Inside the iPhone 5: What makes it tick

iPhone 5

(Credit: Apple)

The Apple A6 chip. The combo CDMA-LTE Qualcomm chip is at bottom.

(Credit: Apple)

Apple's revamp of the iPhone included an overhaul of the inside too. So, what new silicon did Apple drop into the iPhone 5's chassis?

A6 chip: It's faster! (duh). Here's a summary of what Apple says. "Up to twice as fast compared with the [iPhone 4S' A5 chip]...The A6 chip also offers graphics performance that's up to twice as fast as the A5."

Problem is, Apple doesn't say much beyond that. So, I asked Anand Shimpi from chip review site Anandtech.

It turns out that Anand's initial guess was wrong. Based on the performance gains, he initially believed the A6 used an ARM Cortex-A15 design. That's the latest and greatest from ARM, the chip architecture that powers virtually all of world's major-brand smartphones.

But in a post on Saturday, he says that's not the case.

"It turns out I was wrong," he wrote.

"Based on a lot of digging over the past couple of days, and conversations with the right people, I've confirmed that Apple's A6 [chip] is based on Apple's own ARM based CPU core and not the Cortex A15," he wrote.

The upshot is that the A6 can't be pegged to any current ARM chip design because Apple has take design liberties. This is similar to Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4, which isn't based on any particular ARM chip design.

The graphics processing unit is less clear but Anand believes it could be using faster Imagination PowerVR SGX543 cores.

Another analyst believes Apple is able to balance increased performance with decent battery life because of tweaks done independent of the main central processing unit, or CPU.

"In order to get double the performance but still have good battery life, more than likely it's because they have beefed up peripheral cores," said Francis Sideco, an analyst at IHS iSuppli. "Those are GPUs, accelerators that are peripheral to the main core," he said.

See CNET's full coverage of Apple's iPhone 5 event

LTE/4G/3G: Apple makes some pretty impressive claims about battery life. Despite 4G LTE's reputation for sucking the life out of smartphone batteries in short order, Apple says battery life, if anything, is a little better compared to the iPhone 4S.

"Internet use: Up to 8 hours on 3G, up to 8 hours on LTE, up to 10 hours on Wi-Fi," according to Apple.

That probably has more than a little do with Qualcomm's newest silicon. Apple's A6 is paired with Qualcomm's single-chip 28-nanometer MDM9615 LTE, according to Anand.

"Apple claims support for EDGE, EV-DO, HSPA, HSPA+, DC-HSDPA and LTE. The WiFi gets updated to dual-band 2.4GHz and 5GHz 802.11a/b/g/n, using 20MHz channels Apple can hit a peak link rate of 150Mbps over WiFi," he said.

iPod Touch: The new iPod Touch got an upgrade too: to a more pedestrian (and dated) dual-core A5 -- the same chip in the iPhone 4S and iPad 2. That said, the A5 "provides up to twice the processing power and up to seven times faster graphics than the previous generation," according to Apple, referring to the previous chip in the iPod Touch.

Teardowns will reveal other new silicon in the iPhone 5, likely including upgraded NAND flash memory and system DRAM chips.

Originally published on September 12.
Updated on September 13 at 5:00 p.m. PDT.
Updated again on September 15 at 4:25 p.m. PDT : corrects initial speculation about the ARM A15 chip.

iPhone 5 is thinner, lighter, faster

Brooke Crothers 16 Sep, 2012

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Thief drives straight through Apple Store window

Look, they've made a mess.

(Credit: Pe/YouTube Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

Perhaps he thought the iPhone 5 would already be there.

Who can imagine why someone would risk the sensitive fenders of his BMW to drive straight through the front window of the Apple Store in Temecula, Calif.?

And yet here is footage of a smash, a grab, and a slight thoughtlessness, given that the robbers seemed not to have factored in the security cameras.

Footage that was release to YouTube shows action that seems as incontrovertible as it is rather tragic.

