Contributed by Dick James
View our teardown blog on the iPhone 7
One of the lesser-known stories of mobile phone evolution is the development of proximity sensing in order to save power and disable touch screen functions when the phone is actually being used as a phone. This essentially means turning off the...
Contributed by John Sullivan,
Recent reports have surfaced suggesting that Qualcomm is in discussion to acquire Dutch chipmaker NXP. Such a deal, likely valued at over US$30B, would be one of the biggest in the semiconductor sector this year and would push 2016 closer to the total acquisition record set just last year, which was in excess...
Contributed by Mandi Gingerich
Now that we have had a look at Apple’s latest offering in the world of wearables, it’s time to dig into the latest from one of the original fitness tracker manufacturers, Fitbit. Replacing the Charge HR in Fitbit’s lineup is the new Charge 2, promising a few upgrades including...
Contributed by Mandi Gingerich and Jim Morrison
Just when you thought we might be finished with Apple-related teardown updates, here we are once again. We too had hoped to be through with this by now, but alas, there seems to have been a delay in delivery of our new Apple Watch. We’ve heard this is a fairly common...
Contributed by Stacy Wegner, Al Cowsky, Chad Davis, Dick James, Daniel Yang, Ray Fontaine and Jim Morrison
Keep up with major updates to the ongoing teardown blog.
And the winner is….Intel, at least in the iPhone 7 A1778 we have in our lab. The Intel and Apple iPhone 7 rumors have been circulating...
Contributed by Dick James
As usual, within days of the August 19 launch of the Samsung Galaxy Note 7, we had it in pieces and had identified most of the significant components that were inside.
APU and memory
The application processor that drives our phone is the Exynos 8 Octa (Exynos 8890), similar to the Galaxy S7 and...
Contributed by Ray Angers
Speculation about who will acquire analog semiconductor manufacturer Intersil is high in the latest chapter of the 2016 Mergers and Acquisitions story. Reports indicate that Japan’s Renesas, a leader in the automotive IC market, currently has offered US$3B for the Milpitas-based company. While Intersil...
Contributed by Daniel Yang, Mandi Gingerich and Phil Gamache
In today’s smartphones, a touch screen has become a must-have function. To implement this function, smartphone makers usually have to use two separate silicon components to fulfill both the touch function and the display driving function, a touch screen controller (...
Contributed by Dick James
Soitec Bounces Back, Makes Gains in Mobile Phones, AutomotiveThe week of July 11 was the week for the annual pilgrimage down to the Semicon West show, though it’s becoming less of a show these days than a gathering place for the industry, with multiple conferences in parallel, hence the motto for the event...
Contributed by Miranda Lim
Last year we looked at the Force Touch technology on the Apple Watch including its construction and its capacitive sensing approach. Later in the year, Apple introduced 3D Touch on iPhone 6s and we have performed a similar analysis (report available soon in the Chipworks Store, please contact us). Since...
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