Many have criticized the iPod Touch for being a crippled model of the iPhone, but is there more to Apple’s touch-screen media player than meets the eye? Yes, actually, there is.

Every 8GB iPod Touch costs Apple about $155 to make according to iSuppli, which conducted a "Teardown Analysis" of a brave soul’s unit. In other words, iSuppli’s "Teardown Analysts" took apart an iPod Touch, and researched and analyzed each major part.

"…despite its functional and physical outward resemblance to the iPhone," said Andrew Rassweiler, teardown services manager and principal analyst for iSuppli, "and the fact that its internals borrow heavily from the iPhone, the iPod touch is no iPhone clone, and has its own unique design."

The iPod Touch uses a different set of parts for the WLAN and touch screen functions of the device. It also uses advanced packaging techniques not used in the iPhone in order to squeeze all that hardware goodness into a smaller space. However, they both share most of the same internal parts including the key integrated circuit that sits at the core of both machines.

As a result, the iPod Touch is more like a refined little brother to the iPhone as opposed to a crippled iPhone clone.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, December 19th, 2007 at 5:47 pm under iPhone, iPod Touch.  Print This Post

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