[MUSIC].
We started IFixIt back in 2003, so that was, I went to CalPoly San Louis Obispo.
I'm not an electrical engineer, I got a degree in industrial engineering, so you
guys may know more about some of the details inside here more than I do.
But I've become a combination photographer and at least learned
enough to have some clue when it comes to the insides
of electronic devices like the I-phone.
So, I actually just got back this morning from Australia, which,
I didn't go there for the emus or the sheep or the kangaroos.
yeah, you can see the joey in the pouch there.
That's real, I took that photo but because of the IPhone 5.
And why Australia?
Why in the world am
I flying half way around the world to buy the new IPhone 5?
Well, if you guys know how time zones work, it turns out
that Australia, if it's released at 8AM local time, 8AM in Australia.
Is 17 hours sooner than 8AM here.
So, in Australia I can have my hands on the iPhone 17
hours sooner and it seems crazy, but people really care what's inside.
There's a lot
of eagerness and from an investor stand point,
there's a whole lot of interest on what's inside.
You look at what investors are doing, making.
For example, a new fiber optic cable across the Atlantic to shave milliseconds
off their trading times, so knowing 17 hours sooner is a huge deal.
So, I flew over to Australia, this was
my first arrival greeting when I got to Australia.
If you guys can read
that, international rate of 19.97/MB applies.
Turn on airplane mode.
No thank you AT&T I will find some other way to access the internet.
And worked with a local company there, this is our photo set up.
Every time I go there I leave a few more pieces.
So over time our photo set up's gotten
better there so that's in Melbourne in Australia.
One thing that the EE's here may appreciate is compact fluorescent bulbs.
Something I've learned is if you take
a compact fluorescent bulb from the states, and
take it to Australia, bad things happen when you plug it in and turn it on.
So when I was there previously, I had my lights all
set up, all working great, things seem great, and then I
start smelling something, and I'm thinking what's going on.' And a
few minutes later I hear a big pop and I see
sparks and then it starts dripping. Turns out you don't want to put a
120 volt compact florescent bulbs in a 220 volt socket, lesson learned.
So now I have 220 volt florescent to go with
a 220 volt country and everything worked great in that regard.
So this is, to stay awake.
Red bull, it comes with one can per day limit, if
you've ever read the fine print on your red bull cans,
[LAUGHTER] this is the big size.
And this is, I just found this online, a friend send it
to me, this is the people who aren't willing to wait in line.
Those are supposedly iPhones all being shipped throughout the world.
Which is kind of cool to see, just how many of them are, the
numbers that they're producing and shipping in
the first few days is absolutely insane.
So here I am, standing in line downtown Melbourne, in
Australia.
there was my number, I was seventh in line.
They actually upgraded me to sixth but I thought
the double o seven number was a lot cooler.
[LAUGH]
>> And, this is. >>
[LAUGH]
>> If you guys have seen some of the things on the
internet, this, I just had to throw a few of these in.
There's the iPhone 10, and then, here's the
iPhone 20 versus the what is a Galaxy 23.
But anyway, back to the actual teardown.
Here it is with phone in hand, and then digging into the internals
apple, likes to make it hard to get inside things, so they're using a 5.8 screw
on the outside here. We Nicknamed it the pentalobe screw.
And the, the screw is about 0.8 millimeters across, and has five sides.
So, it's quite the small little precision thing.
So a few screws, and then a suction cup to pull the front of the iPhone off.
And, you're inside.
Apple made the iPhone 5 actually a lot easier to get
inside than the previous ones in that the front comes off.
On the four and four S, the back came off.
And, the front coming off, is really good, from
a repair ability standpoint, because you cracked the screen.
That's the thing you really care about.
Then it's easy to pop off that screen and put on a new one.
Another interesting design thing they did, you can see here, is
that they got these metal plates over lots of the connectors.
And a lot of that's just so connectors don't pop off.
Because, you see, a lot of times on some other devices where simply a connector
comes undone, and your phone could be fully functional.
But, if your display isn't plugged in, it's not going to work.
So that's something they're doing just to make sure with it being jostled in
shipping and whatever else, it's going to stay
functional once it gets in the customer's hands.
So this is going in pulling off the display assembly and there we've
got, really after only a few minutes you can have the display assembly separated.
And then you can see the big
thing inside there is the battery, and
the battery actually hasn't gotten much bigger.
I've got some comparison parts here, and you can see they are
more or less the same size, I believe it's about 5% bigger capacity.
But, really, Apple has not been increasing the battery size nearly as much as they
have been focusing on improving the chip design
and architecture so they can add LTE support.
And have the same size battery, and at least, supposedly
have about the same run time as the previous phone.
