teardown

When Apple put the original iPad under the knife, it yielded a fetchingly slimmer iPad 2. IHS iSuppli shows how they did it.

"Thinner is better" is an Apple mantra. And the popularity of the MacBook Air, iPhone, and iPod proves that consumers agree. The iPad is no exception.

By shaving off a sizable 34 percent of the original iPad's body fat--to 8.8 millimeters from 13.4 millimeters--Apple got the weight down to 600 grams, down 15 percent from 700 grams for the iPad 1.

How did it do it? The biggest reduction in thickness came in the iPad 2's battery subsystem, wrote Kevin Keller, a teardown analyst at IHS iSuppli, in a research note today. This part of the iPad 2 is 2.5 millimeters thick, a 59 percent reduction from the 6.1 millimeters of the original iPad, according to Keller. … Read more

Part of the tradition of an Apple product release is the teardown.

Usually within hours of the first sales, pictures begin to emerge from the odd people who delight in taking the new gadgets apart to see what's going on inside. The days following Friday's release of the iPad 2 have been no different. I've seen two different teardowns already.

But the teardown that Wall Street and the investment community is waiting on is the one from the market research firm IHS iSuppli, whose team spent all day Saturday in a furious effort to dissemble a 32-gigabyte … Read more

Under the hood, the Motorola-Verizon Droid 2 is really a hopped-up version of the original Droid.

While practically a clone of the original Droid on the outside, the Droid 2 is not the same inside. As a previous post spelled out, underneath the skin beats a new Texas Instruments processor that is about twice as fast (based on the megahertz rating) of the original Droid 550MHz (Droid) versus 1,000MHz, i.e., 1GHz (Droid 2).

And as seen in the iFixit photo, Japan-based Elpida Memory supplies the 512MB DRAM module, twice the capacity of the original Droid. As if to … Read more

The parts used to construct the iPhone 4 cost about $187.51, according to a teardown analysis conducted by research firm iSuppli.

iSuppli dissected a 16GB iPhone 4, which went on sale Thursday, and estimated the cost of each component based on the manufacturer and volume. iSuppli's analysis is only an estimate because Apple is able to negotiate costs with each manufacturer. It also does not include how much Apple spent on shipping and labor to build the phone, or advertising, software development, and patent licensing.

"Over the years, the iPhone has generally tended to hover in the $… Read more

The iPhone 4 got a timely teardown from iFixit on Tuesday night, confirming that it integrates 512MB of RAM and a new battery connection scheme and revealing the accelerometer/gyroscope hardware, among other things.

Here's a brief overview of what iFixit found in its initial teardown of Apple's newest phone:

Battery: The inside real estate is dominated by the battery. The 3.7V 1420 mAh Li-Polymer battery allows for up to seven hours of talk time on 3G or up to 14 hours on 2G. "It's pretty apparent that real estate was very limited inside the iPhone 4's 115.2 x 58.6 x 9.3 mm footprint," iFixit wrote. Antenna connector is on the back of the rear case cover.

Battery Connector: "The battery can be easily removed once the back panel assembly is out of the way," according to iFixit. The battery connector is different than the one in the 3G and 3GS: it is not soldered to the logic board.… Read more

The traditional iSuppli component breakdowns that attempt to put a neat little number on what a product actually costs to build appeal to a primal part of us, the part of us that wants to know, "Did I get screwed?"

"How much is a company making off of me? Was I a sucker?" It's a clever gambit. Because everybody wants to know. You can't help it.

It's a tricky thing, though, to finger how many dollars were poured into, for instance, each and every iPad out there. Even if you don't want … Read more

As usual with product releases from Apple, numerous online sources compete to show detailed teardowns of the devices when they are available. Not only do people test the physical durability (even going so far as to blend the original iPhone), but they also benchmark the devices to see if they live up to the advertised specifications. With the iPad, however, some folks have gone one step further to bring a full teardown of the custom A4 chip.… Read more

Google's forthcoming Nexus One smartphone is composed of components worth about $175, according to a teardown conducted by iSuppli.

The new phone, which Google unveiled Tuesday, offers an inside designed by Google and an outside designed by HTC. The primary interface is a 3.7-inch AMOLED display. The Nexus One runs Google's Android 2.1 operating system, and the WVGA display can show 3D graphics.

While Google has priced the Nexus One at $179 with a two-year T-Mobile service plan ($529 without a subscription plan), the phone has a bill of materials of $174.15, according to iSuppli analysis, … Read more

Many people would love to take apart their computers to see the internal components if only it wouldn't jeopardize the system's warranty and potentially break it. This is not only interesting, it's also quite useful for instances where you need to re-seat a loose system component or replace it. To satisfy these curiosities, various sites such as iFixIt and PowerBookMedic have extensive take-apart guides with pictures and video.… Read more