iPhone X Teardown: Two Batteries, Kinect-like Camera System

iPhone X: TrueDepth front-facing camera System

iPhone X Teardown and Analysis! [Video]

Video uploaded by iFixit on November 3, 2017

The iPhone X Teardown Revealed Two Batteries and a Kinect-like Camera System

The iPhone X teardown revealed a double-cell battery, a Kinect-like camera system and two different modems, depending on the model number of your device.

Sometimes innovations arrive ahead of their time and no one notices them. Just as it happened to the Kinect that was developed by Microsoft for the Xbox gaming console.

The Kinect was the spatial infrared dot matrix sensor, created by PrimeSense – the tech company from Israel. How does it work? It radiates infrared rays that reflect back from the object and the integrated processor analyzes the data and builds a 3D picture.

Perhaps, Microsoft made a mistake by not tying face identification to the Kinect. It was used for gaming controls, but gamers aren’t a very large crowd unfortunately, and considered relatively conservative. The industry didn’t end up reacting and didn’t install the sensor controlled features in their games.

Apple on the other hand, bought PrimeSense in 2013 for $360 million and hit the jackpot. Of course, the company invested hundreds and millions more since the moment of purchase and the technology has evolved greatly. This is how it all went down…Microsoft ended up being left behind, scrapping for the new Kinect 2 while Apple is gaining millions by introducing the Face ID into their smartphones.

The guys from iFixit, the site we all love for the discoveries they are making every day found out that the Face ID is very much so resembling the half-forgotten Kinect. Their IR-enabled video camera wasn’t quick enough to catch the dot pattern but managed to shoot the light beam!

The amazing thing number two about the iPhone X is that this smartphone features not one but TWO batteries.You can say that they finally understand how critical the battery capacity is for the modern smartphone! Especially for one with the edge-to-edge display and the pro-active face recognition system.

iPhone X teardown: battery. Source of image: iFixit.com.

I might end up disappointing you by saying this but technically it’s still one battery. It has a very moderate capacity in comparison to other flagship phones. Compared to the Galaxy Note 8 it is 10.35 Wh vs. 12.71 Wh. In fact, the iPhone X features a one dual-cell battery and its strange form is determined by the new layout.

With the slim shape being a prime goal nowadays, engineers faced a real challenge. They had to find some place to organize the logic board and all of the cameras. The front has the“Romeo” and “Juliette” couple and the double rear one. And don’t forget about the logic board, because most of the magic the iPhone X can perform is due to the amazing software.

iPhone X teardown: the separated logic board. Source of image: iFixit.com.

The logic board takes up just half of the space under the hood. Apple just printed it and folded twice making a nice sandwich. The iFixit guys had to use industry scale equipment to separate it. They mentioned that this is the first sandwiched logic board since the first iPhone. No matter how small the components have become, there’s still no enough place for them to install it all.

The war between Qualcomm and Apple has affected the iPhone X hardware as well. The iPhones X with the model number A1865 feature Qualcomm MDM9655 Snapdragon X16 LTE modem while the iPhones X with the model number A1901 have the Intel XMM7480 one. They aren’t interchangeable, though. Qualcomm is much more powerful than Intel and embraces more bands. Apple intentionally throttled the Qualcomm modem to keep the parity between the two and that’s why the Qualcomm modem doesn’t support Gigabit speeds in U.S. networks.

As we can see, the iPhone X doesn’t continue the iPhones line-up but sets up a completely new class of handhelds both externally and internally.