Iphone 3G entrails reveal all

TO MOST PUNTERS the Iphone 3G is a nifty bit o’ gadgetry/symbol of St. Steve’s holiness just waiting to be fingered and thumbed. Techies, however, are aching to rip one apart and see what makes it tick, so we’ll save you the bother of pulling out your tools or ruining your warranty and just point you towards something on Tech Online that’s showing all. There’s something new, something old and something borrowed, in there.

In the days of yore, gutting an animal and reading its entrails would tell you the future, or at least provide you with a strong hint on what would go on if you followed a certain course of action. Said “omen” would, naturally, only reveal itself once you’d decided on what to do (ie: inevitability).

Well, the article is a regular reading of entrails on the Iphone’s future. As Patrick says in the article, Infineon (GPS, Digital Baseband processor, comms power management, UMTS transceiver) and TriQuint (WCDMA/HSUPA power amps) had some big wins in this design, as did Numonyx with (the first part we’ve seen since its inception) the 16MB NOR and 8MB pseudo-SRAM. Spansion should be looking at this as NOR and pseudo-RAM are part of its portfolio.

Other bits and pieces of said religious icon include: STM (accelerometer), Skyworks (GPRS/EDGE Power Amp), NatSemi (Display interface), Broadcom (Touchscreen), SST (Serial Flash), Wolfson (Audio Codec), Samsung (ARM11-based apps processor), Linear Technology (Battery charger/USB controller), Marvell (Bluetooth), NXP (system power management) and Toshiba (16GB/8GB storage).

The application’s processor itself is quite standard, an ARM-11 design from Samsung, with 128MB of DDR SDRAM and an integrated Power VR MBX Lite, capable of 2D/3D acceleration.

The article further points out that the Tosh storage was a bit of a surprise, considering that Apple had secured “a huge deal” with Samsung on this matter. So what did Apple do with all the Samsung chips? *drums fingers*

As you can see, almost everyone pitched into this design, which makes everyone an interested party in its success and future development.

There are some great nudie pics of the front and back of the board there too... µ

L’Inq
Tech Online