iPhone 3Gs – Teardown and Analysis
The unboxing - courtesy of ifixit
Apple “surprised” us early this month with the announcement of it iPhone 3G “s”. Whenever Apple releases a new device – everyone and their brother/sister has to get involved.
Dr. Wreck is no exception and has been working hard with the gentlemen/women over at ifixit to get the skinny on the new device. Without further ado, here we go!
Explosion - courtesy of ifixit
Those Apple Engineer’s really know how to pack a PCB. They’ve managed to fit almost everything onto the “top” of the main logic board. The 3Gs’ PCB makes the 3G’s PCB look sparse (the apostrophes were probably a little bit confusing there).
Let’s take a minute here to talk about the new Applications Processor Core. Apple has chosen to go from the ARM 11 Samsung S3C6400 to the ARM A8 Samsung S5PC100 with this device.
iPhone 3Gs Block Diagram - In Progress
This is the single largest difference between the 3G and the 3Gs. Firstly the manufacturing process has been chopped from 90nm to 65nm. Pipeline depth has been boosted to 13 – stage from 8. More importantly the clock speed of this newer processor rolls in at 600MHz – opposed to the 412MHz core of the old – obsolete 
3G. Samsung has also doubled the quantity of L1 cache from 16 to 32KB.
None of this even takes the new PowerVR graphics core into consideration. Apple is clearly thinking along the lines of a gaming device for this puppy. The SGX is fully programmable – like the graphics card on your PC or mac. Expect some sweet gaming action in the near future.
@ 200MHz the SGX can pop 7M triangles/second and render 250M pixels/sec. That’s roughly 7 times the performance of the old, “obsolete” MBX.
It’s kind of like comparing your old 486 to a Pentium.
Moving around the rest of the PCB – it’s easy to notice the similarities with the previous 3G device. The Power Amp wins once again went to Triquint and Skyworks. We also see the NAND flash going to Toshiba – which as far as phoneWreck is concerned is fairly surprising. The battery has been bumped from the previous 1150mAH to 1219mAH – a much needed upgrade. Only time will tell if Apple’s claim of increased battery life will hold.
Once again the psuedo SRAM win goes to Numonyx. The BaseBand Processor appears to have similar markings to the previous 3G therefore we can assume it’s an Infineon. This has been paired with the Infineon PMIC. The Applications Processor mentioned Earlier (Samsung S5PC100) is paired with a PMIC courtesy of what appears to be NXP. It’s mounted with a DDR SDRAM coming in at 256MB.
True to form, Apple has re-branded some of the higher profile IC’s we’re very interested in. We’ll be performing some more thorough analysis further identify these. Make sure to follow Dr.Wreck’s twitter or subscribe to the RSS for updates!
Underneath the logic board we have a little surprise! A new combo chip from Broadcom (BCM4325) This puppy packs 802.11a/b/g and Bluetooth 2.1 (+EDR and FM). This is a fairly substantial change from the Marvel and CSR combo on the old – obsolete 3G.
We’ve received some rumours and speculation about the other devices we weren’t able to ID. There is a guess from a few readers that the GPS chip may be the same as on the previous 3G – the Infinieon Hammerhead II. This may be true but the new package is a different size – this means that it could incorporate the compass hardware as well.
That said, we’ve had some rumours that the compass chip is the Asahi Kasei – AK8973. We’ll still have to do some more digging!
We’re currently in the process of performing a much more thorough analysis. Keep checking back for more details as they come – we’ll most likely be putting this device through it’s paces to see how it stacks up with the Palm Pre and BlackBerry Bold & Storm.
Thanks again to the wonderful people at ifixit for gracing us with these great photos! If you want to see how it’s taken apart, make sure to check out their teardown.
Stay tuned and keep wrecking!
Dr.Wreck
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[...] iPhone 3GS Teardown and Analysis [...]
Thats very helpful teardown info as I was googling for circuit board for my iphone 3gs which has water damage and the backlight doesn’t come on. I’ve tried changing the LCD but it didn’t had any effect. What do u think which IC needs replacing? or should i replace the whole circuit board(going to be expensive)?
i have a iphone 3gs and i was replacing the screen assembly and accidently broke the white clip that holds pin 3… will my ear speaker still work even though that clip is broken?
[...] and WiFi on one package making it very efficient and battery friendly. The iPhone 3GS uses the BCM4325. Millions of cell phones and laptops have very similar chips in them for the past several years. [...]
This posting is marvelous and what a wonderful research that you have done. It has assisted me personally a. a person really much.
ho un iphone 3g 16gb dopo una caduta ho sostituito lcd e touch il cellulare funziona tutto perfettamente ma non vuole piu anadare il touch ne ho provati altri due nuovi ma nulla da fare.cosa posso controllare ancora? grazie
i’m more intersted in a 850 mhz 900 mhz 2100 mhz umts here in australia and most other country’s that use 900 mhz 2100 mhz its like nokia mobile phones version 1 is 900 mhz and 2100 mhz version 3 has 850 mhz and 1900 mhz and some other version is 850 mhz and 2100 mhz and the iphone should be like this or have all of the bands in one phone and they would sell alot more iphones and countrys like here in australia most providers use 900 mhz and 2100 mhz umts and one provider uses 850 mhz umts and i would buy an unlocked 900 mhz 2100 mhz umts iphone if they come avalable even more so if europe and the south pacific like australia and new zealand
[...] 3GS: http://s1.guide-images.ifixit.com/igi/hsa3HpY6I2UNWjYJ phoneWreck Jak myślicie było by to możliwe? Pozdrawiam Cytuj [...]
Thanks for the excellent disassembly photos. I’m in the process of documenting and repairing a “white screen” iphone 3gs. Phone is fully functional except for screen (Phone was exposed to moisture). I’ve dissembled and clean corrosion from the battery and various other contacts.
1) Do you have any suggestions for removing the RF shields from the logic board?
2) Your block diagram and pictures do not show video related components identified. Do you have any insight into the relationship of video to board components?
Thanks again.
Is the Cortex-A8 underclocked to 600Mhz, just like the iphone 3G was underclocked to 412Mhz?
Email me a response please
Hello, please help me to find the kind and values of the different components of this pcb part of my iphone 3G (4 SMD components ).
I put a different usb power who make the components explosed.
this is the photo:
http://img5.imageshack.us/img5/636/battcomm.jpg
thank you
Great write up. The iPhone is truly amazing and I don’t like being without it. This time last year I had jumped in a pool with my iPhone and it was dead. I had to wait 9 days before I was able to get a new one. The phone I had was a cheap go phone. I really love all the apps that can be downloaded to the iPhone. The best part about the iPhone to me is the ability to check emails on the fly. Thanks for the information.
I am not tech literate. I took apart my phone before looking at your teardown specs and where the do not remove the sticker is I broke the board, ruined the vibrating mechanism, and I took it apart breaking the silver to white back piece. I became very familiar after reading your specs but now its just an ipod. it doesn’t get a signal no service internet and not sure if I should buy a new one or buy parts for it? My tech or repair guy been ripping me off and he steered me into causing these problems. In that corner (where the sticker is) does that have anything to do with signal or connecting to internet? and what do i do to fix it? Its a new 3gs 16g and dont want to waste it but liked it when it worked. can you please respond to me for input on fixing?
davesully1@gmail.com
thank you