Teardowns of the Verizon iPhone 4 by iSuppli and iFixit reveal a number of changes, including to its antenna and a chip, that may hint at Apple's plan for the iPhone 5.
Verizon Wireless' Apple iPhone 4 may appear to be essentially AT&T's smartphone with its GSM technology replaced by Verizon's preferred CDMA, but not so, say iFixit and IHS iSuppli, two companies that on Feb. 7 revealed the initial findings of their teardowns of the smartphone.
The two iPhones feature different batteries, vibrators, baseband processor chips and GPS chips. But most likely to grab attention is the redesign of the antenna—a component that, following the launch of the AT&T iPhone 4, instigated a public-relations nightmare for Apple, dubbed "Antennagate," after some users found that holding the phone a certain way (known as the "death grip") caused signal interference. That a change had been made was known—the exteriors of the two models are ever-so-slightly different—though not to what degree.
"This isn't just a case where Apple took a CDMA chip and slapped it into the iPhone and called it Verizon. They actually redesigned the entire logic board, including the electromagnetic shields," iFixit's M.J. explains in a video for the repair site. "Apple's RF engineering team did a great job at restructuring the antenna, so hopefully we don't have the same death-grip problem that saddled its AT&T brother."
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