Apple's Lightning to 30-Pin Adapter Torn Apart, Reveals Several Chips and Copious Glue

[MartiNZ]

Saying the headphone jack shouldn't be on the bottom is simply bizarre. It is the ONLY place one should be allowed ... logic pretty much dictates it.

Put phone in pocket, pull it out RIGHT WAY UP! No need to perform acrobatics to use the damned thing, and probably end up dropping it.

Hold phone, have cable coming towards you, not coming out the other end of the phone and looping around far more likely to get in the way. I just don't see the downside. And I don't get the lefthanded argument at all ... maybe I'm just holding it wrong?

 

[terraphantm]

A few observations:

1) Mico USB would never work. Can you imagine how hard a micro-usb dock would be to use?

Works fine on the blackberries.

----------

As for the iTunes thing, haven't you heard of ALAC and AIF? iTunes supports these. You can have all the high quality music you want. I don't use the iTunes Store because it's overpriced and low-quality, but iTunes/iPod can deal with CDs just fine.

Doesn't necessarily mean it'll be better quality through the lightning connector. The sound quality will depend entirely on the quality of the DACs in the device plugging into the connector - the previous iPhones already had some of the best DACs in the mobile space, I kind of doubt there'll be any appreciable improvements. Though I suppose some companies with audiophile gear can make some high end adapter if Apple allows it.

 

[supersteve]

"Nobody should balk at paying $29 for this after they see what is inside, though."

Why shouldn't they?

What has the Lightening port done for the consumer?

Wow, really dude, really?

 

[makingdots]

Move on whiners.

Also, USB3 is pointless it will just choke to a certain speed due to flash storage maximum speed.

 

[repoman27]

I suck at teardowns? Because 10 other people have published better ones already.

Of course I have a heatgun (the top Milwaukee one) and my macro lens is a Canon L 100mm. Heat guns aren't going to do diddly squat to this thing, other than warp the plastic on the outside, so I cut the plastic part off. There's a detailed photo here:

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/181udw2lc7l90jpg/original.jpg

Where you can read most of the markings. I invite you to do a better teardown, I admit I was in a hurry, but I got the job done - the important chips are visible and there's not a lot that you can figure out from them. Again, if you haven't had this thing in your hands, don't act like it's so easy. I can take a full 12 hour shift dremeling apart every edge of the steel cage with my kevlar cutting wheel, then hand sand every molecule of epoxy off of it, but it isn't going to provide a wealth of information to us that I haven't already provided. The point is, the board is covered in chips that nobody has been able to identify yet, just like nobody is 100% sure how the Lightning cable works.

The difference between tearing down one of these adapters vs. an iPhone is that these are not intended to be disassembled or serviced. They're built to not break, they aren't designed to have parts replaced.

Thank you for the close-up shot.

I do understand that these things are a bitch to get apart and involve ridiculously tiny internal components at times. And I recommended the heat gun as an alternative to the Dremel to remove the glue without damaging the underlying components. I tore down a Thunderbolt to FireWire adapter recently to disprove the myth that Apple was not using Thunderbolt controllers in their own adapters. That was the beginning of my annoyance with some of the tear downs that have been popularized lately. Many of them are performed by folks who don't know what they're looking at and the photos that get posted don't allow the armchair engineers to adequately decipher what might be going on. Macbidouille published an incomplete tear down that resulted in a completely inaccurate analysis that spread like wildfire across the interwebs. At times even iFixit is guilty of omitting the money shots that would answer the questions that keep some of us up late at night.

Plenty of people know exactly how the Lightning interface works, they just can't share that information with you unless you sign the appropriate NDA's first.

And I will point out that I correctly guessed the first four characters of markings printed on the Apple chip. It would indeed appear to be some flavor of Cirrus Logic DAC.

