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
So quick to tear this thing down, waiting to see more details, cant wait till they come! Good job DrWreck.
[...] both Rapid repair and ifixit have torn down the new iPhone 3G S, and phonewreck has provided some analysis. The new CPU runs twice as fast at 600 MHz and supports 720p video. They also found that the new 3 [...]
Do you know what chip(set) is doing the Nike+ support? I believe this is supposed to be a Nordic Semiconductor part.
@ Kirk
We didn’t come across anything specific but there were some IC’s we were unable to identify. Thanks for the input – we’ll let you know when we find out!
Is the new compass a inside the accelerometer chip? Or elsewhere? Also, curious if the compass works with the device in any orientation.
GPS receiver is still the infineon/Broadcom Hammerhead II
Touch screen IC is the Broadcom 5974
Accelerometer should still be the ST micro part.
Where is the voice chip? Is there any?
In the photo on the chipside, why do so many components look scorched above most ICs. The board is burned brown, many small transistors burned the blue board, too.
What made it hot enough to burn the board surface?
Thank you for this, that made my day! This page rocks, I’ve promoted this link on three different locations now.
Can you say anything about the GSM and GPS hardware involved?
so, what compass chip are they using?
I live in a country that has 2100 and 900 MHz UMTS coverage. How hard would it be to swap the UMTS band 5 components out and replace them with band 8 ?
@Larry
That’s not burned board. It’s called underfill.
After manufacturing the board, you use a dispensing machine to “pour” a few lines of a specific expoxy/adhesive on the sides of the BGA chips. The epoxy goes under the IC by capillarity force. After curing the epoxy, this process improves the structural strength of soldered BGA ICs greatly. Making them difficult to replace at the same time.
@ Robin
As DPRoldan just mentioned, Apple has been very thorough in it’s manufacturing process. It would be very difficult to remove the existing hardware.
@Monah
We’re doubtful there is specific hardware for the voice control functionality – the new apps processor is a powerhouse!
@Yosh
We received rumour that the compass chip is an Asahi Kasei AK8973. We’ll have to work a little harder to verify that though!
There is actually no evidence at this point to support the claims being made by various folks (RapidRepair seem to have started it) that the SoC is the Samsung S5PC100.
Can anybody say somthing about the ability of the TQM6×603 chips to support HSUPA?
[...] both Rapid repair and ifixit have torn down the new iPhone 3G S, and phonewreck has provided some analysis. The new CPU runs twice as fast at 600 MHz and supports 720p video. They also found that the new 3 [...]
what was infinieon on the 3G is also Infineon on the 3G S, only changes are in the firmware (baseband in iphone speech). the transceiver was throttled in 3G, as the trans/proc bus only supports 5Mbit/s. would be hard to push 7,2Mbit/s over it, wouldn’t it?
“We received rumour that the compass chip is an Asahi Kasei AK8973. We’ll have to work a little harder to verify that though!”
Yes, it is probably a AK8973, …. but, …
where is it? It should be a chip of 2 by 2 mm, 0.7mm high, AFAIK.
Great job!
But i NEED to know what type of audio codec is inside?
Is it Wolfson like in 3G?
music lover:
wolfson has stated publically that they were not selected for the iphone 3GS.
@kirk @dr.wreck: According to http://www.eetindia.co.in/ART_8800548467_1800001_NT_172c5e77.HTM the bcm4325 (bluetooth+wlan+fm) chip does the communication with nike+.
But take this with a grain of salt:
a)
it’s said nowhere that the nordic nrf2402 (the chip inside the nike+) can communicate with bluetooth devices.
The spec sheet looks as if the package format could match that described in the ‘bluetooth low energy’ though.
b)
broadcom doesn’t state that the bcm4325 supports ‘bluetooth low energy’
addendum:
Even engadget thinks that communication with nike+ is done through the bcm4325:
http://www.engadget.com/2008/09/10/debunk-the-ipod-touch-bluetooth-chip-is-really-the-nike-receiv/
Invaluable information, it certainly helped me make an informed decision, keep the wrecks coming!
[...] the iPhone 3G S: [Link] Do you like this article ? Bookmark it [...]
does nyone know what light sensor and proximity is in this one – do u have a teardown for the speaker area
[...] SIRF en daarmee ook wat minder ontvangst heeft; op ifixit.com kun je daar meer over vinden). Het lijkt er op dat in de 3GS dezelfde chip zit als in de 3G, mogelijk met het kompas in dezelfde package [...]
Very interesting tear-down. Does anybody know more about the PCB? Who makes it, what’s the minimal line/space, no. of layers?
Thanks
[...] PhoneWreck analysis Finally, PhoneWreck has a very thorough analysis of the device’s planar and circuitry… [...]
Does anyone know for such large display, how many LEDs are required as back lit? Also, how are they arranged like in how many strings where how many LEDs are per string. I am thinking this may be interesting information to see how phone maker trying to keep the back lit good and maintain long battery life.
Thanks
SMEEE
[...] also interesting to note that the iPhone 3GS uses a combination Wi-Fi / Bluetooth Broadcom chip that handles 802.11a/b/g as well as Bluetooth 2.1. Previously separate Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips [...]
[...] also interesting to note that the iPhone 3GS uses a combination Wi-Fi / Bluetooth Broadcom chip that handles 802.11a/b/g as well as Bluetooth 2.1. Previously separate Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips [...]
[...] also interesting to note that the iPhone 3GS uses a combination Wi-Fi / Bluetooth Broadcom chip that handles 802.11a/b/g as well as Bluetooth 2.1. Previously separate Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips [...]
[...] also interesting to note that the iPhone 3GS uses a combination Wi-Fi / Bluetooth Broadcom chip that handles 802.11a/b/g as well as Bluetooth 2.1. Previously separate Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips [...]
[...] also interesting to note that the iPhone 3GS uses a combination Wi-Fi / Bluetooth Broadcom chip that handles 802.11a/b/g as well as Bluetooth 2.1. Previously separate Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips [...]
[...] also interesting to note that the iPhone 3GS uses a combination Wi-Fi / Bluetooth Broadcom chip that handles 802.11a/b/g as well as Bluetooth 2.1. Previously separate Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips [...]
[...] also interesting to note that the iPhone 3GS uses a combination Wi-Fi / Bluetooth Broadcom chip that handles 802.11a/b/g as well as Bluetooth 2.1. Previously separate Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips [...]
Any chance of pointing out where the GPS antenna and chipset is in the photos, and how it connects to the main board? I’m wondering if it’s physically possible to connect an external aerial to the iPhone by mounting a mini-MCX socket on the back. I presume no cables go from the GPS chipset to the main connector?
[...] [...]
One interesting omission is the lack of FM receiver functionality althought the Broadcom BCM4325 certainly has a block for that.
Hello Dr. Wreck, can u email me that block diagram? I can’t read some of the small words. BTW, do u have the schematics, functional block diagram or description of input/output functions of the 30 pin connector? If so, please email me the info. If not, please advise where I can find the tech info? tks
Wun
(Please do not post my personal request on the public comment)
can you post lcd ways of 3gs 32gb i accidentally broke tha connector path of the pcb logic board..
tnx sir
Hello,
Great job!!
I need to know which IP used as Application processor: is’t the samsung S5PC100?
Tks
Что-то у меня в Опере дизайн вашего сайта расползается…
I have an iPhone 3GS. After updating the firmware my iPhone stops working and it says the following message “waiting for NAND to appear”, and now I can’t acces my iPhone. Anybody knows about this error message? (I got some screenshots of the error).
Is this a hardware or software problem. If it is a hardware problem, what specific part do I need to change and where I could get?