I am grateful to the BBC for grabbing this footage and smashing it into my eyes.

Some will be impressed that the thieves appeared to have chosen the smaller items, rather than the MacBooks.

However, I am sure many of the Apple faithful will be depressed at the sheer mess that these people made. Didn't they understand that you can steal from an Apple Store without having to ram your car backward and forward into the pristine tables? Isn't that what Samsung was accused of?

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Look at that poor severed table leg. It's not as if it could have moved out of the way. Didn't they know how many design hours went into creating that beautiful thing?

Still, this story has a peculiar ending.

The security gates behind the car appear to have come down and hampered the thieves' exit. The car's tires allegedly suffered, as did the license plate.

Police now accuse 22-year-old Equonne Howard, after he had allegedly abandoned the car and then returned either to fix the flats or to retrieve a license plate he allegedly left behind.

He pleaded not guilty last Wednesday, the very same day the iPhone 5 was revealed.

Chris Matyszczyk 16 Sep, 2012

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Apple, and the media, bury the PC

Phil Schiller talks iPhone 5 at Wednesday's Apple event.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

You would think the PC was six feet under by reading tech coverage this week.

With every aspect of the iPhone 5 dissected ad nauseam by legions of tech journalists worldwide, coverage of the ultrabook at the concurrent Intel event didn't stand a chance.

Problem is, there's just too much cool tech that Apple -- and the Android guys too, by the way -- pack into a handheld device. PCs, as they stand now, are a bit boring by comparison.

Here are a few of the most prominent technologies that ultrabooks -- the standard for cutting-edge PC design -- either lack or can't incorporate effectively:

• 4G: The vast majority of ultrabooks don't come with Internet-access-anywhere capability. (In my opinion, a big mistake. At the very least it should be an option.) The iPhone, on the other hand, has the fastest thing going, LTE.
  
• Ultra high-resolution displays: There is no Windows laptop out there with anything close to the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro's 220 pixel-per-inch (PPI) density Retina display, let alone the iPhone's 326 PPI screen. And PC makers like Dell and Hewlett-Packard still insist on selling mainstream ultrabooks with sub-120 PPI displays. Result: ultra boring.
  
• Cameras: Aside from videoconferencing (which the iPhone can also do), the utility of a laptop's camera is problematic. Meanwhile, the iPhone's camera is good enough to turn many digicams into paperweights. And that now includes tech like panorama mode and video stabilization.
  
• Sensors: Again, the laptop paradigm doesn't lend itself to features like three-axis gyros and accelerometers. Not to mention digital compasses.
  
• Size: Though size is not a technology per se, it's a big factor. Intel processors are fast. No doubt. (And I like the Ivy Bridge processor in my laptop.) But until very recently you couldn't squeeze Intel tech into a phone. While it's possible now, the ARM variety of silicon is now the standard. It's not clear that Intel's chips have a compelling advantage over ARM in phones. Time will tell with tablets.
  

All of the above is here-and-now technology. We're not talking about, for example, futuristic tech that verifies a person's identity by reading the unique vein patterns in the palm of the hand. That's interesting Intel tech, but you won't see it for a few years, if at all.

And Intel had a lot to say this week about its upcoming "Haswell" fourth-generation Core processor. But the ultra power-efficient variety of that system-on-a-chip that gets loaded into tablets won't appear until the second half of 2013. Again, too far out there.

Meanwhile, Apple, Samsung, Google, Motorola, HTC, et al keep packing beautiful screens and better cameras into always-connected marvels of technology that you can buy now.

Here's a closing word of advice to Microsoft, Intel, and its partners to keep the PC above ground. Laser-focus on high-resolution displays, because a 13-inch Retina-class display would be stunning on an ultrabook. And make it touch, for good measure.

Any other advice from readers? I'm all ears.

Surface tablet: Microsoft will try to shift the focus of the PC to more mobile devices at its Build conference in November.

