Wednesday, July 11, 2007

What’s Inside the iPhone?

David Hetfield, 18 years old, is a long-time blog contributor from Israel.

Thanks to product demos, we know what’s on the iPhone (Google Maps, for one thing). But what is Apple hiding beneath that glass and plastic cover? Some gadgets freaks pay hundreds of dollars just to disassemble it, and reveal the internal parts of the iPhone.

Since the very beginning of the iPhone launch last week, several websites competed among themselves in order to be the first to tell us what’s in it. The disassembled phones revealed one of the top secrets that Apple kept away from us thus far: the companies who provided the chips and the other electronic parts to the luxury phone. The findings caused an enormous leap of stock for almost every of the companies who provided the parts for the iPhone.

The screenshot by Lee Spencer shows this blog read with Google Reader’s mobile site, as seen through the emulator iPhoney.

The most valuable part: 60 dollars

The first conclusions of the disassemble, according to the calculation that Portelligent did, is that the comprehensive production cost is 220 dollars.

The screens (which was made by a German company named Balda) costs $60.

It seems that the manufacturers will make good profits from the iPhone, if Apple will maintain the hype that’s around it, and if it will remain as popular as it is now for long. Apple itself has a goal of selling over 10 million units by the end of 2008, which is only 1 percent of the world’s market of cellphones.

Some of the other companies that were behind the iPhone are Intel, Broadcom, Texas Instruments, and Infineon. And some unfamiliar companies such as Skylook and Linear Technology. One of the high profit makers is Samsung, which made the main micro-processor in the product, used for OS launching and different other tasks. Samsung is also responsible for manufacturing the iPhone’s memory, called NAND.

Out of stock

The opening was a great success: The iPhone were completely out of stock in most of Apple’s stores and AT&T’s stores according to an AT&T’s spokesman. He also said that the iPhone launch didn’t go by smoothly and many purchases had to wait a long time until the phone could be activated.

Without activating the phone, you couldn’t perform tasks that don’t require cellular connections, such as listening to music or watching videos. The Apple spokesman claims that the delays were caused by an unexpected overload, but that the problem has been solved.

I’m still waiting for my iPhone, but until then, i’m buying Nokia N95 next month :)

What’s Inside the iPhone? by David Hetfield | Comments (12)

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