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Bloomberg has partnered with iFixit to provide a high-resolution look at how the inside of the iPhone has changed since first launching a decade ago.

original-iphone-vs-iphone-8-800x797.jpg
The original iPhone on left vs. brand new iPhone 8 via Bloomberg

The original iPhone, above left, is equipped with a bulky, yellow lithium-ion battery rated for 1,400 mAh. Apple said that was good enough for up to eight hours of talk time, six hours of web browsing, seven hours of video playback, or 24 hours of audio playback, but real-world results certainly varied.

In the top-left corner sits a 2-megapixel rear camera that lacks an LED flash and shoots photos that are unequivocally blurry by today's standards.

While shielding covers many of the other components, the original iPhone is equipped with 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB of storage, a single-core ARM11 processor downclocked to 412 MHz, just 128MB of RAM, and a PowerVR MBX Lite graphics processor. It also has Bluetooth 2.0 and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi chips.

The original iPhone supports EDGE cellular networks, often referred to as 2G. The technology is so outdated that AT&T, which was the exclusive carrier of the device in the United States, doesn't even operate a compatible network anymore.

Other hardware in the original iPhone includes a 3.5-inch display with a resolution of 320×480 pixels, a mechanical Home button, and a deeply recessed 3.5mm headphone jack that was hard to use. The device's iPod-like 30-pin dock connector was succeeded by the Lightning connector in 2012.

By comparison, the iPhone 8 has a tall, slim battery rated for 1,812 mAh, a 12-megapixel rear camera, up to 256GB of storage, 2GB of RAM, a six-core A11 Fusion chip, Bluetooth 5.0, 802.11a/c Wi-Fi, and LTE Advanced. It has a Lightning connector, a capacitive Home button, and no headphone jack.

The inside of an iPhone has looked similar since the iPhone 4, while the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS below look noticeably different.

iphone-3g-3gs-internals.jpg
iPhone 3G on left vs. iPhone 3GS on right via Bloomberg

While we've already seen the inside of every iPhone model thanks to iFixit's teardowns over the years, Bloomberg's full feature article provides high-resolution photos and is worth a look for iPhone aficionados.

Article Link: Here's How Much the Inside of an iPhone Has Changed in Ten Years
 

Hater

macrumors 6502a
Sep 20, 2017
898
884
Edinburgh, Scotland
I reckon I can still change a 4 or 5's logic board in under 5 minutes.

7's and 8's? not a chance. :(

The original was a bit of a pain to get apart! Not as bad as 3rd gen iPods though...
 
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Superhappytree

macrumors 6502a
Sep 10, 2015
938
3,159
Cumbria
Only thing that hasn't changed is the terrible battery life. Can't believe we are still using battery tech that's decades old.

Battery life actually improves. The thing is though over the years we’ve gotten faster processors, faster graphics, much higher resolution displays, much brighter displays, a chunk of the space being taken up for better cameras and things like haptic feedback etc. It all sucks the actual improvement of battery life away so we get more or less the same with slight improvements due to power management etc.
 

Tozovac

macrumors 68040
Jun 12, 2014
3,009
3,215
Why so many textures, and 3D-looking hardware inside? And why so black? Shouldn't Jony Ive have found a way to make the guts be white, grey, flat, and less-intuitive than back in 2012? After all, the average user no longer needs a battery to look like a battery in order to know it's a battery. The user can take time to wonder, play, and explore to learn it's a battery instead of instantly recognizing it's a battery in a "it just works!" kind of way. All those colors & textures look so...old. :)
 

44267547

Cancelled
Jul 12, 2016
37,642
42,491
Aside from all the technology incorporated into today's latest generation iPhone, take a second and reflect on how thin these devices really are. Even the iPad, incredibly thin and less than an inch thick. We live in some fascinating times where phones are more powerful, thin and lightweight over computers ten years ago.
 

mi7chy

macrumors G4
Oct 24, 2014
10,495
11,155
How it looks isn't as important as future proofing the device with sufficient DRAM, quality battery size, etc. so it doesn't slow down after a few iOS updates and prematurely shut down from degraded battery.
 
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OldSchoolMacGuy

Suspended
Jul 10, 2008
4,197
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Only thing that hasn't changed is the terrible battery life. Can't believe we are still using battery tech that's decades old.

The battery industry changes very slowly. There haven't been much in the way of breakthroughs in the past 10-20 years. Incremental changes but much of it comes through better use of power in hardware/software rather than the batteries themselves.
 

Return Zero

macrumors 65816
Oct 2, 2013
1,302
3,718
Kentucky
Only thing that hasn't changed is the terrible battery life. Can't believe we are still using battery tech that's decades old.
8 hours versus 14 hours of talk time and you say it hasn't changed? Batteries are completely dependant on chemistry, which simply doesn't evolve as fast as our ability to manufacture and package smaller electrical components. A new iPhone is literally 1000x as fast as the 10-year old original and you complain about "decades old" tech. Well, I have worse news for you. The screen is still made of glass, which is "millennia old" tech, so... enjoy your stone-age glass rectangle :D
 

OldSchoolMacGuy

Suspended
Jul 10, 2008
4,197
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I'd like to see a comparison on how people's phone behavior has changed from the original iPhone to the iPhone 8.

Vastly. When iOS 2.0 was released, people complained about battery life issues. It wasn't the software itself, it was that there was now an App Store, which made the phone much more useful. The reason for the battery "issue" was that people were now using their phones much more than they had previously.

We see this continue. Each year studies find we're using our phones more and more every day. It's this increase in use that's draining our batteries faster, not the batteries themselves or the software. If you go from using Facebook for 10 minutes per day to the current average of 20 minutes (the current average daily usage), it shouldn't be surprising that battery life may be less.
 

fmalloy

macrumors 6502
Nov 5, 2007
405
245
Wow, technology has gotten better in the last 10 years - thanks to shrinking silicon processes (TSMC, UMC, Intel, Samsung), LCD technology (Sharp, Samsung, LG), Chip design and integration innovation (Samsung, Qualcomm, ARM, Broadcom), and camera technology (Sony).

Nowhere do I see Apple, except taking that technology and putting it in a shiny rectangle. Well, they *do* write the software.

How about a photo showing how the battery got smaller from the 7 to the 8? Progress!
 
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