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iPhone X Teardown

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251–260 of 372 posts

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#251
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the sim is no piece of plastic. SIM cards are computers! they have a CPU. they have memory, a file system. they run applets, yes Java applets. sims are one of the most secure pieces of technology out there, part of the Secure Element standard. the sim is responsible for a lot of your phones security. lots of encryption keys live on the sim and nothing can access them at all. I am much much happier to trust the hardwa…

On a dumb phone yes contacts are stored on your SIM maybe using some kind of weak crypto, yes. On an iPhone X, it’s completely unused for crypto or security, or for any other purpose other than carrier authentication.

carrier authentication is huge! do you want someone to be able to subscribe to a network with your phone number? receive your calls? texts? or call or text as if they are you? yes the sim has little relevance to device security for most smartphones. contacts on sim are a great example of supporting legacy features for BC only. but the network is still very important to secure.

sims are used for more than just phones. the chip on your credit card is a Secure Element. the chip in your passport is too. these are some of the most physically and technically secure pieces of hardware ever made

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#252

I don't understand, when they got rid of the audio jack and added wireless charging, why does the phone have ports at all? Couldn't they make a port-less phone?

Qi charging is slow. All wireless charging is (by its nature).

It’ll get better but I’d be very surprised to see a popular phone go totally port-less in the next 5 years.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#253
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a dumb phone yes contacts are stored on your SIM maybe using some kind of weak crypto, yes. On an iPhone X, it’s completely unused for crypto or security, or for any other purpose other than carrier authentication.

carrier authentication is huge! do you want someone to be able to subscribe to a network with your phone number? receive your calls? texts? or call or text as if they are you? yes the sim has little relevance to device security for most smartphones. contacts on sim are a great example of supporting legacy features for BC only. but the network is still very important to secure. sims are used for more than just phones.…

Carrier authentication is not huge. The vast majority of communications services today are secure without a SIM, even ones that are tied to your number. Ever notice that iMessage keeps working without a SIM? The SIM card is mostly a relic that is useful to the carrier oligopoly because it increases network switching friction.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#254
post #206

TL;DR: I see that Apple is doing great engineering, but where is this engineering better than Samsung's? Or is it not? --- This was fascinating, but I am not very knowledgable when it comes to hardware and I have a burning question. Everybody here seems to think this was a great feat of engineering. I am looking also at the teardown of the Samsung Galaxy S8. Where is Apple doing a better work than Samsung? Is it just…

Basically, this "cramming up all of the components tighter together" is worth being impressed with. We're at the point in manufacturing where every square millimetre of space saved on a logic board, or within a collection of components, is bringing us ever closer to the limit of what we are capable of producing based on our current understanding of physics.

Aside: I'm excited to see how far technology advances in my lifetime. The general consensus seems to be that we are approaching some supposed limit. I'm hoping this turns out to be wrong, and that our technology continues to experience "horse => car" types of leaps. All I've been reading is that we only have "faster horses" in our future. With any luck, this kind of narrative is short-sighted and naive, and we have some incredible technological advances to look forward to.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you know, just use an Android phone. Apple zealots are the fucking worst. Your phone makers are too incompetent to implement notifications properly, so your solution is to find a new job.

Just curious, why are you getting 100+ emails at once that you can't filter into a low priority/no notification inbox?

The most common case is overnight with a geographically distributed team.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#256
post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or you know, just use an Android phone. Apple zealots are the fucking worst. Your phone makers are too incompetent to implement notifications properly, so your solution is to find a new job.

Being a former android user, I see no fundamental difference in how notification are implemented for email between the two platforms.

Have you used recent versions of Android with priority and aggregation? I've found that iOS users have no idea how good notifications are on Android.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#257
post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the sim is no piece of plastic. SIM cards are computers! they have a CPU. they have memory, a file system. they run applets, yes Java applets. sims are one of the most secure pieces of technology out there, part of the Secure Element standard. the sim is responsible for a lot of your phones security. lots of encryption keys live on the sim and nothing can access them at all. I am much much happier to trust the hardwa…

>I am much much happier to trust the hardware than software for some of this Most SIMs I know are black boxes, with 0 public documentation. Taking into account that they are issued by telecom companies I don't trust them at all.

The standard is out there if you're willing to pay ETSI (or whomever - though the CDMA2000 specs are open and online) the money to get at it. They're not black boxes by any measure of the word.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#258
post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the sim is no piece of plastic. SIM cards are computers! they have a CPU. they have memory, a file system. they run applets, yes Java applets. sims are one of the most secure pieces of technology out there, part of the Secure Element standard. the sim is responsible for a lot of your phones security. lots of encryption keys live on the sim and nothing can access them at all. I am much much happier to trust the hardwa…

On a dumb phone yes contacts are stored on your SIM maybe using some kind of weak crypto, yes. On an iPhone X, it’s completely unused for crypto or security, or for any other purpose other than carrier authentication.

The onboard crypto is still used to secure voice calls.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And it's the best mobile OS by far. And yet Android dominates the market share. I don't think iOS is the best mobile OS, let alone the best by far.

Android dominates because Apple refuses to sell $50 iPhones. iOS app revenues still outpace Google Play, Android is the OS of choice for people who use it like a feature phone.

I've seen that revenue stat mentioned before, but never any evidence that this isn't due to something like Android having free options available for functionality that only paid apps have on iOS.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#260

I've owned various iPhones (starting with the 4 in 2010) and I'm going to take a serious look at the Pixel 3 in 2018. Performance is a feature, and I don't see a compelling reason why I should upgrade my 6S. I have a suspicion that Apple will keep the '6' chassis they've stuck with since the release of the 6 (6/6S/7/8) at 2GB of memory, and will continue to do so with the 9 next year. Pixel 2 performance with 4GB of…

The X has 3gb of RAM, this is one of the drivers moving me to upgrade
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