Many of us have been waiting for this and iFixit has delivered. In a live teardown of Apple’s biggest ever iPhone, iFixit has revealed a lot of things about what goes inside this 5.5-inch handset. In addition to confirming the 1GB RAM, iFixit also reveals that the iPhone 6 Plus comes with a huge 2915mAh battery, which is almost twice big as what we saw on the iPhone 5S.
In line with rumors, the battery is rated at 3.82 V and 11.1 Wh of energy, for a total of 2915 mAh—nearly double the capacity of the 1560 mAh unit in the iPhone 5s, and slightly larger than the 2800 mAh burner in the Galaxy S5.
Just for the reference, the 5.7-inch Samsung Galaxy Note 4, which is 8.5mm thick, comes with a 3,220mAh battery. So Apple’s effort of stuffing in a 2915mAh battery inside a 7.1mm chassis is quite commendable.
The 4.7-inch iPhone 6, on the other hand, has a 1810mAh battery which is still bigger than 1560 mAh battery found on the iPhone 5S. This should explain why iPhone 6 is claimed to provide better battery life inspire of having a bigger and higher resolution screen.
As expected, iPhone 6 Plus features a relocated and redesigned vibrator motor, which now sits to the right of the battery. Apple appears to be using a linear oscillating type vibrator instead of the rotating mass unit found in the iPhone 5s. Unlike the linear oscillator found in iPhone 4S, the iPhone 6 Plus unit is rectangular.
As for the camera, the iPhone 6 Plus features an 8 MP (with 1.5µ pixels) ƒ/2.2 aperture rear-facing camera, just like the iPhone 5S. The iPhone 6 Plus brings two new additions to the table: optical image stabilisation, and “Focus Pixel” phase-detection autofocus. Just for the reference, phase-detection isn’t completely new to smartphones. We first saw it on Samsung Galaxy S5, where it was termed “fast auto-focus”.
Few other things revealed by iFixit’s teardown:
- Apple A8 APL1011 SoC + Elpida 1 GB LPDDR3 RAM (as denoted by the markings EDF8164A3PM-GD-F)
- Qualcomm MDM9625M LTE Modem
- SK Hynix H2JTDG8UD1BMS 128 Gb (16 GB) NAND Flash
- Murata 339S0228 WiFi Module
- Broadcom BCM5976 touchscreen controller
- M8 motion coprocessor (NXP LPC18B1UK)
- Qualcomm WTR1625L RF transceiver chip
- NXP 65V10 NSD425 NFC chip for Apple Pay
- InvenSense MP67B 6-axis gyroscope and accelerometer combo
- Cirrus Logic 338S1201 audio codec
The teardown is still in progress, and we shall update the article if there’s anything significant that comes out.