iPhone 3G
There is little difference between the 3G and 3G S other than the big Toshiba NAND flash chip smack bang in the middle. Image credit: Rapid Repair.
The screen and digitizer
The trickiest part of the job is removing the digitizer from the screen. It requires a heat gun, a steady hand and nerves of steel. See the one on the left, missing the home button? It will remain this way forever. According to Rapid Repair, “The home button is held on with plastic pegs which cannot be replaced.” In other words: Kids, don’t try this at home. Image credit: Rapid Repair.
Rapid Repair has, as expected, descended on the new iPhone 3G S, bristling with sharp tools like some sci-fi torture-bot, and splayed its remains on the cold slab of the teardown lab. It’s not an easy job — you’ll need a heat gun to remove some parts, other sections can be taken apart but not reassembled (the home button) and you’ll be left with a pile of tiny screws that look more like cake-topping sugar-strands than actual nuts’n’bolts.
The most interesting part is the CPU, the Samsung S5PC100 (both previous iPhones used the Samsung S3C6400). It runs at 600MHz, just as T-Mobile let slip last week, but according to Samsung’s spec sheet it can run at up to 833MHz and its native speed is 667MHz. This means that Apple is underclocking, presumably for better battery life. The chip also has built-in 720p video, and the memory for use by the OS has been doubled to 256MB.
Otherwise things are pretty much the same (apart for the compass and camera. of course). The screen is the same, as is the Wi-Fi (b and g, still no n). The Bluetooth gets a boost from 2.0 + EDR to 2.1 + EDR, and the whole package comes in at two grams more than the 3G, at 135g. Incremental upgrades all, but of course welcome. We can’t wait for the overclocking geeks to get started on it.
Well that was fast. Orange Boutique in Paris, France did a midnight release of the iPhone 3G S, and the gang at Rapid Repair were there to pick one up and subsequently rip their new toy to shreds. There isn’t much here in terms of analysis of parts yet, it’s more so just a quick and dirty job to get it out to the world, but hey, if you’re into watching someone rip apart brand new, expensive gadgetry, we’ve got just the gallery for you.
Update: They’ve identified the chipset as the SoC S5PC100 from Samsung and thus confirm an ARM Cortex A8 running at 600 MHz (operates at up to 833MHz though) and the ability to record 720p video and handle real-time video conferencing should Apple choose to go in that direction (iPhone 3G S records VGA only). PowerVR SGX graphics and 256MB of RAM too as expected. S5PC100 block diagram after the break.
Just as soon as we finally get our hands on a new unit to test out, the boys over at Rapir Repair are racing to rip one apart. And that’s just what they’ve done here with the Amazon Kindle DX. Inside it’s got the requisite boards, wires, tape and cat hairs (just kidding), plus an E727NV WN2 wireless card, memory, CPU and Epson E-ink panel controller. It’s actually pretty sparse and clean inside of there — we’d expect nothing less! Hit the read link for the full, glorious disassembling (though there is one more shot after the break).
You’ll need a screwdriver to do it, but the sealed batteries in the new MacBook Pros announced last Monday are as user replaceable as those of the MacBook before it. IFixit has already carried out its customary explorations inside the body of the new notebook, and found that, apart from the rearrangement of ports and the latch-free baseplate, things are much as before.
The new, bigger (and 60 grams heavier) battery is claimed to last seven hours. IFixit found that the new unit is a 60 Watt-hours cell, up from the 45 Watt-hours of the original, itself supposedly able to last five hours. So there will be a boost, but we expect you’ll be lucky to even get five hours from it.
The doorless base brings new problems, too. I swapped a 500GB hard drive into my 13” unibody MacBook last week and it was so quick and easy that it wasn’t even worth writing up for Gadget Lab. The hard drive is still considered user-replaceable by Apple, but “replacement does require removing 10 more screws than on the MacBook Unibody.”
IFixit also notes that the SD card sticks out about half an inch when inserted, a little messy, and that the new combined headphone/jack socket omits a digital in connection. It also means that you can’t use headphones and a mic at the same time.
It’s apparent, though, that this is still one of the easiest Apple machines to take apart. If you don’t believe me, try replacing the hard drive on a 12” PowerBook.
We’ve only just started playing with our new 13-inch MacBook Pro, but the cats at iFixit have different ideas — they’ve already torn one open for your morbid viewing pleasure. Interestingly, battery replacement involves only the removal of a couple tri-wing screws and a sticker, so the situation isn’t totally dire, although we’d obviously prefer if Apple had left well enough alone. Other than that and the addition of FireWire and the SD slot, things seem to be about the same as the original unibody MacBook, but don’t take our word for it — hit the read link and feast your eyes.
We’ve got a delicious gallery of pics of the new 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pros.
Just by looking at the 13 and 15-inch models together, you can tell that Apple was pretty much right when they said that they belong in the same family. The construction is almost identical. The only difference is that the 13-inch has one fewer audio jack and no side-board speakers, as been the case for the 13 for years now.
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We’ve got a delicious gallery of pics of the new 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pros.