8 ms·

What’s Inside Every iPhone, from Retina Displays to Cameras

232 points by shawndumas 9y ago

KGIII 9y ago
It's worth a look, actually. At first, I was thinking, "Surely they mean "current" and not "every." So, I clicked the link and, sure enough, they do actually mean every iPhone. It's a bit more in-depth than I'd expect from Bloomberg and that's a pleasant surprise. Nice find, OP.
- ballenf 9y ago
  Except the short-lived plastic one (5C) and the SE (the 5 with upgraded guts). Edit: and others that I missed as noted in other comments: 4S, 5S, and the Plus sizes.
ktta 9y ago
Anyone have an idea why they would spend resources to do this? I have a feeling this has to do with the recent $18 modem article, but this is every iPhone.
- reportingsjr 9y ago
  IHS tries to track market trends by looking at what devices are made of, how much they think items cost, etc. A large reason for this is for the financial world so investors can say "ok, the if the last iPhone sold x devices, the new one will sell y devices. It has a Bosch sensor that we think costs 10 cents so Bosch will effectively sell z million dollars of those sensors." They don't do this with just iPhones fyi, they do it with a ton of different things.
- ksec 9y ago
  Yes, and then they list the Modem here as being $11 part. And some of the modem prices changed since they last estimated.
chis 9y ago
It's crazy how the first iPhone is just ten ICs crammed together, vs now when they fab their own parts on one tiny board. Really shows how ahead of its time the first iPhone was.
- amq 9y ago
  Cramming ICs together was ahead of time? I don't understand your logical transition here.
  - gehsty 9y ago
    If you look at what Apple could achieve by cramming ICs together Vs what anyone else could achieve with the same resources, the first iPhone is pretty remarkable. I remember reading articles where folks from Blackberry were reminiscing on the iPhone being unveiled and there were a lot of people who just couldn't believe what Apple had done was actually possible, I think the line was, "it must just be a battery with a screen'.
    - macintux 9y ago
      Blackberry thought Apple was lying about battery life. It wasn't until they bought one and opened it that they discovered it was a battery with a screen. When the iPad was announced, I read on some display-oriented tech site an analyst who was convinced Jobs was lying about its battery life and would have to retract the claims before it shipped. "I'm an expert, and no LED display that size can be powered that long" yada yada.
  - andruby 9y ago
    I think the OP means that the first iPhone really was a quick-to-market release and iterate later. In that sense they were ahead of it's time because the tailored components weren't available yet.
  - coldtea 9y ago
    The iPhone combined already existing ICs -- and still got all the "wow" factor and industry-changing impact that competitors before it, which had the same ICs available couldn't achieve. So what the parent means is that since the iPhone achieved such impact without extraordinary/novel components (e.g. without ICs being a differentiating factor), it means that its concept/software/combination/form etc was ahead of its time.
RachelF 9y ago
The cost section is Interesting. I see the iPhone 7 cost of materials is $237. No wonder Apple makes so much money!
- irrational 9y ago
  Does that include labor, shipping, design work, getting the fab set up, programming, etc.?
  - TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
    Support; several OS upgrades; iCloud access for the life(?) of the phone. The list goes on. Apple does make a lot of money though.
- swengw 9y ago
  Tim Cook says he's never read a bill of materials that was anywhere close to accurate. I believe it- the last time I got an iPhone replaced, I asked what they were doing with the old unit and the person said they were probably going to reuse the touch id sensor since that was one of the most valuable parts.
  - janekm 9y ago
    The Touch ID sensor value in the second hand market is not reflective of the cost to Apple... it’s expensive because there are no third party replacements, so the supply is restricted to parts taken from broken phones.
    - otterley 9y ago
      ...Or newly manufactured ones.
- ksec 9y ago
  Excluding Shipping, Marketing, R&D, Operation Cost, and the recent most expensive and inflated one, Patents.
NamTaf 9y ago
Fascinating that the battery of the original was the biggest until the 4 landed - it speaks for the power optimisation that they pursued for those first 4 iterations. Also amusing how it's literally a completely different purpose battery cobbled into a phone case to prove the concept before purpose-designed parts came into fruition.
- leggomylibro 9y ago
  Sometimes, you just gotta work with what you got. Like today. What is the ubiquitous Energy Unit? There are flat batteries out to like 2500mAh, but for most applications, it's gotta be the 18650 cell. And accordingly, ho-lee shit. 2600mAh is around what you can rely on a factory-fresh authorized 3.7V cell having. But let's look at Amazon. 3000mAh abound. 5800mAh and above are available as well! And ebay? 6,800-9,900Mah! Ten fucking amp-hours! 'Optimistic' is one word...'Advertising' is another. Lying.
  - comstock 9y ago
    Yes, it would be interesting to see a graph of states versus actual capacity for the eBay batteries. I’d guess there would be an inverse correlation between stated and actual capacity.
