Apple's iPhone Dissected: We did it, so you don't have to
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 29, 2007 10:17 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Mobile
We have only had the phone for a few hours but we needed to get inside its casing, what follows is our dissection of the Apple iPhone. 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. Do whatever you wish to your iPhone, but do so at your own risk :)
This is the iPhone that most of Apple's customers will be seeing:
Special thanks to Olivia Marsh and Manveer Wasson for help with the disassembly and photographs for this article
And this is one of ours, on the operating table:
Chances for survival? Slim
The first step to disassemble the device is to remove the lower black plastic piece; heating it up and squeezing a razorblade in there made it not only possible, but easy:
Then came the process of removing the brushed aluminum cover, which wasn't nearly as easy. After a lot of bending, pulling and other unfathomable things one would do to a brand new iPhone we were left with this:
Ignore the slightly bent iPhone casing, we swear it came this way
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js2007 - Sunday, July 1, 2007 - link
Any signs of a hidden GPS chip on the iPhone? Could it be in the ARM package?
js2007 - Monday, July 2, 2007 - link
I really think that GPS is in there somewhere on an unmarked chip.No one noticed when Apple introduced the MBPRO with the 802.11.n only to be activated later for $1.99?
;-)
psychobriggsy - Saturday, June 30, 2007 - link
I really thought that there would be an ATI Imageon or an nVidia GoForce inside the device driving the (extremely smooth and high-end for a mobile) graphics. I guess there isn't, so that ARM CPU is doing a load of work - unless Samsung licensed a mobile core from somebody (Imagination?). Maybe it is one of the other chips...The sad thing is that the coverflow on the iPhone looks to be far more smoother than coverflow in iTunes on a Windows PC...
Kensei - Saturday, June 30, 2007 - link
It the Apple iPod Video (80 GB) Black supposed to be showing up in the AnandTech Deals area under the article's header?JarredWalton - Saturday, June 30, 2007 - link
The deals basically come from a short text search. I don't think the iPhone shows up in the pricing engine, so Apple iPod gets pulled up instead. As you may or may not have noticed, the AT Deals area doesn't necessarily have links to the product being reviewed. :)Kensei - Sunday, July 1, 2007 - link
Before I wrote the OP, I thought about it being a new product and not in the pricing engine, but then I noticed that the recently reviewed ASRock 4CoreDual-SATA2 had nothing in the AT Deals area. I guess there are no other ASRock products in the pricing engine (although I haven't actually looked).Anyway, I don't think any of this is a big deal, I just found it all kind of curious.
Googer - Saturday, June 30, 2007 - link
I am surprised the iPHONE does not have or support 1394 for on the go video/data transfers. After all, Apple is the biggest proponent of the standard.CrystalBay - Saturday, June 30, 2007 - link
How much does this phone cost to build ?JAS - Friday, June 29, 2007 - link
Interesting. You guys are fast. But it's sad to see a perfectly good iPhone put to death.bossman - Thursday, December 27, 2007 - link
hi yes i have an 8gb iphone and screwed it up i was wondering if anyone who has an iphone would like to sell me the top layer of the pcb board where the battery is connected too thanks renaldo30@aim.com