Teardown redux: iPhone 3GS vs. Nexus One
iFixit's side-by-side breakdown of the internals of these two phones makes a compelling case for the Nexus One.
It's never too late to revisit two smartphones with some of the hottest hardware specs on the market. iFixit's side-by-side breakdown of the internals of the Google Nexus One and Apple iPhone 3GS makes a compelling cost and feature argument for the Nexus One.
iFixit's CEO Kyle Wiens sums it up nicely: "The Nexus One deserves more attention. Its hardware is really quite impressive, and yet no one seems to be buying it!" he said in a note sent out Thursday morning. (Though CNET's Tom Krazit makes the case here that it's not quite that simple.)
On the downside, if something goes awry internally, the Nexus One is up against a formidable infrastructure of Apple stores. "Our biggest beef with the Nexus One? There isn't a parts supply chain for it yet, meaning all repairs have to go through HTC's overpriced mail-in service," Wiens said.
And a quick look at the silicon inside these phones shows how utterly absent Intel is in this space. In short, Samsung rules.
What follows below are two graphics excerpts from iFixit's teardown. Also, see this CNET Reviews camera showdown.
In the second graphic, note that much of the primary silicon is from Samsung. Even in the Nexus One with its Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, both the flash and RAM memory is supplied by Samsung.