    - ButchDriveshaft 9y ago
      Well, it turns out there is. Mooch has done some amazing testing and research in numerous form factors and chemistries. If you're interested you should check them out: https://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/blog-entry/list-of-battery-tests.7436/ https://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/blog-entry/list-of-b...
      - TrickyRick 9y ago
        Can someone explain to me what one would use 1800 mAh LiPOs for in an e-cigarrette? Or is it just a collection of battery tests unrelated to e-cigarettes?
ksec 9y ago
4.5G LTE or 3GPP Rel 13/14 along with 802.11ax WiFi + Bluetooth 5 Chip will likely be Apple's next target to bring them in house.
- icanhackit 9y ago
  Reading into the Qualcomm dispute, I suspect it's not for performance reasons but instead shaving off features/paying licenses for hardware that they don't use. Plus you probably don't want to be handing over large wads of cash to a SoC/baseband chip manufacturer that serves your competition in the phone space.
  - ksec 9y ago
    Yes, Qualcomm doesn't care where you buy your baseband, you still have to paid them LTE patents tax. And once anyone doing calculation that making baseband themselves is not worth the hassle when the resulting chips is inferior to Qualcomm offering. So Apple wanted to make, my guess a LTE only 4G Baseband, no 2G, 3G attached, hence Apple wanted a better deal.
amigoingtodie 9y ago
Missing the best model created. Where is the 4S?
- ktta 9y ago
  Missing several others: 5S, 5C, 6S. Not to forget, the 'Plus' models will have more expensive parts.
  - ezequiel-garzon 9y ago
    And my little SE!
- saagarjha 9y ago
  They said that they’re in the process of acquiring those models.
- gm-conspiracy 9y ago
  I would contribute to a Kickstarter for 4S replacement boards a la the Nokia N900 'upgrade' project. Replace the 30-pin connector with microUSB, upgrade the processor, modem, add more storage. Also, use a battery that can be easily acquired (and not just pulled from other phones). Use the existing screen/digitizer, speakers, microphones, cameras, and antennas? No forced reliance on iOS 11. Anybody else?
  - limeblack 9y ago
    The digitizer(not the LCD screen) was the first thing to break on my 4S. Maybe it was a fluke. Not to say it is a bad idea but just interesting.
    - gm-conspiracy 9y ago
      I never had a case on mine and have dropped it countless times, never had an issue. The chassis on the sides has some pretty bad gouges, but I have never had a crack on the screen or digitizer. I did have to replace the 30-pin connector interface (it would charge and transfer data fine, but had some weird short-circuit where it thought an external speaker was plugged in, and there would be no sound for videos). Was yours an OEM digitizer? The 5S I have is on its third battery and the digitizer is starting to separate. The lightning port will only work with cables in a specific orientation, and slight jiggling causes a momentary disconnect (using actual Apple cable and charger).
ggm 9y ago
As I heard it, Apple boosted VLSI design smarts in the UK to get audio stuff in the iPod era, got really good FPGA and there was a one-two year boost in the british chip smarts IPR. Next cycle round, Apple went to the cheaper foundries and said "do this smart stuff cheaper" and undercut. So the apple model appears to me to be: get good design work, but don't depend on it, leverage scale to get cheaper. Apple is still hugely exposed to the lack of diversity in touch screen and battery smarts. I expect to see something there, because it must hurt paying Samsung with one hand, while you are suing for a pound of flesh with the other.
- spaceseaman 9y ago
  > So the apple model appears to me to be: get good design work, but don't depend on it, leverage scale to get cheaper. I would just tack on, "then leverage global markets to get those margins as wide as possible". Apple really loves their huge margins. Their design work plays into this by creating a brand and lifestyle for their products, increasing the price. I feel that many of Apple's business decisions come down to either ensuring margins stay high or opting for materials, parts, and designs that increase them.
  - madeofpalk 9y ago
    I really don't think we're at the point anymore where people by iPhones because of any supposed 'brand and lifestyle' Apple projects. Sure, iPhone "Animoji-Class-Signalling" x will definitely reach back into this level for a bit, but I think that smartphones (and iPhones) are so ubiquitous these days that there's no lifestyle to project from having an iPhone any more.
    - adventured 9y ago
