Palm Pre Teardown and Analysis – Review coming Soon!
If you haven’t had a chance yet, make sure to check out our Sprint Palm Pre design analysis! Check out the UI Review!
Note: Most images are courtesy of www.ifixit.com
Here it is, the phone we’ve been ramping up for since it was first unveiled earlier this year.
This puppy has been touted by many as the venerable iPhone killer. Here at phonewreck, we’ll be taking this thing through it’s paces over the weekend and the next few days in order to give you, our readers a proper review that includes benchmarks for all of the functions this device can perform.
Make sure and keep it locked on www.phonewreck.com as we continue to put our Palm Pre from Sprint under the wrecking ball.
Fortunately for you guys, we had a chance to work with the gentlemen/women over at ifixit to get some high quality images of the PCB. These people  really have their stuff together and resorted at nothing to be the first with a fully documented teardown of both the pre and the pre touchstone charger.
Anyways, enough rambling from us – we know why you guys are here. Time to get our hands dirty and see what makes the pre hummmmmmmmm.
Oh and don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS to keep posted as the updates come!
There are some pretty interesting things that popped up on the Pre’s PCB’s. This is the first production device we’ve seen on the OMAP3 (Open Media Applications Processor) platform. OMAP3 is powered by the 600MHZ ARM Cortex A8, PowerVR SGX 530 (GPU), 430MHz C64x, DSP and ISP (Image Signal Processor) and was clearly designed to pack a punch – Dr. Wreck thinks we’re going to see this processor popping up in future netbook endeavours.
On the connections side we see the usual wifi/bluetooth combo going to Marvell and CSR with the W8686 and 63823 respectively. We also see the BaseBand win going to Qualcomm with the heavily integrated MSM6801A platform. The OMAP3 PMIC comes loaded with a USB tranceiver and Audio codec which even further reduces the overall board density of this device. We’re not fully sure – but it looks as if the Pre’s cool new multi-touch Touch Screen Controller win went to Cypress Semiconductor with the CP6944BA device.
The device packs a 1150mAh battery – just like the iPhone 3G.
More Info after the Break!
On the top of the communications board we can spot the BaseBand Processor (Qualcomm MSM6801A), SDRAM, RF power amp and Duplexer by TriQuint.
On the bottom of the communications board we can spot the BaseBand PMIC (Maxim MAX8695Q), RF Transmitter (RFT6150) and the RF Tranceiver (RFR6500) both by Qualcomm.
On the main logic board, we see the OMAP3 PMIC – the Texas Instruments TWL5030. As mentioned before, this PMIC is packed with a USB Traceiver as well as Audio Codec. We also see the Bluetooth and Wifi Tranceivers with the earlier discussed wins from both Marvell and CSR. This device contains a microUSB port and 8GB of internal memory from Samsung.
Elpida offers up some mobile DDR memory and is stacked on top of the venerable OMAP3 processor. We’ll have to wait and see how this thing benchmarks.
And there you have it! Thanks again to ifixit for the wonderful teardown scans and images. Make sure and pop over there if you want to see how they took it apart!
Keep posted as we plan on continually releasing Palm Pre content over the next week!
Until next time, Keep WRECKING and make sure to grab our RSS and follow Dr.Wreck on Twitter! Also be sure to check out our Palm Pre Design analysis or UI review!
Wow awesome analysis, best teardowns I’ve seen on the web. Keep up the great work!!!!!!!!!
great work guys, impressive.
On your digagram you note a MicroSD slot, the pre does not have an exposed microsd slot, is there one internally? (which would shoot down palm response that there is no room for one) are the simply sodder points for a microsd slot but with no hardware? Can you point out in the picture where the slot is?
@ME
Good spot. You may find this article interesting: http://www.intomobile.com/2009/01/24/palm-nixed-microsd-on-palm-pre-for-all-the-right-reasons.html
We’ll do some more thorough service on this but in our opinion, the decision to drop the slot was more influenced by the software side.
ifixit really medded up that PCB (green one) look at the connector at the upper left and the two capatisors (or what it is) near the TI processor… dammit
You guys always provide the most in depth analysis, its amazing how much detail you provide.
[...] more more annotated images and analysis, visit PhoneWreck. Phone Wreck will continue to release more Palm Pre details over then next week as they research [...]
@Dr. Wreck.
That intomobile explanation makes little sense, the explanations are meaningless generalities: “palm’s vision,” “curves”. It sounds like repetition of spin for a feature of definite value to the consumer left out for other reasons.
I hate to mix metaphors but the “round edges” sounds more to me like “cutting corners.”
