Breaking Open An iPhone! What’s Inside and the Costs

So…now that you have your pretty little iPhone, wonder what the inside of it looks like?!  Here are some pictures of what the innards of the iPhone look like:

Breaking the iPhone Open:
  The $27 touchscreen module that enables the iPhone’s cool touch navigation originates from Balda and TPK Solutions.

This closeup shows the bottom of the iPhone’s applications circuit board. The open slot (1) houses the AT&T SIM card; the iPhone not only is locked to AT&T service, but it’s also locked to the specific AT&T SIM card that comes with it. We tried inserting a non-iPhone AT&T SIM card–and the phone wouldn’t recognize it. Hidden under (2) is 8MB of multipurpose flash memory–which is in addition to the iPhone’s 4GB or 8GB of primary flash storage.

The heart and soul of the iPhone…Pictured here: The quad-band GSM (850-, 900-, 1800-, and 1900-MHz)/EDGE transceiver (A); power amplifier (B); Bluetooth 2.0 chip set (C); the wireless 802.11 a/b/g chip set (D); the baseband chip set (E); and power management chip set (F).

The iPhone’s lithium ion battery cannot be replaced by users. The battery is built into the unit, and soldered to the wireless interface board, as shown here. Apple says the battery should be able to be charged 300 to 400 times. To replace the battery, you’ll have to send the phone in to Apple, and it will cost you $79 plus $6.95 for return shipping. Apple will replace the battery in warranty if it drops below 50 percent of its original capacity; but the iPhone only gives you a visual, not a numeric, reporting of battery life.

The iPhones Brain: this view shows the top of the applications circuit board, home of the iPhone’s core components. The flash memory is among the most expensive elements in the iPhone–even with flash prices having fallen almost by half since the iPhone’s unveiling in January. “Memory pricing has fallen right through the floor,” says iSuppli’s Rebello. The 4GB Samsung NAND memory costs $24 (seen here), while the 8GB costs $48. The Samsung memory uses multi-level cell (MLC) technology, which stores more bits per cell than single-level cell (SLC) technology, but also means you’ll have higher power consumption.

The iPhone’s Brain – Part 2: Other core components on the applications circuit board include the motion sensor/accelerometer that enables the iPhone’s whiz-bang ability to auto-rotate the display’s orientation (A), the 24-bit RGB display interface from National (B), and Wolfson Microelectronics’ audio codec (C). In the upper left, you can see the iPhone’s camera. The Apple-branded processor (D) is one of the largest components here: The 620-MHz ARM1176JZF application processor has 1Gb of DDR SDRAM memory from Samsung. (iSuppli has narrowed down the processor’s source as being either Samsung or Marvell).

   The iPhone’s Camera: The phone has a 2-megapixel, fixed-lens camera module with a CMOS sensor.  Roughly costing about $9.50.

In summary, the total cost of the hardware components is $225.85 for the 4GB version, and $249.85 for the 8GB version. The only difference between the two versions lies in the flash memory.