iFixit reveals inner workings of iPhone 4S in new teardown

By on Oct 13, 2011 at 7:30 PM
mobile October 13, 2011

The crew at iFixit has given the iPhone 4S its proper tear-down, revealing the phone’s inner workings and hardware. iFixit noticed that the battery offers an extra 0.5 WHrs over the one found in the iPhone 4, which is likely the reason Apple is able to advertise an additional 1-hour of 3G talk time on the iPhone 4S compared to its predecessor. The phone is equipped with a Qualcomm RTR8605 radio, an Avago ACPM-7181 power amplifier and of course a dual-core 1GHz Apple A5 processor, which has been downclocked to 800MHz. Be sure to hit the jump for a few more images of the iPhone 4S teardown. Deliveries of Apple’s new smartphone begin on Friday, and in the meantime be sure to check out our hands-on with the iPhone 4S.


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  • http://twitter.com/ramirphoto ramir sioson

    wow clocked down

    • Anonymous

      Still faster than any dual core Android handset currently on the market (including dual core 1.5GHz HTC Sensation XE).

      • Anonymous

        No it’s not, the Java test for the browser is faster and it’s only using 1 core.
        When they actually perform a real test and not a browser test which reminds me of politics in a country like China or Russia (or Republican surveys) I’ll bet you that there is probably like 10 Androids phones that are faster. I’m still going to buy it on the 28th though, unless Ice Cream is the best OS of all time. 

  • Anonymous

    Downclocked? Don’t you mean UNDERclocked? •facepalm•

    • John

      ya i got a good chuckle out of that too.

  • John

    512MB of ram is unacceptable. i love how apple fails to mention this to its users. typical but still..it’s bs.

    • homescrub

      Typical users are iDiots.  Its a phone with icons and thats all people care about.  you think they care about how many rams it has?  lol.  

      • numetheus

        It doesn’t make the typical user idiots because they don’t understand the specs or innerworkings of the phone; just like it doesn’t make you an idiot for not understanding the innerworkings of your cars engine, electrical system, and onboard computer. I just drive my car. Most people just use their phone and run apps. Most users don’t care about internal RAM. They just know this phone does this and runs these apps taking pictures that look this good. PERIOD. That is all they really need to know, much like all I really need to know about my car is gas mileage and how to drive it.

      • Anonymous

        Thank you, at the end of the day its still a phone, a device that should be fully functional and easy to use for the mass consumers. 

      • numetheus

        Yeah. It cracks me up when Android people somehow think that the world cares about specs. THEN has an idea that the overall population is stupid for not caring about them. Because … I am willing to bet that most of these numbnuts can’t rattle off internal specs of their car engine. Why? Because ultimately it doesn’t matter to most people. Should it? No. All I know about my car is that it has an engine, it is 4 cylinder, gets 32mpg, and goes forward when I push the gas pedal. Does that make me or most of the population an idiot? no. That is what mechanics are for.

      • 123

        i agree and disagree.  it dont make you an idiot but it makes you a poor consumer.  just because I dont understand the inner workings of a car doesn’t mean I dont research its crash test rating, the horsepower, the gas consumption, etc.  I just dont buy it because its the new bmw.  with the phone your analogy is just off. In the car analogy, I might not know how to fix my engine, but I also dont know how my A5 processor processes data.  I did take the time to research how much RAM it had, and does my phone need more than 512mb of it? The fact that you buy a car or a phone and dont know what its main features are makes you a poor or consumer.

      • numetheus

        I am willing to bet money that MOST consumers buy a car based on brand. Ask most general consumers on the street. They have an idea of what car they want. They may choose Ford Focus because it is priced well, or a Honda Accord because they rode in their friends car and loved it. I seriously doubt they will rattle off crash test ratings. Does that make them idiots? Absolutely not.

        Again, does this apply to all consumers? Absolutely not.

    • Anonymous

      It has not got real multi-tasking, so I guess 512MB is enough. 
      Question is would you notice if it was 1GB instead and how would you notice this without multi-tasking? 

    • Anonymous

      Because MORE is BETTER right? Benchmarks don’t matter. 

