iPhone 4S suffers teardown treatment

By Chris Davies/Oct. 13, 2011 10:39 am EST

Having your circuits exposed, RAM revealed and baseband boggled at is a rite of passage for any smartphone worth its salt, and so it was clear the iPhone 4S would have to suffer the teardown treatment. Apple's new dualcore smartphone has been vigorously hazed by the screwdriver-toting engineers at iFixit, revealing a larger battery among other things.

Well, we say larger: this isn't some masterpiece of TARDIS-style magical battery accommodation, with the iPhone 4S bigger on the inside. Actually you get a whole extra 0.05 WHrs over the iPhone 4 battery – and no backward compatibility – so there's obviously some impressive power management going on for the 4S to meet its improved runtime estimates.

Unfortunately, Apple has also used its frustrating pentalobe screws, minimizing the likelihood of you having a screwdriver that will actually fit the iPhone 4S casing. Most people won't be interested in opening their handset up, but we'd at least like the option. Of course, if you'd rather see how the iPhone 4S shapes up in fully assembled form, make sure to check out the full SlashGear review.