(Credit: CNET)

Chris Matyszczyk 16 Sep, 2012

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Alibaba: Google just plain wrong about our OS

Chinese search giant Alibaba is disputing Google's claim that Alibaba's new Aliyun operating system is a forked and incompatible version of Android and thus can't be used by phone maker Acer.

In a blog post yesterday, Google's Andy Rubin said "the Aliyun OS incorporates the Android runtime and was apparently derived from Android."

CNET asked Alibaba's John Spelich about Rubin's/Google's claims and about whether there are elements of Android in Aliyun, and here's what we got in response: "They have no idea and are just speculating. Aliyun is different."

Google took some heat earlier this week for seemingly using its clout to squash a burgeoning mobile OS. Alibaba, an e-commerce company, is known as the Google of China, and wanted to follow Google's playbook and build its own OS. Acer was set to include the OS in a handset, but those plans were apparently scuttled by Google, which said that while Alibaba built its own OS, it lifted elements of Android.

But Spelich told CNET in an e-mail that Aliyun is "not a fork. Ours is built on open-source Linux." And he added that Aliyun "has our own applications. [It's] designed to run cloud apps designed in our own ecosystem. [It] can run some but not all Android apps."

He also accused the Android ecosystem of being closed and restrictive:

Aliyun is an open-source based OS that is also an open ecosystem that allows others to host their mobile-enabled Web sites in our cloud and we make those Web sites available to users who use Aliyun OS phones. So we are an ecosystem that includes other Internet companies, whereas Android does not because it provides apps through downloads. It's the crux of the whole cloud vs. app debate. Cloud is open, apps system is closed because it is controlled by the operator of the apps marketplace. So you see: Two competing ecosystems, one that's open through the cloud, the other is closed and restricts users to only the apps that they want you to see.

Alibaba accused Google on Thursday of forcing Acer to drop its support of Aliyun. Acer had originally scheduled a press conference that day to show off the first Aliyun-powered smartphone but was told by Google that the Android maker would cease providing its support if Acer followed through. As a result, the conference was halted.

Alibaba cried foul. "Our partner was notified by Google that if the product runs Aliyun OS, Google will terminate its Android-related cooperation and other technology licensing with our partner," Alibaba said in a statement e-mailed to CNET on Thursday.

The accusation prompted Rubin to call out Aliyun as a forked version of Android that's modified to the extent that it's incompatible with other Android devices. As a member of the Open Handset Alliance, Acer is forbidden from using such an operating system, he said.

"Compatibility is at the heart of the Android ecosystem and ensures a consistent experience for developers, manufacturers, and consumers," Google said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. "Noncompatible versions of Android, like Aliyun, weaken the ecosystem."

We've contacted Google for a response to Spelich's claim that Aliyun is not a forked version of Android, and we'll update this post when we hear back.

CNET's Roger Cheng contributed to this report.

Edward Moyer 16 Sep, 2012

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The evolution of Mark Zuckerberg as a leader

Mark Zuckerberg aced his interview at TechCrunch Disrupt.

(Credit: James Martin/CNET)

With Facebook's stock price crashing and employee morale sinking, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stepped up and delivered a home run he would never have been able to hit even just a year ago.

As you may know, Zuckerberg has been under fire the last few months for Facebook's plummeting stock price. A darling of Wall Street before its IPO, Facebook fell to half its IPO price in just a few months. As a result, a growing chorus of critics have called for new leadership at Facebook. Some have even called for Zuckerberg himself to resign.

While I've always thought that the calls for Zuckerberg's resignation were extraordinarily premature, I have been critical of Zuckerberg for not focusing on creating revenue-generating product and for not publicly commenting on Facebook's stock price or soothing the market's fears about the company's future.

Zuckerberg finally answered his critics this week, though, at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference. During a wide-ranging interview with CrunchFund's Michael Arrington, Zuckerberg addressed everything from the company's plummeting stock price to its plans for mobile. I won't go through everything Zuckerberg discussed, but almost every part of the business was talked about. Arrington asked a lot of tough but fair questions.

