Katie Marsal
After Apple's latest iPod touch was released on Wednesday, iFixit it took it apart to reveal its new features contained within, including the 640x960 pixel Retina Display, dual cameras, three-axis gyro and A4 processor. The custom Apple-built chip carries a marking of K4X2G643GE, which is identical to the A4 found inside the iPad, released on April.
One major distinction between the A4 found in the iPad and the iPhone 4, released in June, is the onboard memory. The iPad and iPod touch CPU includes 256MB of random access memory, or RAM, while the iPhone 4 has twice that — 512MB.
"And no, there's no RAM upgrade slot," the site quipped.
The disassembly also found a singular antenna within the device that allows for Wi-Fi connections. It is situated near the front glass panel, which eliminates the need for the plastic "window" found on previous generation hardware.
The solutions provider also found that while the iPod touch has a rear camera that shoots lower quality photos than the iPhone 4, both devices have identical forward facing cameras for FaceTime video chat.
iFixit also discovered that the new speaker inside the fourth-generation iPod touch emits audio through a grill, as well as through the iPod dock connector. The site also found a mysterious white plastic piece that it could find no use for other than to save space.
Other details from the teardown:
- For the first time, the headphone jack in the iPod touch is not soldered to the logic board. This makes the device more repairable.
- Apple added more space between the three solder points on the battery, which should also make replacing it easier.
- There is no structural bracket holding the volume buttons to the rear panel. They are simply held in place by an adhesive bond that must be strong enough to stand repeated button presses.
- The rear facing camera is almost identical in size to the front facing camera, and is "dramatically smaller" than the rear camera on the iPhone 4.
- "For those of you wondering, there's no way the iPhone 4's rear camera can be installed in the Touch without some extreme hackery."
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29 Comments
Wonder what the margins are on this version of the touch? Still wish they would have had a much better still camera option. The current res is less than most modern cell phones.
Wonder what the margins are on this version of the touch? Still wish they would have had a much better still camera option. The current res is less than most modern cell phones.
The lower RAM is probably the sacrificial lamb to keep the margin they want and keep the price pretty much the same. Higher RAM probably would've meant higher price for consumers or lower margin for Apple.
it seems with no IPS, half the RAM and worse camera that they were trying to cut some costs or encourage people to go with the iPhone. I'm sure it still works great tho seeing as how it's just an iPod
This is being sent from my itouch
4g and if your wondering it's amazing.
That's a darn shame
Although I'm guessing the 512 RAM was left out because it wasn't perceived as necessary. I have a second-gen Touch running iOS 4, and so far I haven't experienced any of the slowness that iPhone 3G (the corresponding iPhone hardware for the 2G touch) owners have reported. It runs rather swimminglyHowever, I still see fragmentation being a real issue for the iOS ecosystem. Two products from the same generation having differing internal specifications when it comes to RAM? That'll only slow the adoption of memory-intensive applications