iPhone 4S shows its guts, confirms 512 MB RAM


The folks over at iFixit have gotten ahold of an iPhone 4S early and in typical fashion have begun ripping its guts apart. The teardown is still happening as I write this article, but a few details have begun emerging already.

The iPhone 4S does indeed have 512 MB of RAM as opposed to the 1 GB everyone was expecting. The RAM doesn’t seem to have been a bottleneck in Apple’s eyes and the benchmarks confirm that fact with gains as high as 86 percent over the performance of the iPhone 4.

The 4S has received a new baseband chip. Manufactured by Qualcomm (MDM5510), this chip is an undocumented variation of the MDM6600 found in the CDMA iPhone 4. Search is underway for any documentation showing the differences between the two chips.

It appears that the iPhone 4S is considerably closer to a CDMA iPhone 4 than the GSM model. One notable similarity is the presence of an oscillating vibrating motor, which was introduced on the Verizon iPhone 4 early this year.

The teardown is still under way and you can hop over to Chipworks if you’d like a more in-depth look at what’s being pulled out of this sucker!

Source: Chipworks
Performing Teardown: iFixit
Image Credit: Madspeitersen

Josh is the Social Media Director and Sr. Systems Engineer for a startup toy company. He is freakishly into just about anything tech related. When he's not writing, he can be found inventing products at Quirky, or doing 3D renders for other inventors.