With nary hours
since the reviews went live, the gang at
iFixit -- no doubt blessed by the
hands of early deliveries -- have procured an
iPhone 4. And as is their modus operandi, they wasted no time tearing that sucker apart screw by screw. The teardown is still ongoing, but here's what we got so far: 512MB RAM (confirming
earlier rumors), a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor (same as the
Samsung Wave S8500, they say), and chemically-strengthened Gorilla Glass for a more
torture-friendly front panel. Those two screws on the bottom of the phone can be removed to excise the real panel, but the site says the front glass "will likely be rather challenging [to remove]." The battery, looking rather large even in the pictures, is a whopping 1420mAh Li-Polymer -- comparatively, the
Nexus One is 1400mAh and the HTC
Droid Incredible is 1300mAh. There's no SIM eject tool with this phone, but a paper clip should work just fine. As for the much-ballyhooed side panel antennas, the phone apparently now "[utilizes] whichever network band is less congested or has the least interference for the best signal quality, regardless of actual signal strength" -- in other words, better call reliability (hopefully). Also helping with overall voice quality is a dual microphone setup for suppressing background noise. Peruse on over if you're interested in seeing a bare Apple device at its most beautiful.
Update: The teardown is complete with a few more interesting bits of information. First, the battery is very easy to remove (and thus, replace) after removing the two screws. The LCD panel is not, however, as it's tighly glued to the glass and digitizer. So if you do manage to break the Gorilla Glass, you'll have to replace it, the digitizer, and the LCD as a single unit. The new AGD1 3-axis gyroscope is thought to be made by ST Micro and Broadcom provides both the BCM4750IUB8 single-chip GPS receiver and BCM4329FKUBG receiver giving the iPhone 4 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, and an FM radio.
posted June 22nd 2010 11:38PM
@DJ
Go for it dude. Research your area and see what the service is like. If your near San Diego like me you'd have no problems. I think the phone is just that good to take the plunge regardless.
@Jack
What I mean by locked to iTunes is that when I want to put my music, video, etc on the iPhone I have to use iTunes. There are other programs that claim to sync with the iPhone, but all of them felt janky and didn't really work well when I had a 3G.
@Good Times
I had a Blackberry and iPhone 3G for awhile with at&t and the coverage was OK outdoors, but indoor the service failed. I am with Verizon now, and I don't think I can go back.
@DJ
agreed. Ive got a business line free through my employer from ATT. Sprint is my personal line. All i can say is that im glad im not paying for the ATT line. There is no comparison to Sprint and ATT, Sprint always has better coverage (at least in phoenix and Az).
@hated one
Given that pre orders are usually 4x less of what Apple predicts to sell in the first day, I am confident that the number of iPhones that will be sold in the first DAY in the US, will be roughly 2,000,000, and in the total amount of sales internationally, I will say 32,000,000.
No Apple device has ever gotten this much pre orders, the 3GS got half of this, and so did the iPad, their most record breaking devices.
And the EVO 4G has a 1500MAh battery...just for comparison...
Also, The Game - You Lose.
@martin0641 So wait there's only 80 more MAh for a much larger screen, and a much much larger phone? So you're telling me HTC just through components inside of a case without doing their engineering due diligence and creating a much more custom internal design to make the best product possible? Sounds like that's not much of a comparison at all...
@martin0641 Damn you, I had a 1 month streak of not losing the game
So pretty much confirmed A4 = Samsung Hummingbird
When it says it has "an FM Radio" does it mean it will have radio to tune in ur fav stations or is it just for the wifi and bt?
@Johnswfc
Yeah even the 3GS had an FM radio but it was never activated. I think its just something standard built onto the Broadcom chip they're using but hopefully they will make use of it I mean the ipod nano has radio these days. There was talk about an itunes feature that auto tagged radio songs for easy download so maybe the're waiting to get that working.
Why the hell they glue the front glass to the digitizer??? How hard can a glass be after all? It will brake somehow and then you have to replace half the device. They sure try a lot to get people mad.
