Apple's iPhone 6 is finally here, and while some of you are downloading apps and watching movies on the new phone, others are tearing it apart to examine its guts. If you're curious about the gritty details behind what's powering the year's most anticipated smartphones, here's a look at an early teardown performed by the folks at iFixIt.
Design
If you're worried about how much the iPhone 6's raised camera lens protrudes from the body, iFixIt reports a bump of about 0.6 mm. The phone's outer shell is held together by Pentalobe screws, while you can find Phillips screws holding together the smartphone's innards.
MORE: iPhone 6 Benchmarks - Here's How Good It Really Is
The phone's front panel assembly houses the front-facing FaceTime camera, as well as the phone's earpiece speaker. Located in the top right of the guts is the rear-facing iSight camera, which iFixIt was able to remove with just a pair of tweezers. For the first time, the iPhone's headphone jack and Lightning connector are part of the same internal assembly.
CPU and Specs
If you're aching to know what comprises the iPhone 6's integrated circuit (IC) board, the teardown reveals it all. We're a bit surprised to see just 1GB of RAM, compared to 2GB for the Galaxy S5 and HTC One M8. (The iPhone 5s also apparently had 1GB.)
Here's what you'll find on the front side of the board:
Apple A8 APL1011 SoC + Elpida 1 GB LPDDR3 RAM (as denoted by the markings EDF8164A3PM-GD-F)
Qualcomm MDM9625M LTE Modem
Qualcomm QFE1000 Envelope Tracking IC
Skyworks 77802-23 Low Band LTE PAD
Skyworks 77356-8 Mid Band PAD
Avago A8020 High Band PAD
Avago A8010 Ultra High Band PA + FBARs
TriQuint TQF6410 3G EDGE Power Amplifier Module
InvenSense MP67B 6-axis Gyroscope and Accelerometer Combo
RF Micro Devices RF5159 Antenna Switch Module
And here's a look at the backside:
SanDisk SDMFLBCB2 128 Gb (16 GB) NAND Flash
Murata 339S0228 Wi-Fi Module
Apple/Dialog 338S1251-AZ Power Management IC
Broadcom BCM5976 Touchscreen Controller
NXP LPC18B1UK ARM Cortex-M3 Microcontroller (also known as the M8 motion coprocessor)
NXP 65V10 NFC module + Secure Element (likely contains an NXP PN544 NFC controller inside)
Qualcomm WTR1625L RF Transceiver
Qualcomm WFR1620 receive-only companion chip.
Qualcomm PM8019 Power Management IC
Texas Instruments 343S0694 Touch Transmitter
AMS AS3923 Boosted NFC Tag Front End
Cirrus Logic 338S1201 Audio Codec
Battery
Apple promised a better battery with the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus, but is it true? The base iPhone 6 packs an 1810-mAh, 7.01-Wh battery, which is a notable step up from the 1560-mAh pack found in the iPhone 5s. Naturally, the 6 Plus goes even bigger, touting a 2915-mAh, 11.1-Wh battery.
Durability
On top of digging through the iPhone 6's insides, a few smartphone enthusiasts have tried to destroy the smartphone completely. YouTube channel PhoneBuff put the new handsets through a drop test, dropping the each phone's rear, front and side panels onto concrete from about five feet. While the two devices only took a few nicks when landing on the rear panel, both the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 plus saw some significant cracking when dropped side- and face-first.
Mike Andronico is an Associate Editor at Tom's Guide. Follow Mike @MikeAndronico and on Google+. Follow us @TomsGuide, on Facebook and on Google+
