Teardown Shows Apple iPhone 3G S Secrets

Apple said the iPhone 3G S would go on sale June 19, and European carrier Orange decided that meant 12:01 a.m. RapidRepair CEO Aaron Vronko headed to Paris to get his hands on one.

The Apple iPhone 3G S – the 16GB black model, in this instance – comes with earbuds, a USB charger, a USB cable, a SIM opener and of course a manual.

The first step toward disassembly is to remove the bottom two screws by the dock port with a Phillips-head screwdriver. To lift the LCD screen, RapidRepair instructs, youll need a small suction cup, or else need to poke a paperclip through the screw-less holes.

The next step is to remove the ribbon cables, highlighted here in red. RapidRepair notes that at this point the iPhone 3G S already differs from its predecessor, as the LCD screen has a different driver package, and components on the end of the cable are different

And then there were two: the front half separated from the back panel.

To free the LCD module from the digitizer, six side screws must be removed.

The next step is to remove the system board, which involves removing the screw securing the camera module, as well as four Molex brand connectors and a big screw hiding behind the warranty sticker.

Who said an iPhone battery cant be removed? Here, RapidRepair pries open the bottom of the board, removes the camera Molex connector and finally the battery, which it says is solderless and easily replaceable.

Once the screws are removed, the headphone jack comes out easily. The same goes for the dockport. RapidRepair says that the vibrator module, GPS antenna and SIM spring are held in place with mild adhesive and also come out with little coaxing.

Removing the digitizer, however, requires a heat gun and some care. The ear-piece speaker and home button can also be removed at this stage.

Here rests the iPhone 3G S. Although, RapidRepair says it can put back together by reversing all the steps.

On the left is the iPhone 3G S, and on the right is the iPhone 3G. The iPhone 3G S contains a Samsung S5PC100 CPU (the 3G contains a Samsung S3C6400 CPU) and an ARM Cortex A8 600MHz PowerVR SGX graphics card, while the 3G has an ARM 11 412MHz PowerVR MBX-Lite graphics card. The 3G S has 256MB of RAM (up from the 3Gs 128MB of DDR RAM), offers six more hours of talk time and features Bluetooth 2.1.