A slot would have cost less than $2 or so per unit and added the bulk of a dime. It could have been under the battery cover, since after all the battery is accessible (and thank god, given the Pre power hunger and under capacity battery.
It seems all about obsolescence and upselling ala Apple.
[...] PhoneWreck’s full analysis is online here. [...]
The unpublished specs. Nice to know what’s inside..
[...] PhoneWreck’s full analysis is online here. [...]
cool review, looks like this bad boy has two monster processors, probably expensive for Palm to make
waited in line and got this phone on Sat, cool to see whats making this thing tick thanks Dr. Wreck
Got this phone and I love the new WebOS, cant wait to see your review up soon.
[...] arbeitet in dem schicken iPhone-Konkurrenten eine 600MHz-CPU von ARM nebst SDRAM von Samsung und einem Grafikprozessor von PowerVR, die gemeinsam mit den anderen [...]
[...] full mind-boggling details, suitable for consumption by electronics experts, is available via phoneWreck. Share and [...]
[...] the help of our friends at iFixit and Phonewreck, TechRepublic has published an extensive Photo Gallery exposing the inner technological workings of [...]
It was published that Anadigics had the win for the Power Amplifier but on here they said it is Triquint. Can’t make out any name or anything from the image shown. Any input?
[...] The full mind-boggling details, suitable for consumption by electronics experts, is available via phoneWreck. [...]
Great work! Any idea who the supplier of the camera is? Inquiring minds want to know!
Great Job Guys !!!!
Good analysis team at phonewreck, can’t wait to see your always detailed reviews.
[...] « Palm Pre Teardown and Analysis – Review coming Soon! [...]
So Anadigics was obviously not successful to win the Power Amplifiers! And Triquint won them with their new 7×4mm PA-Duplexer module.
Anadigics specifically announced in their conference call they had won this slot. Has also been commented on by several analysts. Not sure what is correct, but by the pictures published here, which are horrible..can’t make out anything, I’m not convinced. Triquint hasn’t announced anything on this win, if it is correct
@techman
We found this suprising as well. If you look closely at the photo you can see that the RF Power Amp is the AVAGO 7788. If you’d like some higher resolution images, e-mail us and we’d be happy to provide!
I’m sure if you examine some other teardowns available on the web you’ll see the same results.
[...] The full mind-boggling details, suitable for consumption by electronics experts, is available via phoneWreck. [...]
It would be awesome if you guys could reference the size of a larger part on the PCB. That would help with additional reverse engineering on calculated PCB area.
Does the Cypress processor also drive the display?
I have been reading some forums user are complaining about the Palm Pre with several hardware issues: wobbly keyboards, screens – cracked, blotchy, yellow spot, and bubbles, earphone jack causing speaker not to work when plug removed, loose volume control buttons, easily scratched case, etc. Do see cheap components, poor construction, design issues, or is it just quality control?
@Don: Clearly you have no knowledge of electronics. Adding a card slot is not just about bulk and placement, but also power. A reader will add sufficient power draw that it would really hurt battery life (which via multi-app mode already makes it small). Also additional PCB component would have to be added to interface with the reader.
Anyone know if the hardware is capable of speech processing/speech codecs? If so, what IC?
goodjobs, guy!
So really, how much “effective” RAM does the Pre have? I’m confused because in addition to the 8GB flash memory, there appear to be two other memory modules: one with 512 MB of NAND and 256 of SDRAM, and another with 256 of SDRAM.
What does this mean?
Hi. I think in your Palm Pre flow-chart the GPS is shown in the main CPU, but that’s likely not accurate but very close! It’s in the next chip leftish. Qualcomm’s RFR6500 is a receiver that can support both GPS and CDMA2000 cell voice reception.
I can send you an engineering document on the RFR6500 detailing the GPS if you need.
Cheers, keep up the good work, -Tim
[...] [...]
I personally can’t wait for the Palm Pixi to hit UK shores. After reviewing the Palm Pre, one thing that was apparent to me was the slightly cramped keyboard which made texting a little bit awkward.
The Pixi has fixed this apparently, however the camera resolution has been dropped to 2 megapixels, which to be honest is a shambles.
WebOS is amazing, the 1.3.5 update will be amazing I am sure, and if Google could go back knowing about WebOS they’d surely design something very similar.
Thank you for the post.
Regards,
Jakk – Your fellow Technoholic
[...] UPDATE: phoneWreck’s analysis [...]
The easiest I found – Reverse Lookup – PhoneQuick… quick and easy for reverse lookup