How do we know the new iPod touch began shipping yesterday? Because iFixit’s gone and torn it apart already. That’s right, the fifth-generation device has received its customary teardown, revealing its whopping new battery, and all of its new components. iFixit have awarded the iPod touch a repairability score of 3 out of 10, meaning it’s not at all easy to fix.
It’s not impossible to repair the new iPod touch, iFixit notes, but it is very difficult. First you’ll need a heat gun to remove the display from the casing and get inside the device. “The Touch has no screws,” iFixit says. “Instead, a combo of clips and adhesive makes it difficult to open the case.”
Once inside, you’ll find most components are soldered together, “requiring either a very difficult or very expensive repair if any one part breaks.” Apple does this to make everything super compact and make the device as small as possible. That’s great — until you need to repair it.
The teardown also revealed a new battery in this model, which has a 1,030 mAh capacity and provides 3.8 Wh at 3.7 volts. That’s a slight improvement over the old iPod touch battery, which had a 930 mAh capacity, and it provides up to 40 hours of music playback, according to Apple’s website.
Unfortunately, there are no improvements to the home button. Unlike the iPhone 5, which has a new home button that’s mounted to the display, making it much stronger, the iPod touch’s button uses a traditional (and weaker) rubber-membrane fixture.
Internal chips include Apple’s A5 processor, with 512MB of DDR2 RAM; a 32GB Toshiba NAND flash chip; a Murata Wi-Fi module; a Broadcom touchscreen controller, and a STMicroelectrics gyroscope. There’s also a mysterious Apple chip numbered “338S1116.” It’s unclear what this is for, but according to iFixit, it bears a “striking resemblance” to the Apple 338S1117 chip found in the iPhone 5.
You can check out out the full teardown over at iFixit now.
Source: iFixit
