First iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c teardowns show 5s’ Touch ID home button, new batteries made by Apple Japan

“They’re not due in the US until tomorrow, but it’s already tomorrow somewhere in the world, and that somewhere is Australia,” Steven Sande repots for TUAW.

“Well, that didn’t make any sense, but the point is that some blokes at Sydney, Australia-based iExperts got their hands on some brand new iPhones and did a teardown before the guys at iFixit were able to do the same,” Sande reports. “The team noticed that there’s a special cable that connects the Touch ID sensor on the iPhone 5s to the charging port assembly — not sure of the reason, but I’d speculate that it’s for grounding the sensor when the iPhone is docked and charging.”

Sande reports, “The batteries on the new devices have higher capacities that those of the iPhone 5 (5.45 Whr), with the iPhone 5s coming in at 5.92 Whr and the iPhone 5c at 5.73 Whr. Those batteries, according to iExperts, are made by Apple Japan, something they’ve never seen before on iPhone batteries.”

Read more in the full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “Sarah” and “Lynn Weiler” for the heads up.]

19 Comments

    1. Come on. It’s common knowledge that Japan has some of the best technology in batteries. It’s also one of the technologies that they typically don’t manufacture in China.

      Sanyo has the patent on the eneloop batteries (the ones that apple resells) and both Duracell and Energizer license it as well. They have a white ring on the top (I believe they still do this) and usually say precharged on them. They are labelled: Made in Japan.

      You have to remember that the Japanese portable electronics industry is hugely innovative and large companies like Toyota have been investing in battery technology for DECADES.

      Electric-assist bikes are commonplace and hybrid cars are hugely popular. It wouldn’t surprise me to see Japan be the first country to switch most of their car production to electric. They have the infrastructure, the willing population, the density and the experience to make it happen.

      1. I think he is correct in that respect, it’s the Dreamliner argument that may be in doubt. That explanation may be true but last I heard was that they were still not clear as to the reasons for the fires but had introduced further safety features related to the batteries to try to make sure they would not happen again. But maybe there have been subsequent developments.

      2. Like ApplePi wrote. I subscribe to an industry trade magazine called Aviation Week & Space Technology. As far as I know, the NTSB and Boeing were unable to determine a likely cause of either of the two major lithium-ion fires. To deal with the uncertainty, they improved a great many things to help ensure a battery fire couldn’t happen again. And, just in case, they improved the containment and provided a titanium tube to route electrolyte vapors and smoke out of the plane.

        There are a number of things that Ballmer’s testicle seems to be shooting blanks on. I can’t find any reliable sources linking “787,” “lithium,” and “India.” The closest I got was Wikipedia’s article “Boeing 787 Dreamliner battery problems.” It mentions “Indian Directorate General of Civil Aviation” and nothing about an Indian wiring harness manufacturer. And, not that Wikipedia is the most reliable source out there (but still better than Ballmer’s nuts), but the article concludes with these words: “The causes of the battery failures are still unknown.”

        Maybe Ballmer can go do what has long been the bane of Wikipedia: go do a drive-by shooting on the article.

        This is a beside the point of Japanese-manufactured Li-Ion batteries. Apple has smart engineers who know how to qualify vendors.

  1. It is revealed that Apple has some in-house manufacturing capability of Li-ion batteries. That is the news here. Battery technology is foundational for many things (electric cars, distributed household power generation). Bam! Again!

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