Apple's iPhone 5s release on Friday is a classic example of systematic incremental engineering. Many of the electrical components within the phone feature tweaks and improvements, cumulatively creating a phone that sets the standard in design. Whether this approach provides the necessary foundation to win against Samsung's continuing innovation remains to be seen. Beyond the new A7 processor and the transition from LPDDR2 to LPDDR3, we've found interesting changes to the NAND flash and a change in the combo radio connectivity solution.

NAND flash

The NAND flash memory on the iPhone 5s is manufactured by SK Hynix (package marking H2JTFG8YD2MBR), conforming to its E2NAND3.0 standard.

E2NAND3.0 uses advanced error correction code (ECC), buffering, and processing to improve performance and reliability. The flash controller is centred on the eight-die flash stack in order to maintain timing symmetry. Die centring requires mounting the controller under the flash stack in order to maintain workable wirebond lengths. The NAND flash is manufactured in Hynix's 21nm process, which it designates "2ynm class."

Combo radio device

The combo radio device, used to provide the phone with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth (no FM radio in the Apple specs), is a slight variant on the flagship Broadcom BCM4334 seen in the iPhone 5 and many other smartphones. This time, it's called the BCM43342. The layout of the device, packaged in a Murata MCM (marked 339S0205), is shrunk slightly over the original BCM4334.

The circuitry is essentially the same, with the critical radio layout still intact. Broadcom could have several motivations for the shrinking, such as reduced die cost, though tweaking RF designs isn't done without incurring significant cost. The circuitry may have been improved or optimised since the original 4334 release.

By: DocMemory
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