 

[faroZ06]

yeah touche, i totally forgot about ALAC.

in defense of my statement though, if the Lightening port does provide for better sound quality, i see 99% of users not converting their music selection to take advantage of the available higher sound quality. most systems that people play their iPods from are crap anyways. the sound quality wouldn't even be noticeable on those popular Bose SoundStation docks

It's not so much about sound quality in that sense, but doesn't analog audio have a risk of cable noise? That is, analog audio is the same quality as digital, but you won't have any noise over digital. No matter what your songs are compressed as, noise is always bad.

Anyway, I don't really care about Lightning. I'm sticking with my iPhone 4 just because it's already more than what I need, so I won't be using anything with Lightning on it anytime soon.

----------

Doesn't necessarily mean it'll be better quality through the lightning connector. The sound quality will depend entirely on the quality of the DACs in the device plugging into the connector - the previous iPhones already had some of the best DACs in the mobile space, I kind of doubt there'll be any appreciable improvements. Though I suppose some companies with audiophile gear can make some high end adapter if Apple allows it.

But Lightning supports digital audio, which is noise-free, unlike the imperfect analog audio.

 

[iSayuSay]

Saying the headphone jack shouldn't be on the bottom is simply bizarre. It is the ONLY place one should be allowed ... logic pretty much dictates it.

Put phone in pocket, pull it out RIGHT WAY UP! No need to perform acrobatics to use the damned thing, and probably end up dropping it.

Hold phone, have cable coming towards you, not coming out the other end of the phone and looping around far more likely to get in the way. I just don't see the downside. And I don't get the lefthanded argument at all ... maybe I'm just holding it wrong?

Put the headphone jack on the top is no more than cosmetic design. Original iPod has this and it looks pretty darn awesome and stylish with the headphone plugged into it.

So yeah, it has nothing with logic except iPhone was designed with "iPod that makes phone calls" in mind. Even until iOS 4, Music app on iPhone was particularly called iPod instead. God damn those were good old days

With iPhone 5, it's become more logic and less aesthetique. The bottom part is now too crowded and looks terrible IMO. Mic, speakerphone, Lightning dock, headphone jack .. Yuck

 

[Medic311]

Wow, really dude, really?

dude?
that's "sir" to you, kid

learn some manners

 

[verniesgarden]

Move on whiners.

Also, USB3 is pointless it will just choke to a certain speed due to flash storage maximum speed.

and imagine all the whining had they gone USB3 and most macs don't have it

 

[iChrist]

They made a better device that simply would not have been possible with the 30-pin connector. Quit your whining. There are other options for people like you.

Why is it better, genius? Just bc it's smaller? I'm sure that line works well with the ladies.

Lol


.

 

[stevegt87]

#3 - Really? Why should it be on the bottom? When I have my phone in my pocket, I want to be able to plug in my headphones from the top - not at the bottom where the cable would have tension and eventually break or ruin the connector. It also interferes with most car cradles and general mp3 accessories that use a phone plug instead of the dock connector.

The headphone jack placement is one of the many reasons why I am not upgrading my phone this cycle.

Yes, bottom is better. Put your phone in your pocket top first, you'll find when you pull it out its in the correct orientation to use. Also, the headphone cable won't dangle in front of the display when used in the car (to the aux port of my radio).

Maybe the lack of audio out from the lightning connector is mitigated by placing the headphone port on the bottom as well.

 

[Big-TDI-Guy]

I can see why Peter at Double Helix cables whom performed this tear down thinks you get a lot for your money with this Apple cable. Because he's the rapist who sells $3,000.00 HEADPHONE CABLES! (and $2,500.00 power / line cords that are 3 feet long)

No wonder this tear down looks like it was done by a rabid wookie!

Those things look like junk, clear heat shrink tubing with your company logo on top of a cheap interconnect does not a premium product make! Peter, how do you sleep at night???

 

[RemE]

Anybody actually dim enough to put an iPhone 5 (or any iPhone really) in a case - to double the size of their phone for no good reason at all - deserves whatever frustration that goofy decision brings on them.

Really? Well, I and many of my friends and family like the very thin TPU type flex cases. They have a nice feel and add next to no bulk.

