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Apple iPhone SE teardown shows a blend of components from the iPhone 5s, 6, and 6s

Apple iPhone SE teardown shows a blend of components from the iPhone 5s, 6, and 6s
Apple iPhone SE teardown shows a blend of components from the iPhone 5s, 6, and 6s
What makes the iPhone SE tick? The latest Apple smartphone is an amalgamation of old and new including RAM and wireless chipsets from the iPhone 6 and touchscreen controllers from the iPhone 5s.

The iPhone SE officially launches today in parts of Europe. Visually, the 4-inch smartphone carries an almost identical design to the iPhone 5s, but are the similarities only skin deep? A teardown over at Chipworks.com has revealed that a fair amount of its internal hardware are lifted from multiple existing iPhone models including the iPhone 6 and 6s.

The iPhone SE has the right mix of old and new

The Chipworks teardown concludes that only a small percentage of the iPhone SE is made up of new and original parts. Apple has cleverly cherry-picked the right pieces out of its back catalog to create a successful end product with up-to-date performance.

The Apple A9 is the heart of the iPhone SE

Chipworks confirms what was previously known: The iPhone SE is powered by the Apple A9 SoC as manufactured by TSMC. We can also see the same 2 GB LPDDR4 memory module from Hynix, 6-axis gyroscope, two audio chipsets (338S00105 and 338S1285) and the NXP 66V10 NFC chip for Apple Pay.

As for WWAN and others, the 5-inch iPhone will carry the Qualcomm Mobile Data Modem (MDM) MDM9625M chipset and RF WTR1625L transceiver as found on the iPhone 6 with the Broadcom BCM5897 and Texas Instruments (TI) 343S0645 touchscreen controllers as found on the iPhone 5s.

What's new in the iPhone SE?

As a Frankenstein of old and new, the iPhone SE utilizes some original components including the TI 338S00170 power manager, multi-band and multi-mode Power Amplifier Modules (PAM) for quad-band GPRS, A Skyworks SKY77611 chipset for EDGE/3G/4G, Toshiba THGBX5G7D2KLDXG NAND flash storage, Epcos D5255 antenna, and a 0DALM1 microphone from AAC Technologies.

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> Expert Reviews and News on Laptops, Smartphones and Tech Innovations > News > News Archive > Newsarchive 2016 04 > Apple iPhone SE teardown shows a blend of components from the iPhone 5s, 6, and 6s
Ronald Tiefenthäler/ Allen Ngo, 2016-04- 1 (Update: 2016-04- 1)