By all accounts, Zuckerberg did a spectacular job. As a result, shares of Facebook have surged by 13 percent since Tuesday night, from $19.42 to $22 per share. While it's still nowhere near $38 per share (Facebook's IPO price), it's a clear step in the right direction.

As I sat in the audience listening to Zuckerberg speak, I couldn't help but compare his performance to his previous interviews. I remember him stumbling when he said the iPad wasn't a mobile device. And I especially remember when AllThingsD editors Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg grilled him so hard that he started sweating on stage.

Seriously, it wasn't pretty. See for yourself:

The Mark Zuckerberg I saw on stage at Disrupt didn't look anything like the guy who squirmed at the D Conference just two years prior. No, this Zuckerberg was poised, confident, and articulate. Sure, he spoke fast, but only because he was clearly excited by Facebook's future prospects (side note: the interview was Facebook's idea, I've been told).

Zuckerberg was able to simultaneously rally the Facebook troops and Wall Street with just his words. This is something he would never have been able to do even just a year ago. He wasn't born with Steve Jobs' onstage charm -- instead, he had to work up to the comfort level he exuded on stage at Disrupt.

I believe we're witnessing a new chapter in Zuckerberg's maturation. He was once a hacker who had to become a CEO. Now he's a CEO who's transforming into an articulate leader -- the type a public company with sky-high expectations needs.

Chris Matyszczyk 16 Sep, 2012

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Samsung attacks iPhone 5 in new ad

I don't think they've kissed and made up yet.

I don't even think they're talking.

When one party embarrasses another so badly -- and in public -- you don't expect the hurt one to just take it, do you?

And so Samsung is greeting the arrival of the iPhone 5 with an ad that will run tomorrow. It is not a flattering ad. It suggests that the iPhone 5 isn't even good enough to be, well, a copy of the Galaxy S3.

Clearly, it's been hastily put together, but its headline -- "It doesn't take a genius" -- rather prepares you for what follows.

Yes, it's a list of all the fine, rational reasons why the Galaxy S3 is vintage port compared to the iPhone 5's wine-in-a-box.

More Technically Incorrect

Oh, the Galaxy S3 is full of things the iPhone doesn't have: Palm Swipe Capture, Shake to Update, oh, and NFC -- to name but three.

And though there's no doubt that the S3 is a fine phone -- especially for those with hands handed down by gorillas -- there is one small element that Samsung might be overlooking.

People don't buy the iPhone for all the features. They buy it for all those quirky, irrational, emotional, maddening reasons that make people's eyes glaze over and their minds work like a blancmange clock.

Samsung's biggest problem isn't that its phone doesn't have some fine rational attributes. It's that the brand hasn't captured hearts.

There are no lists nor self-help books that can tell you how to do that.

Chris Matyszczyk 16 Sep, 2012

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Microsoft patent: Smack your phone up

The other night, I was awoken with a blinding flash of light.

I believed the nuclear holocaust had arrived. Or, at the very least, my slightly insane stalker.

Instead, my television had spontaneously switched itself on. I had to get out of bed and manually turn it off. I confess it crossed my mind to smack it.

Still somewhat dazed, I am grateful that Microsoft has finally heard my inner cry and patented a technology that allows you to smack a gadget to shut it up. In this case, it's your cell phone.

The Next Web tells me that Redmond's patent is as simple as it sounds.

You smack your phone, and it shuts up.

Patent Bolt reports that Microsoft's patent application -- number 20120231838 -- reads, in part: "When a user whacks the mobile device, the mobile device accelerates in response to the user whack."

Yes, it's a little like Secretariat in the last furlong.

It is something of a pity that Microsoft has used the word "whack," which has led to a torrid outbreak of online juvenilia. Patent Bolt says that the company clarifies that its whack could be a "slap, hit, swat, smack, flick, push, tap, or the like."

