Usually product teardowns are only interesting for the raw, visceral thrill of seeing chipsets and circuit boards splayed wide open, but iFixit's disassembly of the
new iPod touch revealed something rather more interesting: a Broadcom BCM4325 Bluetooth 2.1+EDR chip. (That's the silver rectangle in the middle of the top circuit board there.) That's got a lot of people all atwitter, but there's an obvious explanation for it:
Nike+, built into the new touch, is based on a proprietary low-power 2.4GHz communications protocol
called ANT -- not quite the standard Bluetooth frequency, but awful close. Yep, sorry, it's for technojogging, not secret A2DP -- although we'd welcome actual Bluetooth support in the touch with open arms. Hit the read link for the complete breakdown.
Update: Just to be totally accurate, the BCM4325 also does WiFi -- and Nike+iPod has been called a "
proprietary 802.11 protocol" in the past, so it's even less likely that it's there for actual Bluetooth usage.
posted September 10th 2008 10:01PM
*cough* No, it's not! *cough*
Linux != BSD ~= OSX
If it was Linux, it'd be open source, and you'd have a chance. (Well, probably not you, but hackers.) Coming from BSD source, OSX can be as open or as closed as Apple likes, and that's rather closed for the versions on the iJunk.
its not running linux, mac OS is based on UNIX at its core as is linux but they are as i would say 2 completely different evolutionary branches, definitely nowhere even close to being considered the Same OS.
So, if I read correctly, this Nike+ crap is only good for getting info from sensors in special pairs of shoes?
Wow. That is so useful. I'd much rather have that than lose the wire to my headphones. Thanks again apple.
Also, still no mpeg support. It looks like I'll be buying something else when I get tired of the 5th gen video.
could it perhap be modded for ipod touch - to - ipod touch communication? since they both have the same chip???
Dear Engadget,
Can we do away with your new comment coloring scheme? Invisible Grey for low ranks and ultra bold black for high rank is really hurting my eyes. Anyways we can make out which comments are low / high ranked by just glancing at the top right corner.
Thanks.
PS: While you are at it, can we have persistent logins?
Come on Engadget! Did you actually even look at this horrible new color scheme before uploading it???
OK if you really want to make the "low ranking" hurt more and hopefully drive off some of the tools that have infiltrated Engadget lately?.. Then just have the "low Ranks" collapse. That way they're not in view by default, the tools don't get the negative attention and if i was curious i could just expand there post...
P.S. - Your welcome!!
AOL has made their fortune encouraging tools- why would they stop now?
I just looked at two large (international) shopsites and neither of them has ANY BT dongle that does v2.1, it's all 2.0, what the hell?
The part number ifixit list doesnt match up with the ones on the broadcom data sheet, so maybe it is a custom part
with 802.11/a/b/g and ANT?
King Job would like to banish the BT users, requiring subjects to conform to Ipod standards.
I have a portable digital music player with a wireless chip.
What should my wireless chip do?
Connect to my headphones?
No, I'm going to make it connect to my shoes.
You're fkn right. How can Apple people be so stupid not to add A2DP????
Somebody please hack that shit to start transmitting to my headphones, now it's just a matter of software. If Leopard can this piece of shit must ....
Hello,
Well... Its reasonable to assume you could write to the flash of the broadcom chipset. Assuming you know what you're doing you could send the instructions directly to the CPU and it would know how to handle things...
Wish all the hackers good luck, with their hacking.
-Kevin
There are some serious researchers out here... Yes, the BCM4325 is there not just for the sake of Nike+ but for the sake of future proof... If the software developers support it there will be A2DP and a lot more. Not failing to address that, because the PCB have been designed with the BCM4325 in mind, there's also space for a future hardware revision if needed that will be a lot cheaper then designing the entire board... chips with similar functions have similar interfaces for the sake of continuity... If the BCM doesn't do the job, it can always be replaced with something else in the assembly line...
I just read the specs of the RF chips for the Nike+ and the receiver. It's not ANT, since it's not an ANT compliance chipset. (Either way, ANT isn't Bluetooth or 802.11). It's not Bluetooth, and it's not 802.11 anything. The only common factors it has with either, really, is that it operates on 2.4GHz.
No, the radio protocol it uses is a pretty straightforward protocol, that's proprietary to the Nordic Semi nRF24xx series. On the radio side, it appears to be a simple raw serial bit stream at 1MHz. This isn't going to be anything the BCM4325 can pick apart.
I suspect that the tiiiiny little chip to the right of the BCM module, seen in the face-up shot with the LCD removed, is the nRF2401A which is the Nike+ receiver chip. It can piggyback the same antennae that the BCM chip use.
As far as Bluetooth in the iPod Touch, it may be something that they add in software later. The chipset's already in place, and no physical changes are necessary. I'm not sure that Steve & co are happy with the idea of A2DP, because it requires the use of lossy audio compression to fit to stereo audio channels into the Bluetooth data channel. So that means lossy compression of an audio stream that's been previously compressed with another algorithm... which means reduced audio quality.
As for the other functions of the BCM4325... please also note that it's got an FM receiver and supports 802.11a (5Ghz WiFi) too. But those require additional hardware to support.
i was really looking forward to that bluetooth f@$& the nike shit i want the bluetooth!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A chip is a chip.
http://www.broadcom.com/products/Bluetooth/Bluetooth-RF-Silicon-and-Software-Solutions/BCM4325
http://embedded-system.net/single-chip-wifi-bluetooth-and-fm-receiver-bcm4325-broadcom.html
Was just on the broadcom website...
Thank you for your interest in the Broadcom Bluetooth SDK. You have been sent an email with a confirmation link.
Lets check it out. :) Anyone care to help?
@Plaid : where's that spec pls?
Tnx,
wim
...unite
ok found it. Product brief however, so not much. But chip can do Bleutooth, that's for sure.
Question remains if the UART I2C I2S/PCM SPROM lines are connected in the ipod thouch.
BTW Anyone a link for a "product extensive" on that 4325?
http://www.broadcom.com/collateral/pb/4325-PB00-R.pdf