I have two original iPhones in my possession. One sits in a junk drawer, untouched and unloved for many years.
The other has been carefully disassembled and the parts arranged in a handsome black frame that hangs on my office wall. Made by Grid Studio, the Grid 1 is my own personal iPhone teardown in a box.
Grid Studio’s Grid 1 review
Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
All original parts
This Grid 1 showcases a first-generation iPhone, a genuine handset that’s been broken down and the parts carefully arranged in a 13-inch-by-13-inch frame. Grid Studio labeled the parts, with some key measurements displayed on the plain white backing.
All the major components are there except the battery, omitted because it can swell, leak and possibly explode. It simply isn’t suited for long-term archiving.
There’s the camera module, which looks positively antiquated compared to modern iPhone cameras with its tiny pinhole aperture.
Here’s the phone’s surprisingly complicated chassis and its aluminum back-cover plate with a shiny Apple logo. The bottom part of the back plate is plastic, so as not to block cellular and Wi-Fi signals.
And here’s the main logic board with an Apple-branded chip front and center. The chip is a APL0098 chip: a 32-bit, single-core RISC ARM chip made by Samsung. It’s the great-great-great-great grandfather of today’s Apple silicon.
Just look at that massive SIM tray
Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
The biggest surprise is the SIM tray, which looks positively gigantic. Back in the dark ages of 2007, the SIM card was one of the iPhone’s single biggest internal components (except for the screen).
And what’s this? A headphone socket? I’d almost forgotten iPhones even had them (and that the original iPhone had a bizarrely recessed socket that would only accommodate Apple’s wired earbuds).
Apple co-founder Steve Jobs‘ signature is reproduced near the bottom of the frame, accompanied by his famous “crazy ones” quote.
Photo: Leander Kahney/Cult of Mac
Grid Studio does more than just iPhones
The Grid 1 is a limited-edition piece. (Grid Studio says it will produce only 999 units.) But it’s only one of several framed iPhone models offered by the company. Grid Studio framed most of Apple’s iPhones, including the iPhone X, iPhone 5S, iPhone 8 and more. It also offers various models of Apple Watch, Nintendo Game Boy, Sony PlayStation Portable and Samsung Galaxy S.
Pricing varies according to the importance and rarity of the device. The original iPhone, for example, costs $599. (It’s on sale for $399, but is currently sold out.) Most of the iPhones cost between $139 and $169.
All in all, it’s a handsome piece of decorative tech art.
For an iconic gadget, what could be a better fate than ending up in a frame and displayed like a butterfly?
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