      > I think that smartphones (and iPhones) are so ubiquitous these days that there's no lifestyle to project from having an iPhone any more Lifestyle signaling never stops playing a role, for anything sold commercial, in any market in any nation. Nike has been popular and common for three decades. If anything shouldn't be a lifestyle signal, it would be Nike, right? There's a gap between Russell Athletic or Champion and Nike. You can go further and use Gildan (generic, medium quality) vs Nike. Here, take a walk around Walmart's athletic wear department: https://www.walmart.com/browse/men/men-s-activewear/5438_133197_592999 https://www.walmart.com/browse/men/men-s-activewear/5438_133... You'll instantly notice the lack of Nike or Under Armour, much less anything more expensive. There's a reason for that: the bottom half of the income bracket can't afford to frequently, needlessly pay a large mark-up for the swoosh logo. That below middle class, 13 year old, knows there's a lifestyle gap between Russell and Nike, and very particularly so does the Nike Corporation - it's something they monitor like a hawk. Poorer people know there's a gap between a new iPhone model and other cheap phones that get thrown at you for $0 or $39 as part of a deal in signing up with a telecom carrier.
csomar 9y ago
Am I reading this correctly? The battery for the iPhone 7 costs 3.3USD only? Isn't it possible to have higher performance batteries which are more expensive? (like 5 times more expensive which is still cheap, around 15 bucks)
- TrickyRick 9y ago
  The major problem with batteries is size, you can't really make them that much smaller at the moment which means that a 5 times as expensive battery will take up 5 times the space.
  - boobsbr 9y ago
    I've read somewhere (HN or Reddit)that larger capacity batteries also degrade faster than smaller ones. Might that be the case as well?
    - Synaesthesia 9y ago
      You can get more capacity out of them at the price of faster degradation. The Apple tech is pretty good at managing that, they have chips which monitor all kinds of aspects of the battery.
- ksec 9y ago
  Same question i have asked everybody. ( In non tech circle ) Let say these tech for sure it wont be 5 times, but more like 10 times the cost. So for $30 battery, which offer double the energy capacity of the $3.3 unit at the same volume, an extra $26.7 BOM cost, which translate to roughly $70-$80 extra in Retail price. ( You have to add all the patents cost % etc, and then Apple's margin, this calculation is similar range to BOM cost and Final RSP ) Are you willing to paid extra $80 if the iPhone offer double the battery? What was I expecting? I was expecting some crazy yes! For only $80, you dont have to buy an $30 battery pack anymore with cable lying around. And it will surely last you the whole day. But the results were a surprise, lots of No. These people think the battery are fine, it could do a little longer battery, but it is not worth $80. My guess is that lots of geeks and tech enthusiast wanted bigger battery, but the majority are simply doing good with what is on offer.
mtgx 9y ago
iPhone 8's modem: > MDM9655 or XMM 7480 modem1 Likely Countries of Origin: U.S., Taiwan 2 Cost: $11.50 3 Designers: Qualcomm, Intel Bloomberg says iPhone 7's modem had a similar price. But they've just written a story on how Apple is battling Qualcomm over an $18 modem [1]. So I wonder if $11 is what Qualcomm was charging everyone else for the modem - like those who also bought its Snapdragon platform - but charged Apple $18, and that's why Apple sued them. Basically, kind of like how Intel was charging OEMs more for the laptop CPU itself than they would for the CPU+GPU bundle (until they actually put them on the same die at least). [1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-04/apple-and-qualcomm-s-billion-dollar-war-over-an-18-part https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-04/apple-and...
- acqq 9y ago
  > So I wonder if $11 is what Qualcomm was charging everyone else for the modem - like those who also bought its Snapdragon platform - but charged Apple $18, and that's why Apple sued them. The article you've linked is clear: Apple's claim is that they have to pay Qualcomm royalties (independent of the price of the part itself) proportionally to the selling price of the device. When Apple sells a 500 USD and 1000 USD phones with the identical Qualcomm modem, Qualcomm gets twice as much royalties for the later, and Apple claims it's unfair, given that the modem is identical. Tim Cook, January: "so we were in a situation where the more we innovated with unique features ... the more money Qualcomm would collect for no reason." Qualcomm would of course say that the 1000 USD phone without their modem wouldn't sell at all. But the patents for the standards are supposed to be fair. Is the deal fair? That's what the courts will decide... or as Qualcomm hopes, Apple will settle before.
thisisit 9y ago
Are the costs adjusted dollars? What I mean is with each iteration of, say phone camera, the older one's cost will way less than what it might cost back in 2008/2010. So a camera might cost $5 but might have cost $15 back then.
laythea 9y ago
I don't know about the article because I cannot stand these "scroll a whole page down for 3 more words" style websites. Please make it easy to consume information.
- stouset 9y ago
  Looking at the article, I can't understand what your complaint is. There are three paragraphs of introductory information, and literally 100% of the remaining content is images of completely disassembled and knolled iPhone components, with a brief description next to the parts. I'm not actually certain how you could represent this information any better than they already have.
devy 9y ago
Posted this same article 11 hours prior to this post, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15459028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15459028 somehow HN didn't prevent it from repost it again, hmm.
relkci 9y ago
Awesome!