  • Guest

    No mention of the RAM? No link to a source either? Shoddy second hand blogging if you ask me. Seems to be the BGR trend, more articles, less quality.

    • John

      Typical iBGR

  • Anonymous

    As always, getting bye by as little as possible and people still go for it. If that isn’t the definition of sheep then I don’t know what is! 

    • Guest

      sheepplural of sheep (Noun)Noun:A domesticated ruminant (Ovis aries) of the cattle family with a thick woolly coat and (typically only in the male) curving horns. It is…A wild mammal related to this, such as the argali and bighorn.

    • Anonymous

      So explain why the 4S offers better performance the “better” spec’d SGSII?

  • Anonymous

    Underclocked to make sure those apps don’t slow the phone down. What a waist of OS

    • Nineteenwoolson

      If you were an greener you would be confused with the hulk.

    • numetheus

      How does underclocking make apps not slow down the phone?

    • http://twitter.com/5murfette Mr Smurf

      waste not waist….

  • Anonymous

    man apple sure knows how to squeeze every penny out of its followers…I cant wait for the Iphone 5 6 months from now lol….this thing is 800 mhz? and 512 Ram. seriously??? they made like 7 billion last quarter and cant even offer a better spec’d device?

    • Anonymous

      Yeah, the 4S definitely did NOT, you know, murder everything in sight in real world benchmarks. 

      Because more processor speed and more RAM equals better, right? 

      • Anonymous

        i think in real terms yes…more does equal better… would you rather have a phone with 512 ram vs 1 gb ram? 800mhz vs 1.2 ghz? again comparing two devices running two different operating systems and using a benchmark to say which one is better is one way to look at things. My point was more related to a better spec’d device meaning if Apple wasnt so cheap they wouldve offered more and blow the competition away for years to come…instead that pull this crap like they have with the core 2 duo in the 2010 macbook pros and call it cutting edge. I think you’re definitely blinded by the big apple in front of your face to realized how brainwashed you sound…if your looking a at pure numbers game…you should look at some overclocked SGSII’s…o wait you cant do that with a 4S lol…

  • Anonymous

    Cue the moron fandroids who wank about specs but don’t seem to realize the 4S is faster and better than any crapdroid.  true story™©®

    COMMENT
    SPACE BELOW RESERVED FOR DOUCHEBAGS

    • steve jobs

      what a wanna be apple CHEERLEADER, get a iLife

      • http://twitter.com/computer_tweets KW

        an

    • Johnj

      So I have to agree after basically owning every Verizon Smartphone in the last 5 years the ios platform is hand over fist.  No need for 1gb of ram when 512 kills any Android phone.

      MAKE MONEY, MAKE MONEY, MAKE MONEY

  • Eric5273

    I’ve used the iPhone 4, and I plan to get the 4S tomorrow.  I’m just curious, but what exactly would 1gb of ram do for a iPhone 4S user that 512 MB does not? How would that change the user experience?  The phone seems lightning quick to do just about everything.  I just don’t understand how it would make a difference.  My opinion is that the only difference it would make is to suck more battery life out of the batteries.  There is a reason why iPhones and iPads have significantly more battery life than other smartphones.

  • Zack

    A5 chip is sweet.  Even when you teardown the iphone it looks good.

  • LaZy_GeNiUs

    512MB RAM is a slap in the face to jailbreakers! As for the average Joe/Jane who use the phone Apple intended for them, it’s acceptable. Less than a 1GB of RAM and no NFC chip is a complete deal breaker! According to AT&T and Verizon data is scarce and I can’t afford having to reload static web pages. The iPhone is officially a year behind in hardware.

    • Anonymous

      Oh no, the elite hacker is upset.

      People accuse Apple of being “all marketing”, yet cling to buzzwords like “NFC” and the crutch argument of more RAM and faster processor = automatically better. 

  • http://theunderstatement.com/post/11982112928/android-orphans-visualizing-a-sad-history-of-support BoyRetardedReport

    Hey! Why did they make a strip tease of my girlfriend Siri!

  • 123

    underclocked so the next I phone can use the same A5 chip at standard clock speed touting a new and improved speed!

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