More Technically Incorrect

Still, in Microsoft's mind there seem to be those occasions when you're at the opera or listening to the New York Philharmonic playing Mahler's Ninth Symphony.

Your cell phone goes off, your face goes red, and your reputation goes the way of a coke-snorting starlet's.

There seems to be no indication of when this striking patent might come to fruition. However, I feel sure we will never see it applied to an iPhone.

iPhone users are far too in love with their apogees of design to ever think of hitting them. At best, one could envisage them gently stroking their devices, murmuring to them, "Shh, baby, shh."

I am sure Apple is filing such a patent at this very moment.

Chris Matyszczyk 15 Sep, 2012

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Apple posts detailed iPhone 5 schematic for case makers

iPhone 5 schematic for case manufacturers

(Credit: Apple)

Apple doesn't make life that easy for accessory makers before it launches its products, but after the unveiling it shares some of its secrets. Following the iPhone 5 launch, manufacturers scrambled to figure out the dimensions and feature placements so they could rush their cases to market. CNET's Daniel Terdiman was with Incase during the launch as the company monitored the live blogs covering the event  and gathered information in preparation for having iPhone 5 cases in the market by October 1.  Now they have all the information they need, as Apple published a detailed schematic for those making cases or other accessories. Here's the PDF.

CNET's complete iPhone 5 coverage

(Via Electronista)

CNET News staff 15 Sep, 2012

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Apple posts detailed iPhone 5 schematic for case manufacturers

iPhone 5 schematic for case manufacturers

(Credit: Apple)

Apple doesn't make life that easy for accessory makers before it launches its products, but after the unveiling it shares some of its secrets. Following the iPhone 5 launch, manufacturers scrambled to figure out the dimensions and feature placements so they could rush their cases to market. CNET's Daniel Terdiman was with Incase during the launch. Now they have all the information they need as Apple published a detailed schematic for those making cases or other accessories. Here is the PDF.

via Electronista

CNET News staff 15 Sep, 2012

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First listen: V-Moda Crossfade M-100 headphones

Val Kolton at the NYC CNET office

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg/CNET)

Val Kolton has a lot of ideas. I know him first as the man who runs V-Moda, but he's also a hotshot DJ. I met with him in NYC last week for a sneak preview of his brand-new Crossfade M-100 over-the-ear headphones. Kolton had just received the first production batch and hadn't actually listened to the completed headphones yet. I had the honor of listening first, even before the V-Man, and the M-100s totally knocked me out. It has a closed-back 'phone design, but the sound was remarkably open and spacious, a rare feat for a closed design. Bass was deep, but not overdone, and midrange and treble presence were quite good. Comfort levels are high, and the M-100 does a good job blocking environmental noise. This headphone was designed to sound great in noisy places, so it might sound too bass heavy at home. That's fine; since most people do most of their listening on the go, that design strategy makes perfect sense to me.

Volton is thrilled that a lot of the biggest-name DJs and producers like Avicii, Funkagenda, Morgan Page, Erick Morillo, and Nervo use his headphones. Kolton doesn't compete in what he calls the YACH (Yet Another Celebrity Headphone) sweepstakes that started with the Beats by Dre. That's a good move; paid endorsements don't do a thing for the sound, and worse yet, the fees have to negatively affect the headphones' build quality. DJs use V-Modas because they like the sound; there's no money changing hands, Kolton said.

The M-100, inside and out

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg/CNET)

Kolton must be doing something right; he's selling 1,000,000 sets of headphones a year. The man is equally obsessed with sound quality and durability; as a DJ he knows most of his customers won't baby their headphones. That's why he held off making a fold-up, collapsible headphone till now; hinges are prone to failing. He worked long and hard to develop a proprietary all-metal hinge, and the M-100s really do seem unusually rugged. Time will tell, but the M-100 is backed by a two-year warranty.

Kolton promised a M-100 for review in a few weeks when they go on sale for $299; I'll provide a more in-depth sonic appraisal sometime in October.

Steve Guttenberg 15 Sep, 2012

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