232 points by shawndumas 9y ago

It's worth a look, actually. At first, I was thinking, "Surely they mean "current" and not "every." So, I clicked the link and, sure enough, they do actually mean every iPhone. It's a bit more in-depth than I'd expect from Bloomberg and that's a pleasant surprise. Nice find, OP.

ballenf 9y ago
Except the short-lived plastic one (5C) and the SE (the 5 with upgraded guts). Edit: and others that I missed as noted in other comments: 4S, 5S, and the Plus sizes.

ktta 9y ago

Anyone have an idea why they would spend resources to do this? I have a feeling this has to do with the recent $18 modem article, but this is every iPhone.

reportingsjr 9y ago
IHS tries to track market trends by looking at what devices are made of, how much they think items cost, etc. A large reason for this is for the financial world so investors can say "ok, the if the last iPhone sold x devices, the new one will sell y devices. It has a Bosch sensor that we think costs 10 cents so Bosch will effectively sell z million dollars of those sensors." They don't do this with just iPhones fyi, they do it with a ton of different things.
ksec 9y ago
Yes, and then they list the Modem here as being $11 part. And some of the modem prices changed since they last estimated.

chis 9y ago

It's crazy how the first iPhone is just ten ICs crammed together, vs now when they fab their own parts on one tiny board. Really shows how ahead of its time the first iPhone was.