I took my now old 4S, acquired on day 1, used Amazon's Trade-in program to sell it in "as-new" condition for $450.00 a few days after after I received my iPhone5. My black 5 now sits in an even thinner and nicer thin, glossy, TPU case and it looks like it just came out of the box and I wear my phones all day, every day.

So ya, I guess I'm just dim that way... sheese.

But if you are talking Otter Box class cases, I completely understand, they are huge.

Regarding these adapters, I don't see much use for this little shortie, just seems like way too much leverage with all that bulk hanging off of the little tab of a connector.

I just received the cable version dock adapter and tried it out in my car, works like a champ. They used a thicker cable than the USB cable and subsequently made the plastic housing of the Lightning connector fatter than the USB version. For cars I prefer black cables so I slid black heatshrink over the connector and cable. It looks pretty good but because of the fatter connector it required 3/8" shrink vs 1/4" shrink for the USB cable which bulks it more than I like. I think I'll shave down this fattie connector and then use the 1/4" shrink for a thinner more flexible adapter. The bright side is that it at least works as advertised, with a case.

 

[Michael Scrip]

Does the micro-USB standard even have docking accessories? I am not informed so pleased enlighten me. Micro-USB is that tiny plug that looks like a grain of rice right?

I've never seen a dock that accepts micro-USB as the source.

There are a few MicroUSB speaker docks... but you gotta use an AUX cable for audio since USB doesn't natively carry audio. You'd think with a billion Android phone out there... someone would have come up with a better way.

That's why Apple's solutions, albeit proprietary, offer a great way to make a speaker dock. The original Dock Connector spawned an entire industry of speaker docks and other accessories... and the Lightning Connector will too.

All while MicroUSB will only charge and sync your phone.

 

[deannnnn]

This thing is even more fearsomely reinforced than the Lightning USB cord, by a factor of 10, surely to thwart those that want to hack it, and also so that it cannot break easily

Yeah, because when Apple designs a connector, they're planning to "thwart those who want to hack it"

What a completely ignorant statement, made by someone who obviously thinks the world revolves around cables, or revolves around people who care about "hacking" connectors.

Also if he cared about how good the DAC was he could have just run sine waves through it and directly measured THD or whatever.


Well at least this total BS article will fit in well over on gizmodo

I think your misinterpreting the connotation of the sentence.

He's just saying that the adapter's build quality is secure, which means hackers won't want to try and hack it because it would prove to be extremely difficult. He's not saying that Apple built the product in a specific way just to prevent hacking.

When he says "surely to thwart" he means "which will discourage" not "to prevent."

 

[Jimeny]

Not everybody can afford to buy the best. That is why so many people buy Android junk. Apple products are like Ferraris - they set the owners apart from the commoners.

Well done.. you win the 'Biggest iDouche' award in today's discussion. Let's hope you were being sarcastic and the prize can go to one of your very close competitors.

Regarding Lightning, I think it's gotta be a about the 'money money money'. The Church of Apple wants to collect as much from its blind followers as possible and is not happy that another idol is making money off it's own image and therefore has created a magic, chip-ridden, 'dynamic' connector that can do so much more, at a better speed and with less pins. I'm sure the Chinese will thwart your plans in no time and bootleg your beloved cable.

Greedy Apple... why not just give us microUSB like everybody else. Lightning's not revolutionary, just proprietory.

 

[hchung]

I wanna know where people keep picking up these brittle microUSB cables, I should start selling microUSB cables since they break so often according to you guys. I will be the next Mark Cuban and make a fortune over the interwebs!

My brittle and broken microUSB cable was from Motorola.
My broken microUSB port is on a Nook.

I might have fixed the Nook, but then again I'm not the normal consumer when I cracked it open and started working on it with a heatgun, a pair of pliers, and a $200 soldering iron.

 

[scootermafia]

I can see why Peter at Double Helix cables whom performed this tear down thinks you get a lot for your money with this Apple cable. Because he's the rapist who sells $3,000.00 HEADPHONE CABLES! (and $2,500.00 power / line cords that are 3 feet long)

No wonder this tear down looks like it was done by a rabid wookie!

