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iPhone X Teardown

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Re: iPhone X Teardown

#291

Post by michaelmrose »

MikeKusold wrote: post #183
devonkim wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And despite all that engineering their reliability was terrible due to various plug design problems with the predecessor to MagSafe or the cords getting damaged from point stress. Meanwhile, Dell and HP make mediocre stuff that somehow hardly has such a problem by using much thicker gauge wiring and tougher rubber / plastics.

I'll take a skinny MagSafe plug over a Dell or HP plug any day. A power brick costs ~$80 to replace, a laptop costs much more. The main issue with Apple's power brick is that people wind the cord too tightly and don't leave slack. HP/Dell's main problem is that the female power adapter inside the laptop takes a lot of stress. In college, I had two roommates that broke their laptops due to the power connector.

Its pretty amazing that its ok to design $2 worth of hardware badly so you have to replace it and charge $80 for it.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#292

Post by lostlogin »

microcolonel wrote: post #142
rufugee wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typing this from a Pixel 2 XL after having been a happy Pixel XL owner. The 2 is truly the greatest phone I've ever owned, and that includes iphones along the way. If this is what you get with a software company building hardware, I'd say keep it up.

If iPhones ran today's Android, they would lead the pack; but because they run iOS, they're pretty MOR in terms of everyday performance and responsiveness (and perhaps especially disappointing WRT battery life). This is quite a role reversal from the situation five years ago.

Name an android phone that’s faster than last years iPhone.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#293

Post by goldenkey »

rufugee wrote: post #118
mankash666 wrote: post #2

Truly impressive. Smaller, yet faster than the competition. Surprising how many of the chips are now internal Apple components: 1. CPU/GPU 2. Auxiliary Machine Learning/AI chip 3. NAND controller 4. IR Deapth sensor & signal processing chip 5. Power management IC (surprising that Apple is doing Analog IC design too!) Axiom in the tech world is that "Apple is a software company that builds hardware". Above is ample ev…

Typing this from a Pixel 2 XL after having been a happy Pixel XL owner. The 2 is truly the greatest phone I've ever owned, and that includes iphones along the way. If this is what you get with a software company building hardware, I'd say keep it up.

Also typing from a Pixel 2 XL after having been a moderately satisfied Pixel 1 XL owner. The Pixel 2 XL screen gamut is totally washed out with blacks. Its horrendous for watching any show or cinema. Yes, I know that each app has to have the right gamut set in the Android app manifest -- but not even Google updated their apps or launcher yet!! And they expect others to do it? At least give us the option to force a higher gamut per app... Simple solution for such an eclectic decision on a new flagship.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#294

Post by michaelmrose »

aeontech wrote: post #173
cortesoft wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A company absolutely has a zero-sum 'focus' just like a person. You dismiss the idea that resources are the limiting factor, but that is absolutely what the limiting factor is. You really think that with unlimited money they couldn't have better software? They could, but they don't because it does not have enough of a return on investment. They 'focus' their resources on areas that will return them profit.

You're casually insulting everyone who is working hard on the software. Consider that the team sizes are surprisingly small. Consider that throwing more people at a project does not scale, and famously just slows things down after a certain, fairly small threshold. Consider that software is still really really freaking hard to do. Unlimited money does not solve all problems, contrary to what you may think. You can't…

I think we can have an honest conversation even if it hurts peoples feelings.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#295

Post by baq »

cjsuk wrote: post #84
mandeepj wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software bugs can be fixed with iterations but hardware....nope. Not without a recall

Clever software workarounds can save a board respin if you’re lucky. I’ve seen it done before.

Just take a look at driver source and published errata for anything not trivial. Software workarounds are everywhere.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#296

Post by raarts »

damnyou wrote: post #233
xxpor wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Apps like FB Messenger can't display useful overlays on the screen. This is a feature, not a bug.

Chat heads are a great feature, and of course you can turn them off if you like. iOS doesn't even give you the option to do that.

I had to google it, they look pretty distracting to me, but I'm positive that if they turn out to be very useful Apple will release an API for it.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#297

Post by ianhowson »

cjsuk wrote: post #204
abritinthebay wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're describing the cheap Chinese made knock-offs. They look almost perfectly identical and generally you can only tell by opening them up. They're awful. There are a LOT of teardowns of those. It's scary.

No you are completely 100% wrong. This was one that came with a MacBook Pro from the Apple Store actually in the sealed box when I bought it. Don't assume I'm stupid. I'm actually a qualified electrical engineer and I know switching power supply topologies and design very well. Don't assume that because 90% of the charger is well designed, the rest of the 10% is. There is no or insufficient inrush protection in the c…

> There is no or insufficient inrush protection in the charger

There's at least a PFC chopper and fuse. I'd be surprised if there were no series inductors, though I can't spot them on http://www.righto.com/2015/11/macbook-charger-teardown-surpr...

It's a reasonably complex pre-rectification stage for a consumer device. It's certainly not AC->rectifier->DC cap.

I can't explain the burn marks in the image -- stunning for a British plug. None of mine with Australian or European plugs show any significant burns. I see sparking when I plug it in, but that's standard for pretty much any SMPS.

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#298

Post by sgrove »

kevinchen wrote: post #267
woah wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If someone is able to authenticate as your phone number, they can set up iMessage and receive a copy of your future messages.

Wouldn't they need to at least need to log in with your iCloud credentials?

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#299

Post by yodsanklai »

asteli wrote: post #46

This is an engineering masterpiece. The electrical engineer in me is mind-blown. I love the inter-PCB BGA-style interface. Standoff, connector and shield all in one component. And the component density is stunning. Clean internal layout, relatively serviceable, structured light 3D scanning built in. You can debate whether or not Apple have made good UI decisions, but the hardware design execution here is superb.

I'm just wondering, how does it compare to let say a samsung galaxy S8 in terms of engineering? on paper, they seem to be pretty similar devices but Samsung doesn't get nearly as much praise. Is Apple really ahead there?

Re: iPhone X Teardown

#300

Post by bovine3dom »

developer2 wrote: post #254
ikurei wrote: 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…

We're nowhere near the theoretical limit.

Biological brains are much more energy efficient (up to 100,000x depending on who you ask) than our current offerings, and beyond that one can make an entropic argument as to how much energy information processing should require, to which the answer is "not much".

What makes you believe that we are only destined for incremental improvements?

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