Samsung Galaxy S4 Teardown
The Samsung Galaxy S4 and the first teardowns of the smartphone shows that Qualcomm's chips are found everywhere onto the device's motherboard, at least in the LTE version coming in the U.S.
On the other hand, Broadcom and Intel(!) have both secured major socket wins, but in the non-LTE version of the smartphone.
According to iFixit's teardown of the LTE version of the Galaxy S4, Samsung have bestowed the S4 with a 3.8V and 2600mAh (9.88Wh) user-removable battery. Its advertised useful life allows for up to 7 hours of talk time, and up to 12.5 days of standby.
The primary speaker is placed down at the bottom of the back of the phone.
Samsung has equipped the Galaxy S4 with a rear-facing camera boasting 13 megapixels. It also sports the now-standard LED flash, a back-illuminated sensor, and the ability to record full 1080p HD video at 30 fps.
The motherboard includes:
- Qualcomm MDM9215M 4G GSM/UMTS/LTE modem
- Qualcomm PM8917 power management
- ARM Holdings MBG965H
- Samsung K3QF2F200E 2 GB LPDDR3 RAM (Snapdragon 600 APQ8064T 1.9 GHz Quad-Core CPU)
- Toshiba THGBM5G7A4JBA4W 16 GB eMMC (eMMC integrates a NAND flash memory and a controller chip in a single package)
- ATMEL UC128L5
- Qualcomm WCD9310 audio codec
- Skyworks 77619 power amplifier module for quad-band GSM/EDGE
- Qualcomm WTR1605L seven-band 4G LTE chip
- SWA GNF09
- Broadcom 20794S1A standalone NFC chip
- Maxim MAX77803 microcontroller
- Silicon Image 8240BO MHL 2.0 transmitter
- Qualcomm PM8821 power management IC
TechInsights have also performed a teardown of the not LTE-compliant version of the Galaxy S4, which is powered by the ARM-based Samsung Octa eight-core processor (model GT-I9500). The Octa is one of the first processors to incorporate the "big-little" design utilizing four 1.6 GHz ARM Cortex-A15 cores and four 1.2 GHz ARM Cortex-A7 cores.
Inside the I9500 model, Samsung has placed Intel?s mobile communication components for the baseband and corresponding transceiver. This Galaxy S4 uses Intel?s PMB9820 baseband processor. This baseband is optimized for EDGE, WCDMA and HSDPA/HSUPA bands. The transceiver IC is the PMB5745, which TechInsights believes is their SMARTi UE3 RF transceiver. This is a major design win for Intel since they lost their sockets in the Apple iPhone to Qualcomm.
Broadcom has also secured high-profile socket wins within high-profile handset devices. The Galaxy S4 includes the new Broadcom BCM4335 all-encompassing wireless IC for Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, and Wi-Fi hotspot. The smartphone is also the first appearance of Broadcom?s newest NFC IC, the BCM20794. Broadcom also provides the GPS receiver with the BCM47521.
Other design wins include Maxim?s MAX77803 providing further power management, Wolfson Micro?s WM5102 providing the audio codec, and Atmel?s UC128L5-U as the 32-bit microcontroller with 128KB of flash.
Paired with the Exynos 5410 Octa, is a new low-power DDR3 DRAM (LPDDR3) device from Samsung, TechInsights found.
According to iFixit's teardown of the LTE version of the Galaxy S4, Samsung have bestowed the S4 with a 3.8V and 2600mAh (9.88Wh) user-removable battery. Its advertised useful life allows for up to 7 hours of talk time, and up to 12.5 days of standby.
The primary speaker is placed down at the bottom of the back of the phone.
Samsung has equipped the Galaxy S4 with a rear-facing camera boasting 13 megapixels. It also sports the now-standard LED flash, a back-illuminated sensor, and the ability to record full 1080p HD video at 30 fps.
The motherboard includes:
- Qualcomm MDM9215M 4G GSM/UMTS/LTE modem
- Qualcomm PM8917 power management
- ARM Holdings MBG965H
- Samsung K3QF2F200E 2 GB LPDDR3 RAM (Snapdragon 600 APQ8064T 1.9 GHz Quad-Core CPU)
- Toshiba THGBM5G7A4JBA4W 16 GB eMMC (eMMC integrates a NAND flash memory and a controller chip in a single package)
- ATMEL UC128L5
- Qualcomm WCD9310 audio codec
- Skyworks 77619 power amplifier module for quad-band GSM/EDGE
- Qualcomm WTR1605L seven-band 4G LTE chip
- SWA GNF09
- Broadcom 20794S1A standalone NFC chip
- Maxim MAX77803 microcontroller
- Silicon Image 8240BO MHL 2.0 transmitter
- Qualcomm PM8821 power management IC
TechInsights have also performed a teardown of the not LTE-compliant version of the Galaxy S4, which is powered by the ARM-based Samsung Octa eight-core processor (model GT-I9500). The Octa is one of the first processors to incorporate the "big-little" design utilizing four 1.6 GHz ARM Cortex-A15 cores and four 1.2 GHz ARM Cortex-A7 cores.
Inside the I9500 model, Samsung has placed Intel?s mobile communication components for the baseband and corresponding transceiver. This Galaxy S4 uses Intel?s PMB9820 baseband processor. This baseband is optimized for EDGE, WCDMA and HSDPA/HSUPA bands. The transceiver IC is the PMB5745, which TechInsights believes is their SMARTi UE3 RF transceiver. This is a major design win for Intel since they lost their sockets in the Apple iPhone to Qualcomm.
Broadcom has also secured high-profile socket wins within high-profile handset devices. The Galaxy S4 includes the new Broadcom BCM4335 all-encompassing wireless IC for Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac, dual-band, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, and Wi-Fi hotspot. The smartphone is also the first appearance of Broadcom?s newest NFC IC, the BCM20794. Broadcom also provides the GPS receiver with the BCM47521.
Other design wins include Maxim?s MAX77803 providing further power management, Wolfson Micro?s WM5102 providing the audio codec, and Atmel?s UC128L5-U as the 32-bit microcontroller with 128KB of flash.
Paired with the Exynos 5410 Octa, is a new low-power DDR3 DRAM (LPDDR3) device from Samsung, TechInsights found.
