Steps 1–25: Teardown
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Step 9
The battery from the Pre on the left, and the iPhone 3G on the right. Although they're different shapes, both weigh in at 23 grams.
In contrast to Apple's iPhones, the battery on the Pre is user-replaceable. Thanks Palm!
Step 10
The back of the phone and speaker.
The speaker in the Pre is substantially better than the one in the iPhone.
Palm didn't skimp on antennas. They're exposed for all to see as soon as you remove the back panel.
The antenna design is three dimensional to optimize signal quality. The iPhone's antennas also use this technique.
The small sticker labeled palm visible in the third image is probably there to prevent people from doing what we're about to do...
Step 11
Removing one of the six T5 screws required to seperate the backplate from the phone.
The screw in the upper right corner is covered by a sticker labeled "Palm."
There are interlocking tabs securing the backplate.
Carefully work around the phone releasing the tabs as you go.
Step 12
We found two antennas.
One was labeled GPS (its obvious what its for) and the other one was labeled DIV (for diversity antenna - thanks microbreak!).
Step 13
The two volume buttons are still connected to the front half of the phone. Completely separating the two halves requires first removing the plastic volume button cover, then peeling up the volume button electronics.
The back frame seperated from the rest of the phone.
Step 14
Two connectors need to be disconnected in order to remove the black PCB.
The PCB is glued to the rest of the Pre. A gentle pry with the spudger separates the two.
Step 15
Removing the keyboard bezel.
The hardware keyboard and its associated sliding mechanism weighs 32 grams. That's nearly 25% of the weight of the phone! Even if you're not a fan of a hardware keyboard, there's no denying that packing the keyboard into a device that's not much larger or heavier than the iPhone is a very impressive engineering feat.
Step 16
The Palm Pre is the first phone using Texas Instrument's new OMAP3 (Open Media Applications Processor) platform.
The processor is a 600 MHz ARM Cortex A8 + PowerVR SGX 530 GPU + 430MHz C64x+ DSP + ISP (Image Signal Processor)
The chip covered by a white sticker on the LCD is CP6944BA 0907 A 04 KOR 604022.
We found a water damage sensor on the logic board, just below the Micro USB port, indicated by the red box on the second image.
If the speaker is on the back doesn't that make it more difficult to hear and more likely to be covered by your hand? So in the end does the sound end up being worse in practical usage? The iPhone speaker placement seems to make more sense acoustically.
Does anyone have an idea of the manufacturer of the 3D antenna?
"DIV" likely stands for "Diversity", a second antenna for the CDMA receiver that reduces the impact of spatial variations in signal strength and thus increases the average data rate available. Pretty common in CDMA EVDO designs these days.
Re: Step 15
"...there's no denying that packing the keyboard into a device that's no larger or heavier than the iPhone is a very impressive engineering feat."
At 87% volume of the Pre, the iPhone also weighs 2 grams less.
If they hadn't packed the keyboard in, I'm sure your statement would be true, except for the 'very impressive engineering feat' part.
Is two grams really enough for a human to notice the difference? It's within rounding error - if given in ounce units both would weigh 4.7 ounces.