amq 9y ago
Cramming ICs together was ahead of time? I don't understand your logical transition here.
- gehsty 9y ago
  If you look at what Apple could achieve by cramming ICs together Vs what anyone else could achieve with the same resources, the first iPhone is pretty remarkable. I remember reading articles where folks from Blackberry were reminiscing on the iPhone being unveiled and there were a lot of people who just couldn't believe what Apple had done was actually possible, I think the line was, "it must just be a battery with a screen'.
  - macintux 9y ago
    Blackberry thought Apple was lying about battery life. It wasn't until they bought one and opened it that they discovered it was a battery with a screen. When the iPad was announced, I read on some display-oriented tech site an analyst who was convinced Jobs was lying about its battery life and would have to retract the claims before it shipped. "I'm an expert, and no LED display that size can be powered that long" yada yada.
- andruby 9y ago
  I think the OP means that the first iPhone really was a quick-to-market release and iterate later. In that sense they were ahead of it's time because the tailored components weren't available yet.
- coldtea 9y ago
  The iPhone combined already existing ICs -- and still got all the "wow" factor and industry-changing impact that competitors before it, which had the same ICs available couldn't achieve. So what the parent means is that since the iPhone achieved such impact without extraordinary/novel components (e.g. without ICs being a differentiating factor), it means that its concept/software/combination/form etc was ahead of its time.

RachelF 9y ago

The cost section is Interesting. I see the iPhone 7 cost of materials is $237. No wonder Apple makes so much money!

irrational 9y ago
Does that include labor, shipping, design work, getting the fab set up, programming, etc.?
- TheSpiceIsLife 9y ago
  Support; several OS upgrades; iCloud access for the life(?) of the phone. The list goes on. Apple does make a lot of money though.
swengw 9y ago
Tim Cook says he's never read a bill of materials that was anywhere close to accurate. I believe it- the last time I got an iPhone replaced, I asked what they were doing with the old unit and the person said they were probably going to reuse the touch id sensor since that was one of the most valuable parts.
- janekm 9y ago
  The Touch ID sensor value in the second hand market is not reflective of the cost to Apple... it’s expensive because there are no third party replacements, so the supply is restricted to parts taken from broken phones.
  - otterley 9y ago
    ...Or newly manufactured ones.
ksec 9y ago
Excluding Shipping, Marketing, R&D, Operation Cost, and the recent most expensive and inflated one, Patents.

NamTaf 9y ago

Fascinating that the battery of the original was the biggest until the 4 landed - it speaks for the power optimisation that they pursued for those first 4 iterations. Also amusing how it's literally a completely different purpose battery cobbled into a phone case to prove the concept before purpose-designed parts came into fruition.

leggomylibro 9y ago
Sometimes, you just gotta work with what you got. Like today. What is the ubiquitous Energy Unit? There are flat batteries out to like 2500mAh, but for most applications, it's gotta be the 18650 cell. And accordingly, ho-lee shit. 2600mAh is around what you can rely on a factory-fresh authorized 3.7V cell having. But let's look at Amazon. 3000mAh abound. 5800mAh and above are available as well! And ebay? 6,800-9,900Mah! Ten fucking amp-hours! 'Optimistic' is one word...'Advertising' is another. Lying.
- comstock 9y ago
  Yes, it would be interesting to see a graph of states versus actual capacity for the eBay batteries. I’d guess there would be an inverse correlation between stated and actual capacity.
  - ButchDriveshaft 9y ago
    Well, it turns out there is. Mooch has done some amazing testing and research in numerous form factors and chemistries. If you're interested you should check them out: https://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/blog-entry/list-of-battery-tests.7436/ https://www.e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/blog-entry/list-of-b...
    - TrickyRick 9y ago
      Can someone explain to me what one would use 1800 mAh LiPOs for in an e-cigarrette? Or is it just a collection of battery tests unrelated to e-cigarettes?

ksec 9y ago

4.5G LTE or 3GPP Rel 13/14 along with 802.11ax WiFi + Bluetooth 5 Chip will likely be Apple's next target to bring them in house.

icanhackit 9y ago
Reading into the Qualcomm dispute, I suspect it's not for performance reasons but instead shaving off features/paying licenses for hardware that they don't use. Plus you probably don't want to be handing over large wads of cash to a SoC/baseband chip manufacturer that serves your competition in the phone space.
- ksec 9y ago
  Yes, Qualcomm doesn't care where you buy your baseband, you still have to paid them LTE patents tax. And once anyone doing calculation that making baseband themselves is not worth the hassle when the resulting chips is inferior to Qualcomm offering. So Apple wanted to make, my guess a LTE only 4G Baseband, no 2G, 3G attached, hence Apple wanted a better deal.