Those things look like junk, clear heat shrink tubing with your company logo on top of a cheap interconnect does not a premium product make! Peter, how do you sleep at night???

I'm sick and ********** tired of every single person that meets me through one of these articles trashing my cables over the price. They're expensive, some of them. They take a lot of work and a lot of materials to build. What makes designer clothes, expensive liquor, or nice cars worth it? Some designer clothing is pretty indistinguishable from cheap clothing. You have no idea how my cables are built and your assessment of my products as "heat shrink tubing on top of a cheap interconnect" is childlike. Should I show up at your work and start critiquing your job?

Junk cable:

 

[Michael Scrip]

Regarding Lightning, I think it's gotta be a about the 'money money money'. The Church of Apple wants to collect as much from its blind followers as possible and is not happy that another idol is making money off it's own image and therefore has created a magic, chip-ridden, 'dynamic' connector that can do so much more, at a better speed and with less pins. I'm sure the Chinese will thwart your plans in no time and bootleg your beloved cable.

Greedy Apple... why not just give us microUSB like everybody else. Lightning's not revolutionary, just proprietory.

One question.... was Apple greedy when they made the original Dock Connector all those years ago?

They used it on the iPod in 2003... and it created an entire industry around Apple-related docks and accessories. And people bought them... they were widely accepted.

Fast forward to 2007... would the iPhone have had any accessories if Apple used the then-standard MiniUSB?

In a previous post I showed that even today there isn't an elegant solution for MicroUSB speaker docks... despite MicroUSB being on 70% of the world's devices.

So... are Apple's solutions really that bad?

Or... is MicroUSB really as great as everyone says it is?

 

[hchung]

A few observations:

1) Mico USB would never work. Can you imagine how hard a micro-usb dock would be to use?

2) there is already a very simple "reversible" connector. The coaxial power conector is one example. the headphone jack is another. Round connectors work well. Look at the iPod "shuffle" it uses the round headphone connector as the ONLY connector. the data moves through it just fine.

Next you ask how can you get a "ton" of data through only a few wires in the headphone jack. Look at the four wires in your gigabit ethernet cable. All of the internet including streaming HD video and even "power over Ethernet" comes over that wire.

As an engineer, I say Apple failed. When I think of something I keep cost in mind. A nifty idea is not workable if the cost is way out of line from what the customer wants. Everything you design can be designed to a price

One thing in Apple's favor. Perhaps this connector will be used in other ways and in devices we have yet to see. Maybe Lightening will appear on disk drives and monitors and the next macbook. After all what is the point is "asignable pins" if you have only one device? I assume the pins get reassigned when this is used for a disk drive.

Without evening needing to discuss Lightning, your suggestions label you as "not an electrical engineer."

Using a TTRS connector in order to support a high speed serial protocol for all devices fails in many ways.

1) TTRS connectors (like the headphone connector) typically short lines during insertion and removal. I know because I was moron when I first started in electronics and tried to use one for a power connection.
It's a bad idea and it requires that you make your interface components even more resilient than normally necessary.

2) TTRS connectors are most likely not going to last very long. The wear and tear on the sleeve contact is going to be significantly higher because during insertion and removal, it's going to contact the first ring, then the insulator, and then more pressure to contact the 2nd ring, and so on. I've actually seen scratching and wear on some headphone extension cables I've had.

3) If you're going to have USB, digital audio, and HDMI all going through the TTRS connector, you're going to require special decoder chips anyways. The cost savings you might get from making cheap cables in turn causes your phone and your other more complex dongles to require more complex logic. Basically, you've just shifted costs around.

 

[scootermafia]

About the teardown, just FYI, heating it with a heat gun does nothing. The chips will desolder themselves and fall off, most likely, before that epoxy will just melt and go away. Heating it for a long time at 750F just singed the epoxy slightly. The heat gun will get rid of the black silicone but so can your fingernail, it's the glue that's the resilient part.

