As much as we love those guys and gals over at
Will It Blend?, we couldn't help but cringe each time they "dissected" any given gadget. The cautious cats over at
iFixit, however, are more our style. Gentle, loving, appreciative and respectful -- what else could you want in a gizmo surgeon? Per usual, they've done whatever it takes to get ahold of Palm's new
Pre and
Touchstone, but rather than basking in the glory of ownership, they promptly unrolled their tool belt, fired up the DSLR and proceeded to dissemble both units for your viewing pleasure. We already know that all those little innards add up to right around
$170 (for the Pre, anyway), but there's nothing quite like looking at each and every chip and bit yourself. Hit up the read links below if you find your interest piqued, and don't forget to tip your hat as you exit.
Update: Through their official
Twitter account, the
iFixit folks have chimed in to say they'd be "shocked if it cost more than $5 to manufacture." As always, that's not the whole story and there's probably a good number of other variables justifiably contributing to the cost, but knowing $70 is a bit of a
turn-off for some customers, we can only hope that price drops sooner rather than later.
Read - Palm Pre teardown
Read - Palm Touchstone teardown
posted June 7th 2009 1:41PM
$5 is a stretch. Here's a few reasons why its probably more like $10:
1) Palm is licensing the IP from someone like Powermat, this is probably $5.
2) Litz wire is absolutely not cheap, I'd estimate $2 just for the AC coil.
3) The board and misc passives ~ $1.50
No way Robdog - $5 is very realistic
1) magnetic induction technology is nothing new, and the IP that several technology companies have and license is often specific to their application. WiPower is another wireless power company that has IP on other parts of the system, but not on the induction of two coils... thats been in the public domain forever.
2) Litz wire is not expensive in bulk - when Palm sources this stuff, they are doing it for hundred of thousands of units... at those quantities its completely reasonable to be cheap
I'd be more interested to find out how much $$$ palm spent on developing the Touchstone and how long it took...