amigoingtodie 9y ago

Missing the best model created. Where is the 4S?

ktta 9y ago
Missing several others: 5S, 5C, 6S. Not to forget, the 'Plus' models will have more expensive parts.
- ezequiel-garzon 9y ago
  And my little SE!
saagarjha 9y ago
They said that they’re in the process of acquiring those models.
gm-conspiracy 9y ago
I would contribute to a Kickstarter for 4S replacement boards a la the Nokia N900 'upgrade' project. Replace the 30-pin connector with microUSB, upgrade the processor, modem, add more storage. Also, use a battery that can be easily acquired (and not just pulled from other phones). Use the existing screen/digitizer, speakers, microphones, cameras, and antennas? No forced reliance on iOS 11. Anybody else?
- limeblack 9y ago
  The digitizer(not the LCD screen) was the first thing to break on my 4S. Maybe it was a fluke. Not to say it is a bad idea but just interesting.
  - gm-conspiracy 9y ago
    I never had a case on mine and have dropped it countless times, never had an issue. The chassis on the sides has some pretty bad gouges, but I have never had a crack on the screen or digitizer. I did have to replace the 30-pin connector interface (it would charge and transfer data fine, but had some weird short-circuit where it thought an external speaker was plugged in, and there would be no sound for videos). Was yours an OEM digitizer? The 5S I have is on its third battery and the digitizer is starting to separate. The lightning port will only work with cables in a specific orientation, and slight jiggling causes a momentary disconnect (using actual Apple cable and charger).

ggm 9y ago

As I heard it, Apple boosted VLSI design smarts in the UK to get audio stuff in the iPod era, got really good FPGA and there was a one-two year boost in the british chip smarts IPR. Next cycle round, Apple went to the cheaper foundries and said "do this smart stuff cheaper" and undercut. So the apple model appears to me to be: get good design work, but don't depend on it, leverage scale to get cheaper. Apple is still hugely exposed to the lack of diversity in touch screen and battery smarts. I expect to see something there, because it must hurt paying Samsung with one hand, while you are suing for a pound of flesh with the other.

spaceseaman 9y ago
> So the apple model appears to me to be: get good design work, but don't depend on it, leverage scale to get cheaper. I would just tack on, "then leverage global markets to get those margins as wide as possible". Apple really loves their huge margins. Their design work plays into this by creating a brand and lifestyle for their products, increasing the price. I feel that many of Apple's business decisions come down to either ensuring margins stay high or opting for materials, parts, and designs that increase them.
- madeofpalk 9y ago
  I really don't think we're at the point anymore where people by iPhones because of any supposed 'brand and lifestyle' Apple projects. Sure, iPhone "Animoji-Class-Signalling" x will definitely reach back into this level for a bit, but I think that smartphones (and iPhones) are so ubiquitous these days that there's no lifestyle to project from having an iPhone any more.
  - adventured 9y ago
    > I think that smartphones (and iPhones) are so ubiquitous these days that there's no lifestyle to project from having an iPhone any more Lifestyle signaling never stops playing a role, for anything sold commercial, in any market in any nation. Nike has been popular and common for three decades. If anything shouldn't be a lifestyle signal, it would be Nike, right? There's a gap between Russell Athletic or Champion and Nike. You can go further and use Gildan (generic, medium quality) vs Nike. Here, take a walk around Walmart's athletic wear department: https://www.walmart.com/browse/men/men-s-activewear/5438_133197_592999 https://www.walmart.com/browse/men/men-s-activewear/5438_133... You'll instantly notice the lack of Nike or Under Armour, much less anything more expensive. There's a reason for that: the bottom half of the income bracket can't afford to frequently, needlessly pay a large mark-up for the swoosh logo. That below middle class, 13 year old, knows there's a lifestyle gap between Russell and Nike, and very particularly so does the Nike Corporation - it's something they monitor like a hawk. Poorer people know there's a gap between a new iPhone model and other cheap phones that get thrown at you for $0 or $39 as part of a deal in signing up with a telecom carrier.