 

[seungrok]

I can see why Peter at Double Helix cables whom performed this tear down thinks you get a lot for your money with this Apple cable. Because he's the rapist who sells $3,000.00 HEADPHONE CABLES! (and $2,500.00 power / line cords that are 3 feet long)

No wonder this tear down looks like it was done by a rabid wookie!

Those things look like junk, clear heat shrink tubing with your company logo on top of a cheap interconnect does not a premium product make! Peter, how do you sleep at night???

Your username, grammar, incorrect use of words, crude vocabulary, tone, pretentious demeanour, and lack of sophistication and basic etiquette leads me to visualize you as a pubescent-teen-Apple-fanboi, with a lack of social skills, who's only bold enough on the internet to talk big. I'm sure many others do as well.

Try again.

 

[hchung]

I suck at teardowns? Because 10 other people have published better ones already.

Of course I have a heatgun (the top Milwaukee one) and my macro lens is a Canon L 100mm. Heat guns aren't going to do diddly squat to this thing, other than warp the plastic on the outside, so I cut the plastic part off. There's a detailed photo here:

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/181udw2lc7l90jpg/original.jpg

Where you can read most of the markings. I invite you to do a better teardown, I admit I was in a hurry, but I got the job done - the important chips are visible and there's not a lot that you can figure out from them. Again, if you haven't had this thing in your hands, don't act like it's so easy.

Hey, can you do me a favor and take a picture of the flipside of that board?

Can you also tell me a guess as to how many layers the board has?

I don't know what kind of glue/resin/potting is used, but since you've already tried the heat gun and torn off the 30-pin, might I suggest dropping it in a bath of "Goof off" solvent overnight and seeing if that helps? (it's worked for some things for me in the past, but mileage varies depending on what's sealing it)

Best case is that the potting turns to jelly and wipes off nicely. Worst off, all the layers of the board delaminate but leaves the potting compounds.

Thanks for the work btw.

 

[Philotech]

People here mostly mix up two issues:

1. Was there a need to abandon the old 30-pin cable and go for something smaller?

I think everyone can agree that the plug and socket used for Lightning has advantages over the old one as it is a lot smaller and can be used upside-down. If this is worth the change apparently depends on your investment in old cables and accessories, but after 10 years of service of the old connector I think it was time to advance and allow for a better use of space.

2. Was there a need to use 'intelligent' cables with ICs in the plug?

Maybe we still don't know everything the Lightning cable is able to do, but I fail to see such a requirement:
The ability to dynamically assign pins is only required if the pin use on both sides of the cable is fixed and on one side there are more pins than on the other. E.g. 30 pin Apple connector to 5 pin USB where no more than 5 pins are used at a time, but any of the 30 might need to be connected to any of the 5. In this case, you either need a specific hard-wired, cheap cable for each connection requirement, of you may use one cable for all possible connections, but this cable must be able to dynamically assign pin use.

In the case of Lightning, the USB side is fixed and does not use any more pins than the LIghtning side, so no dynamic switching is required. For accessories that used the old 30 pin cable, there actually are more than the 8 pins used on the Lightning side, and apparently all 30 of them have historically been used. But the pin use on the Lightning is not necessarily fixed because the iPhone has been designed by Apple and they could have implemented the dynamic assignment function in the iPhone.
If implemented this way, everybody would have had to pay for the dynamic switching circuits just once when buying the iPhone.

 

[Jimeny]

One question.... was Apple greedy when they made the original Dock Connector all those years ago?

They used it on the iPod in 2003... and it created an entire industry around Apple-related docks and accessories. And people bought them... they were widely accepted.

Fast forward to 2007... would the iPhone have had any accessories if Apple used the then-standard MiniUSB?

In a previous post I showed that even today there isn't an elegant solution for MicroUSB speaker docks... despite MicroUSB being on 70% of the world's devices.

So... are Apple's solutions really that bad?

Or... is MicroUSB really as great as everyone says it is?

http://www.talkandroid.com/119937-jelly-bean-brings-usb-audio-support-to-android-devices/

Windows has done it for ages as I'm sure OSX has also.

Your points still don't make me think that Apple had customer's best interest in mind.