First iPhone 3G S Teardown Goes Live, Shows 720p-Capable CPU

A recently-released teardown of Apple’s iPhone 3G S by RapidRepair has revealed the presence of a 720p HD-capable processor as well as a 600MHz ARM processor, Samsung’s S5PC100, based on the much more advanced Cortex A8 platform. However, official specifications (PDF) show that the chip could run at 833MHz and that, while Apple officially limits video recording to 640×480, the full-speed component could not only play but capture 720p.

The S5PC100 is also technically capable of two-way video calling, although latency on current 3G networks is likely to discourage this.

Per the teardown, Apple apparently chose to underclock the iPhone 3G S’ processor given heat and power concerns within a tight space, as was the case when the company scaled back previous iPhones’ processors from 600MHz to 412MHz. Unlike the iPod touch, the iPhone has cellular baseband hardware and other components that cut back on available energy and cooling areas.

Along with confirming the main processor, the examination also shows the existence of 256MB of RAM (twice as much as on the past two iPhone generations), and that at least 16GB iPhone 3G S units use a single Toshiba NAND flash memory chip for storage.