iFixit

No surprises inside the box:

• USB docking cable
• Standard iPhone headphones
• USB power adapter
• Oh, what's this? A New Zealand power plug! We've never gotten one of these in a box before!

Removing the SIM card. Fortunately for the world's paper clips, the iPhone 3G comes with a SIM eject tool.

Perhaps the least-touted new feature of the iPhone 3G is the flush headphone jack, allowing non-Apple headphones to be used without an adapter. Yay!

For comparison, here's a link to last-year's iPhone disassembly.

Our predictions:

• Apple-labeled Samsung processor. [correct]
• Either some kind of GPS chip, or none at all. If there isn't a GPS chip, then it could be built into the processor. [Turns out it's an Infineon chip]
• Lots of chips with only Apple markings on them. Sometimes we can tell what they are, but most of the time you have to take the chip itself apart first. [correct, but this one's cheating]
• Removing the display!

Rotating the display up.

Apple used orange stickers to number the connectors to the logic board 1 through 6.

The camera is located in the upper right corner of the phone. Unfortunately, it connects to the bottom of the logic board, meaning you'll likely need to remove the logic board from the phone to remove the camera. We haven't tried removing the camera, but would assume that like the original phone, the camera can be removed for those wanting to bring their iPhone 3G into secure locations.

A little birdy has told me that TechOnline will be decapping the chips we can't identify tomorrow, after the US release. They soak the chip in an acid bath to eat away the ceramic coating, then use x-rays and other fancy equipment to examine it.

The display assembly separated from the unit.

In a significant departure from the first iPhone, it appears that the LCD and glass covering are separate components-- just like the iPod Touch. They were glued together before, making replacement screens very expensive. The glass breaks more than anything else, so this is great news for repairing the iPhone 3G!

We had to remove 6 Phillips #00 screws to separate the glass from the LCD.

The glass (with integrated touch sensors and chips) is underneath, while the LCD is being removed.

In the previous iPhone, the display was fairly monolithic. A number of components were connected together via the display assembly-- now the display just connects to the main board. Hopefully this will make obtaining replacement parts easier-- we've had trouble getting quality supplies of iPhone displays to sell.

Behold, the iPhone! Can you see the 3G bits inside?

The two boards (logic and communications) are now one. Rather than stacking them, as in the last model, they laid it out along the entire length. We're guessing this allowed them to make the battery longer.

We're not used to taking photos outside our studio, but these pictures are turning out great because of our awesome friends in NZ.

Props to Andrei Smirnov of Mac Solutions for helping us out. They are a Macintosh sales and support company established in 1998 and based on the North Shore, Auckland. Do us a favor and use his services the next time you're in Auckland!

Uh oh.

Let's try removing that.

And the iPhone explodes!