iPhone SE teardown

The iPhone SE is already known to be an iPhone 6s in iPhone 5s clothing. What hasn’t exactly been known is how much of Apple’s smallest but latest smartphone is indeed composed of those more recent and more powerful pieces. Only a teardown can provide such insight and thanks to Chipworks, we now do. Thanks to the group, we are getting the first official look inside the iPhone SE, which apparently hides a few interesting surprises as far the the silicon is concerned.

The Apple iPhone SE is a 6s in a 5s body, but Chipworks dug into the internals and it turns out the story is more complicated than that. It straddles multiple generations – from the iPhone 5 selfie camera to the iPhone 6s chipset, a whopping four generations.

The Apple A9 chipset is brand new and the SK Hynix-made LPDDR4 2GB memory matches the 6s as well. The NFC, audio chips and motion sensor are from that generation as well. The storage appears to be from the 6s as well, but an earlier 19nm chip instead of the 15nm being shipped now.

The Qualcomm modem from the earlier iPhone 6 model while the touchscreen controller goes back to the iPhone 5s.

Using the images and info from Chipworks, I labeled the parts on the motherboard with the iPhone generation they come from.

Source | Via