The iPhone 5s and the 'mythical' M7 coprocessor
AR + VR
UPDATE: M7 motion coprocessor found.
The folks at iFixit managed to be one of the first people to get their hands on the new iPhone 5s, and they did with it what they do with every new bit of kit they get their hands on – they took it apart! And this is an interesting teardown because it gives us an insight into how Apple's marketing works.
During the iPhone 5s launch event, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller announced that the new handset would feature a new motion coprocessor called the M7. This chip, according to Apple, was designed to take in continuous realtime data from the motion sensors and process it, paving the way for a whole new range of new fitness apps.
During the event Schiller gave the impression that the M7 was a discrete chip inside the iPhone 5s, and the on-screen graphic during the event seemed to support that concept.
When a teardown of the iPhone 5s was carried out I fully expected the M7 processor to be revealed. But the latest teardown shows that there is no discrete M7 processor inside the new iPhone.
"Perhaps the 'M' stands for 'magical,' because it’s not there, folks,' wrote Miroslav Djuric, chief information architect of iFixit, in a statement to ZDNet. "The mythical M7 is most likely a combination of motion-oriented components, and not an actual dedicated chip as Apple implied during last week’s product announcement."
"Chock it up to savvy marketing," he said.
Inside the new iPhone 5s the iFixit team did however uncover some interesting hardware. They found the dual-core A7 based on the ARM v8 64-bit instruction set with what the team believes to be 1 GB of RAM. The also found a Qualcomm MDM9615M LTE modem, a WTR1605L transceiver, and that the updated 1.5 micron pixel pitch iSight camera is a new, until-now-unseen sensor from Sony.
Inside the iPhone 5s is a Murata Wi-Fi module which the team believes is home to a Broadcom BCM4334. What's interesting to note about this chipset is that it does not support the newer gigabit 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard.
On the repairability front iFixit gave the new iPhone 5s a 6 out of ten, where ten is easiest to repair. They liked the fact that the handset is easy to remove and that the battery is relatively easy to replace, but continue to dislike the proprietary pentalobed screws used to hope the handset together, and the fact that the screen is a single assembly which makes replacing it costly.
The team also noted that lashings of glue used to hold down the battery which made it tricky to remove, and a fragile ribbon cable used to connect the fingerprint sensor to the mainboard that could be damaged when opening the handset.