What’s inside the iPhone?

Did you get your iPhone? Are you iHappy? Did you show it off to friends at the IHOP?

In case you’re one of the 11 people in the entire world who didn’t hear the news, Apple’s new smart-phone product debuted in Apple and AT&T stores over the weekend. Some folks in New York camped out in front of Apple’s store on Fifth Avenue for five days before the product went on sale Friday evening.

Various technology research firms and curious gadget geeks did teardowns of the iPhone right after the product came out in the US (rollouts in Asia and Europe are yet to come). Apple and AT&T are said to have sold about 525,000 iPhones during the debut weekend – a drop in the proverbial bucket for wireless handsets (of which there are now 3 billion in the world), but a promising start for a pricey product.

Before we delve into what’s inside the iPhone, let’s look at what’s on the outside of the product – namely, the touch-screen interface that’s attracting so many gadget freaks. The iPhone touch screen is manufactured by Balda, a German display maker that is a supplier to Motorola, Nokia, and Sony Ericsson, and by Optrex and Optera (a Magna Donnelly subsidiary). The glass displays incorporating those touch screens are made by Sharp and Toshiba Matsushita Display Technology.

Apple generally doesn’t reveal its component suppliers for various products (other than its dramatic switch to Intel processors for Macintosh models in recent years), so teardowns by reverse-engineering firms like iSuppli, Portelligent, and Semiconductor Insights offer key details.

The iPhone’s main processor is made by Samsung Electronics, and the giant Korean chip maker also provides NAND flash memory for the product. Other chip makers with devices in the iPhone include Broadcom, CSR, Infineon, Intel, Linear Technology, Marvell, Micron Technology, National Semiconductor, NXP, Peregrine Semiconductor, Silicon Storage Technology, Skyworks, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments, and Wolfson Microelectronics.

Many of those companies also supply chips for iPod models, which is how they got their entrée into the iPhone design.