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Apple said the iPhone 3G S would go on sale June 19, and European carrier Orange decided that meant 12:01 a.m. RapidRepair CEO Aaron Vronko headed to Paris to get his hands on one.
The Apple iPhone 3G S — the 16GB black model, in this instance — comes with earbuds, a USB charger, a USB cable, a SIM opener and of course a manual.
The first step toward disassembly is to remove the bottom two screws by the dock port with a Phillips-head screwdriver. To lift the LCD screen, RapidRepair instructs, you’ll need a small suction cup, or else need to poke a paperclip through the screw-less holes.
The next step is to remove the ribbon cables, highlighted here in red. RapidRepair notes that at this point the iPhone 3G S already differs from its predecessor, as the LCD screen has a different driver package, and components on the end of the cable are different
And then there were two: the front half separated from the back panel.
To free the LCD module from the digitizer, six side screws must be removed.
The next step is to remove the system board, which involves removing the screw securing the camera module, as well as four Molex brand connectors and a big screw hiding behind the warranty sticker.
Who said an iPhone battery can’t be removed? Here, RapidRepair pries open the bottom of the board, removes the camera Molex connector and finally the battery, which it says is “solderless and easily replaceable.”
Once the screws are removed, the headphone jack comes out easily. The same goes for the dockport. RapidRepair says that the vibrator module, GPS antenna and SIM spring are held in place with mild adhesive and also come out with little coaxing.
Removing the digitizer, however, requires a heat gun and some care. The ear-piece speaker and “home” button can also be removed at this stage.
Here rests the iPhone 3G S. Although, RapidRepair says it can put back together by reversing all the steps.
On the left is the iPhone 3G S, and on the right is the iPhone 3G. The iPhone 3G S contains a Samsung S5PC100 CPU (the 3G contains a Samsung S3C6400 CPU) and an ARM Cortex A8 600MHz PowerVR SGX graphics card, while the 3G has an ARM 11 412MHz PowerVR MBX-Lite graphics card. The 3G S has 256MB of RAM (up from the 3G’s 128MB of DDR RAM), offers six more hours of talk time and features Bluetooth 2.1.
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See All Slideshows
Were you the type of kid who liked to take a thing apart just to see how it worked? The team at RapidRepair surely was. As soon as the iPhone 3G S went on sale at the Orange Boutique in Paris at midnight, RapidRepair CEO Aaron Vronko got his hands on the new smartphone and he ran it over to the Brico Mac store where he promptly began to pull apart the perfectly assembled device piece by piece. This slideshow details the disassembly, in all its gory detail, and offers a look at the iPhone 3G S from the inside out. As of June 19, the iPhone 3G S is available at Apple and AT&T retail and online stores, as well as Best Buy and Wal-Mart. [Photos courtesy of RapidRepair]