iPhone 6 Plus Teardown Reveals 1GB of RAM, 2915mAh Battery and More

By Ketan Pratap | Updated: 20 September 2014 16:36 IST

Apple's new iPhones were greeted by long queues in select countries including Japan and Australia. iFixit, the company that publishes free online repair guides for consumer electronics, got its hands on Apple's bigger iPhone 6 Plus from one of the stores in Australia.

The publication points out that the store only had 40 iPhone 6 Plus units, further cementing reports of suppliers not being able to meet Apple's increased orders.

(Also see: iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus: Everything You Need to Know)

After stripping the new iPhone 6 Plus down to the core, the teardown experts report that the device packs a high-capacity battery, and a revamped inner layout.

According to iFixit, the iPhone 6 Plus includes a 2915mAh battery, which goes in-line with leaks ahead of the launch, and is a major upgrade over the battery capacities of the iPhone 5s (1560mAh) and iPhone 5c (1510mAh). Notably, the iPhone 6 Plus comes with a bigger battery than the Samsung's flagship Galaxy S5 (2800mAh battery); though it is smaller than that of Galaxy Note 4 (3220mAh) - though bearing a display of comparable size.

The teardown also reveals the amount on system memory or RAM (Random Access Memory) onboard, which much-speculated about ahead of the launch and expected to be 1GB. iFixit confirms this, detailing the chipset as "Apple A8 APL1011 SoC + Elpida 1 GB LPDDR3 RAM." Recently, purported benchmarks of the iPhone 6 Plus were leaked along with the claim the iPhone 6 featured the same amount of memory - 1GB of RAM.

iFixit also points us to Chipwork's blog, which in early analysis concludes the Apple A8 SoC is fabricated by TSMC in a 20nm CMOS process.

The teardown of the iPhone 6 Plus also includes that the handset includes a 4G LTE modem from Qualcomm, as well as chips from Skyworks, Avago.

Other companies supplying parts for the new phone include Murata, which supplies the Wi-Fi module; Broadcom that supplies touch screen controller; TriQuint supplying power amplifier module, and InvenSense supplying gyroscope and accelerometer combo.

For inbuilt storage, Apple uses SK Hynix supplied 128GB NAND flash memory. The teardown by iFixit also shows that Apple has reworked the innards of the new iPhone to make it slimmest iPhone launched till now.