csomar 9y ago

Am I reading this correctly? The battery for the iPhone 7 costs 3.3USD only? Isn't it possible to have higher performance batteries which are more expensive? (like 5 times more expensive which is still cheap, around 15 bucks)

TrickyRick 9y ago
The major problem with batteries is size, you can't really make them that much smaller at the moment which means that a 5 times as expensive battery will take up 5 times the space.
- boobsbr 9y ago
  I've read somewhere (HN or Reddit)that larger capacity batteries also degrade faster than smaller ones. Might that be the case as well?
  - Synaesthesia 9y ago
    You can get more capacity out of them at the price of faster degradation. The Apple tech is pretty good at managing that, they have chips which monitor all kinds of aspects of the battery.
ksec 9y ago
Same question i have asked everybody. ( In non tech circle ) Let say these tech for sure it wont be 5 times, but more like 10 times the cost. So for $30 battery, which offer double the energy capacity of the $3.3 unit at the same volume, an extra $26.7 BOM cost, which translate to roughly $70-$80 extra in Retail price. ( You have to add all the patents cost % etc, and then Apple's margin, this calculation is similar range to BOM cost and Final RSP ) Are you willing to paid extra $80 if the iPhone offer double the battery? What was I expecting? I was expecting some crazy yes! For only $80, you dont have to buy an $30 battery pack anymore with cable lying around. And it will surely last you the whole day. But the results were a surprise, lots of No. These people think the battery are fine, it could do a little longer battery, but it is not worth $80. My guess is that lots of geeks and tech enthusiast wanted bigger battery, but the majority are simply doing good with what is on offer.

mtgx 9y ago

iPhone 8's modem: > MDM9655 or XMM 7480 modem1 Likely Countries of Origin: U.S., Taiwan 2 Cost: $11.50 3 Designers: Qualcomm, Intel Bloomberg says iPhone 7's modem had a similar price. But they've just written a story on how Apple is battling Qualcomm over an $18 modem [1]. So I wonder if $11 is what Qualcomm was charging everyone else for the modem - like those who also bought its Snapdragon platform - but charged Apple $18, and that's why Apple sued them. Basically, kind of like how Intel was charging OEMs more for the laptop CPU itself than they would for the CPU+GPU bundle (until they actually put them on the same die at least). [1] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-04/apple-and-qualcomm-s-billion-dollar-war-over-an-18-part https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-10-04/apple-and...

acqq 9y ago
> So I wonder if $11 is what Qualcomm was charging everyone else for the modem - like those who also bought its Snapdragon platform - but charged Apple $18, and that's why Apple sued them. The article you've linked is clear: Apple's claim is that they have to pay Qualcomm royalties (independent of the price of the part itself) proportionally to the selling price of the device. When Apple sells a 500 USD and 1000 USD phones with the identical Qualcomm modem, Qualcomm gets twice as much royalties for the later, and Apple claims it's unfair, given that the modem is identical. Tim Cook, January: "so we were in a situation where the more we innovated with unique features ... the more money Qualcomm would collect for no reason." Qualcomm would of course say that the 1000 USD phone without their modem wouldn't sell at all. But the patents for the standards are supposed to be fair. Is the deal fair? That's what the courts will decide... or as Qualcomm hopes, Apple will settle before.

thisisit 9y ago

Are the costs adjusted dollars? What I mean is with each iteration of, say phone camera, the older one's cost will way less than what it might cost back in 2008/2010. So a camera might cost $5 but might have cost $15 back then.

laythea 9y ago

I don't know about the article because I cannot stand these "scroll a whole page down for 3 more words" style websites. Please make it easy to consume information.

stouset 9y ago
Looking at the article, I can't understand what your complaint is. There are three paragraphs of introductory information, and literally 100% of the remaining content is images of completely disassembled and knolled iPhone components, with a brief description next to the parts. I'm not actually certain how you could represent this information any better than they already have.

devy 9y ago

Posted this same article 11 hours prior to this post, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15459028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15459028 somehow HN didn't prevent it from repost it again, hmm.

relkci 9y ago

Awesome!