So here's pulling out the battery.
In this cases the battery, it's interesting that
the cells of it-, made in Singapore by Sony.
And then packed in Japan.
It's fascinating to see on these devices just how many companies go into.
Any given piece of electronics that everyone thinks, oh it's the Apple iPhone.
Yes, Apple's the name on the outside of the iPhone, but
there's 20 or more companies, all of which have components inside.
One fun thing about our tear downs is often the companies, who have their
parts in the iPhone, can't tell the world I've got a chip in there.
I've got a battery cell in there or whatever.
They may quietly leak things to investors but at least on an official standpoint
the first time that, that get's known to the
world is when us or someone else tears it apart.
And we're by no means the only person tearing things apart.
We're probably the most public of those tearing it apart.
But you can be sure that there's guys at Samsung at Nokia and every
other manufacturer doing the exact same thing.s
they're just not posting them on the internet.
So then here we are pulling the main board out.
And everyone's always shocked at just how small the main
board of the iPhone is compared to the entire device.
That really it's only about a third of the width of the phone and pretty thin.
All the brands of the iPhone are crammed into that one board and
the real brands here is the A6 processor which Interestingly enough is still
manufactured by Samsung.
But the one fun thing we did find going through was, on the
Keynote Apple presented they were showing Samsung RAM in the processor as well.
This one, based on the part numbers on
the processor, they've switched to Elpida RAM in it.
So you wonder if over time Apple's trying to reduce their reliance on Samsung
because as your probably aware they don't seem to be getting along so well lately.
So here's the main board once it's out.
This is after prying off, Apple's got some EMI shields covering all of the chips.
Unfortunately on iPhone five they didn't make them so they'll just pop off.
So it was a matter of prying them off.
but over on the side here we've got, most of this is wireless related chips here.
You've got some Sky-works chips, I think an Avago chip.
[INAUDIBLE]
>> a TriQuint chip, And then over on this side you've
got the main memory is that big Hynix chip in yellow there.
And an interesting one is the purple, the whiteish one circled in purple there.
That's a package that's made by Myrada but actually inside it, the main
chip inside that, is a Broad com chip, once you take the cover off.
So it's fascinating to see how.
Even at a board level there's still somebody else's chip inside that package.
So you've got, a chip sold by Myrada chip or at least labeled as Myrada chip.
But really there's a Broad com chip is the primary chip inside that.
And then here's a close up of your A6 processor from the outside.
Which is really the main update of this.
It'll be interesting to see, this is a dual-core processor,
so what Apple did going from the 4s to the iPad is basically
they added two more cores when they put the A5 into the iPad.
Because they had more power available on that, so they could add more cores.
So this is a dual-core processor.
My suspicion would be when we see the iPad 4 or whatever they're going to
call it, is the A6 X is going to be the 4 core version of
the A6 here. And here's the other side of the board.
You can see over on the right.
Those are really the new things of the iPhone.
Which is your LTE support.
Which everyone makes a big deal about. But is really not new news.
LTE's been around for a while now.
But Apple's finally Getting around to adding it to their phones.
So you have, I believe both of those are Qualcomm chips, the one
on the left in blue is the main LTE chip and then the purple one is another
wireless communication chip. Here's a closeup of your Qualcomm chip.
And this is one of the places that added
a lot of cost from the previous iPhone version was.
Adding this chip to have the full LTE support on the iPhone 5.
And this is the one other main difference
between the four s and the five.
The thing the consumers are really noticing
the most is the change in connectors.
So, Apple went from the 30 pin dock connector we
all know and love or hate, depending on your perspective.
To their new lightning connector which is now an eight pin connector that's all
digital, whereas the 30 pin connector had both analog and digital pins in it.
So unfortunately lightning is still a
proprietary connector that only Apple's thing.
The one really nice this is it is reversible so more
of the try it, does it work, nope, flip it, try again.
it'll go in either way and work.
Just fine.
So this is pulling apart the connector, just to
try to see if there was anything exciting inside.
From here it looks suspiciously like the pins on an Ethernet jack,
but it's apples own design of connector there, and seems to be pretty robust.
And then here we are once, basically all the components are pulled out, we're
left with the back of the phone with a few buttons and other things.
Unfortunately, I didn't bring myself a scale.
So, this is what I was using in Australia, some Apple engineer
is probably cringing right now seeing me weighing the new iPhone on a
5 kilogram scale.
but the moral of the story here is
if you compare that to that, it's actually incredibly
light, and really a lot of their weight savings
came from the way they made this back design.
And I can pass around about a bunch of components here.
I've got a bunch of components here i'll pass around, so you guys can.