@nikolas7gr Im sure they glued the components of the screen and glass assembly together to prevent the massive dust infiltration problems they had with the 3G and 3G S.
@Sherifftruman i hope thats the reason for that. Its just that i had a bad experience with my 2g after a broken front glass... :(
"receiver giving the iPhone 4 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, and an FM radio."
soo now it has an FM Radio?????????? id that right???
@zakk99
see reply to @Johnswfc above : )
You seem to be getting your glass technologies mixed up. The iPhone4 uses aluminosilicate glass, something developed for the aerospace industry, which is glass that has a quantity of aluminum in it to strengthen it. GorillaGlass, developed by Corning, uses some sort of undisclosed chemical in the setting of the glass to strengthen it. Regardless, they are not the same thing.
Which is better? I have no idea.
fm radio?
Wait, wait, wait! The iPhone 4 DOES NOT have an FM radio, Ross. Fix that pls.
@Vicada Are you sure? They say it was in the 3Gs but wasn't implemented.
@Vicada
Well this is technically correct. The Broadcomm chip they use does have an FM radio it's just not utilised by Apple same as in the 3GS and 2nd gen Ipod Touch.
i see... so could someone tell me the price of this phone both 16GB and 32GB WITHOUT contract?.. :) please?... ^_^
Wow can't wait to see the prices on replacement glass/lcd..
Blend it!
How can they know the CPU runs at 1ghz from a teardown? Makes no sense.
price without contract please?.. =) in USD...
@zakk99
Same, $599 for 16GB, 699 for 32GB.
@uckApple thanks sir.. ^_^ im planning to buy one, maybe 32GB when i go to singapore.. i hope that the price there will not be higher than $700... i just hope... btw ill buy on october.. hehe
They need to fix the post. The chip is A4, not A8. and people are tripping thinking the battery will last 30hrs+ just cause engadget said it. It lasted that long using it for this and that, but they even said it wasn't their primary phone yet and they have to test some more. Still a good phone for a iphone/at&t customer
@derricob
The A4 chip contains the same Architecture as the Cortex-8, is what they said.
They made it to 512, at last. How cute...and late.
@fast
The questions is, do all competing OS platforms require memory in exactly the same way? Obviously, that answer is a solid NO.
2 GB of RAM is plenty for a lightweight Linux distro like Kubuntu, but if you try to run Vista on the same machine you should not expect the same performance with the same amount of memory.
I don't see the validity in comparing memory in an iPhone to competing platforms. To do so would to make the incorrect assumption that all mobile OS's manage memory in exactly the same way. I would hope that Engadget readers would understand something like this, but sadly this is not often the case with those commenting.
The tit-for-tat RAM comparisons and the "more megapixels are better" arguments in the comment sections are truly cringe worthy.
I am pretty sure the iPhone has always had 'Gorilla Glass', just it has never been advertised that way. In fact I heard that it was originally designed for the iPhone…
uhhh... engadget post says FM radio?!?!?
oh, DO please go on...
@akindy
Idiot read the post.
@fais
BCM4329FKUBG receiver giving the iPhone 4 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, and an FM radio.
I realize they haven't chosen to implement this in the current system, still its interesting and I wanted to point out my desire for such a capability to be implemented. Seeing as Apple has done so in their iPod line....
OH NOW I GET IT!!! Thanks for telling me to re-read it. Big help!
"BCM4750IUB8 single-chip GPS receiver and BCM4329FKUBG receiver giving the iPhone 4 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, and an FM radio" - Does this means the Iphone 4 has FM Radio function available?? can we tune into a FM station from Iphone??
FM Radio ? Is there an App that will play the local FM stations? That does seem like a new add? [Or am i being dumb in understanding this differently - off late i have been !]
It's odd that nearly every iphone has FM receiver, but why did they never make it usable?
I suggest we start a campaign to let Apple activate the FM radio, or some one create an app to make it function-able.