iPhone 4S Teardown by iFixIt

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iFixIt has just finished doing a teardown on Apple’s latest iPhone 4S. From the teardown, iFixIt has found several interesting tidbits of information, such as the expected dual-core A5 processor chip, amount of RAM, plus a few new chips and components upgraded from the previous iPhone release.

Teardowns are famous for revealing certain characteristics of smartphones, tablets and other devices. iFixIt often comes up with estimated costs for manufacturing these devices, and all previous iPhones went under the knife (or screwdriver, in this case), for a teardown. The iFixIt crew got a European version of the iPhone 4S, but they say it’s likely to be similar to the US release, with it being a world phone (and hence, having components meant for any frequency or mobile technology).

While the iPhone 4S looks similar to the iPhone 4 that it replaces, it is expected that some internal components would be changed or upgraded, and the iFixIt teardown confirms just that. Here are a few observations.

• The micro SIM slot is back, and so iPhone 4 users from any network (including CDMA) can expect to be able to plug in a roaming SIM and make it work elsewhere (unless your network does not allow it in the first place).
• The iPhone 4S battery has an extra 0.5 watt-hours over that of the iPhone 4. From official specs, the 4S offers an extra hour of talk time on a 3G network, the same talk time on GSM (2G), although 100 hours less standby time than the iPhone 4.
• The iPhone 4S has the “dreaded” liquid indicator used by Apple service staff in determining whether the phone has been subject to spills or immersion.
• The dual-core Apple A5 chips runs at 1GHz and comes with 512 megabytes of DDR2 RAM.
• Other components include: Qualcomm RTR8605 Multi-band/mode RF transciever, Skyworks 77464-20, Avago ACPM-7181 power amplifier, TriQuint TQM9M9030 multi-mode quadband power amplifier module, TriQuint TQM66052, speculated to be a PA-duplexer module.
• The 4S has the same 960×640 retina display found in the iPhone 4.
• The iPhone 4S has an improved vibrator motor that uses linear oscillating vibrator found in the Verizon iPhone 4, which is quieter and softer than the counter-weighted rotational motor found in the AT&T iPhone 4.

Of course, the iFixIt crew are experts at what they do, and we don’t recommend that anyone do this at home, unless you have deft skills at taking things apart and bringing them back together again.