Feel them in person but a lot of the weight
savings came from the design of that back in the,
previous glass back by itself is almost as head is its entire back enclosure
with all the screw mounts and sides, and buttons and everything still in it.
and there we are with everything laid out.
That's about six or seven hours after the process started.
it's done.
I was the only person that went to Australia, whereas the rest
of our team were out of Saint Louis and So they were.
Working
and identifying things, editing photos, and such.
So, we work with a company called Chipworks.
they're a Canadian company and they have a lot more of
the really cool equipment that I can't fit in a suitcase.
So that's an ion beam etcher to basically take off layers very selectively.
This is a transmission electron microscope.
Also doesn't fit in my suitcase and I also can't afford it.
that was the joke of what the wafers were going to look like.
That's a zoomed in Wheat Thin.
[LAUGH]
But here's, here's, here's the, here's the top of the A6 die here.
that's the machine they're using to take photos.
Basically, it's a CNC picture taking machine in
that it can go around and take photos.
A, basically add a grid and you can take a bunch
of images and come up with a very high resolution photo.
This is
the zoomed in of the Elpida RAM inside the A6
processes I believe there is one gigabyte of RAM in there.
This is the actual AHX processor die zoomed in that's the markings on that.
And then here is the little, main layout of the AHX the one really interesting
thing chip works was telling us is where you see its dual ARM cores there.
They were saying this was laid
out by hand as far as they could tell and they've hadn't seen
a processor like this laid out by hand in a long time because.
Most of the times you use computer software to, to lay it out.
Apple is basically designing a chip just for them starting
with arm as the building block, but really it's custom to
them, And this is, this is, a side profile view
of the chip you can see just how many layers there
are in the package I think, there is eight or nine layers in this package all
sandwiched in top of one another. And, this is another Cirrus Logic clip.
I believe this is the audio codec on the
phone, and that's the dye on the audio codec here.
And, this is the Broadcom chip.
This is the Broad com wireless chip that's under
that Myrada package.
And this is x-raying that package, so what looks like a single package you can see
also has several different dies and resistors and other components inside it.
I think the big one in the lower left, I think that's the Broad com chip there.
>>Wifi chip? >> Yeah, it's a wifi chip.
I honestly didn't do the detailed analysis I was
in Australia, so I was doing the get photos of
stuff, this is Chip work's analysis that they let us use.
And then they do this on a professional basis for a semiconductor company
if you don't want to do your own tear down and don't have a.
Electron microscope sitting in the corner, they all basically do it for you.
So if you're a smaller electronics
manufacturer, especially you would pay them a
relatively large amount of money but a lot less
than it would cost you to get the equipment yourself.
It's not cheap, but if you're in the business
of making chips, it very well may be worth it.
>> What does your job title CXO stand for?
[LAUGH]
>> So the question was
[CROSSTALK].
>> So that's a legacy from the very early days of our business.
I started the business with a co-founder, and he took
the CEO role because he likes talking more than I do.
[LAUGH]
But, then.
The original idea was, x was a variable and
I could put in whatever letter I felt like.
[LAUGH]
So some days I play CEO, some days I'm CFO, some days I'm COO.
That was the idea, and it stuck ever since.
Every once in a while, like, banks or something, they're like, CXO,
what's that, you're not authorized to sign this form, or something, but.
And I'm stuck with the title.
>> And my second question is, do you
sell this information before you post it online?
>> the question was if we
sell the information, and no, we don't sell it.
It's all free on the website.
We don't.
Do anything as far as investing or selling it to other people.
So no, all our information is free.
And it's really more targeted at random end users that are curious.
Rather than a lot of the other tear downs
are either specifically for investors or chip companies or that.
We just put the information out there for free.
Really what we're trying to do as a business,
iFixit, is we want to encourage people to open things up and repair things.
So.
The way we make money is we sell parts and tools, so if you break
your iPhone, we'll sell you a screen and
we'll sell you the screwdriver to get inside.
[INAUDIBLE]
recycle, or? >> pretty much where ever we can
[INAUDIBLE].
>> Wherever we can get them. some do come from complete units.
Some come from suppliers in China.
some things like batteries, you can,
now, over time, act-, have replacement batteries.
That it's something that is possible to manufacture.
So it's kind of a combination of.
Wherever we can get them.
The 4S home button to show off, so an I found
fi, four, the home buttons have been a major problem reliability-wise where
people are having the home button that only works part of the time.
On the five here the home button, it's attached to
the back of the display with screw, so hopefully that'll
stay in better and they have a basically two little
contacts that connect the home button down to the main board.
So we'll.
See if it's any bet-, it's different.
Time will tell if it's actually better or not.
[MUSIC]