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Iphone Mod - 120gb Iphone?

well...

Guys,

I guess I am asking questions in the wrong forum. I am not worried about money, as all I want is a functioning device that meets my criteria. Unfortunately they don't make such a thing soooo I was willing to mod an existing device that I like in order to get what I want. But to me it sounds like I should just go the route of mini-itx's mobile motherboard and build my own "brick iPhone" (the only problem is I love the iphone os and I figured that if all I did was change out a couple things like the hard drive and battery when I plug it back in iTunes would format it like an iPhone so that I wouldn't have to hire engineers to program a linux based replica. I want this to be as little trouble as possible :)

Thanks,

Poohbarr

(oh are there any other forums that you would suggest me asking this "ridiculous" question?
 
poohbarr said:
Oh and on a side note to yalls that don't want to lug a brick around, if you have ever used or had to use a pocket pc or pda or have a zune then you know that you get used to lugging it around. I would sacrifice looks, and being a brick for functionality. All I want is the iphone interface with my base 110gb music library, put some dvds on it and be able to make phone calls and surf.
Click to expand...

d00d all iz want to do is store 1 tb of music and 65 dvds on my iphone.. and it should be able to drive me to work and do all the work for me before teleporting my back home where it touches me sexually just a little bit every night before i fall asleep to my 3244523452345253452 songs
 
If this is useful, remember ziphone jailbreak? The 8gb worked but not 16gb for a while because it had two chips and they were bridged somehow... I think you'd have to know the hardware AND software

Because it would be hard coded with the drivers required and you'd have to either modify the kernel or configure your hardware to fool the itouch/iphone into thinking its the same hardware? :)
 
poohbarr said:
Guys,

I guess I am asking questions in the wrong forum. I am not worried about money, as all I want is a functioning device that meets my criteria. Unfortunately they don't make such a thing soooo I was willing to mod an existing device that I like in order to get what I want. But to me it sounds like I should just go the route of mini-itx's mobile motherboard and build my own "brick iPhone" (the only problem is I love the iphone os and I figured that if all I did was change out a couple things like the hard drive and battery when I plug it back in iTunes would format it like an iPhone so that I wouldn't have to hire engineers to program a linux based replica. I want this to be as little trouble as possible :)

Thanks,

Poohbarr

(oh are there any other forums that you would suggest me asking this "ridiculous" question?
Click to expand...

Unlike some of the other iPod models, the iPhone doesn't really have any modular components, except for the battery. With the Hard Drive based iPods, you could upgrade the drive, assuming you could get one that would fit, etc.

With the Flash based iPods and the iPhone, the storage is soldered to the main board, and it would require some very specialized equipment to unsolder the flash and replace it with more storage.

That is assuming you could find something with more capacity that would work with the same pinouts.

This would be similar to swapping the CPU from a Nano for the one in the iPod touch. Not practical to physically swap, and probably impossible to get to get functioning electronically.
 
you can mod the zunes and get a 120 gb ive seen lots of people do it on youtube
 
Facepalm in 3..... 2...... 1 ...

facepalm.jpg



the flash chip is soldered on, even if you wrote the software to access more space, you would need to figure out the pin out/configuration of the chips and how those pins can access the different locations on the new flash chips/new harddrive


basically its cheaper just to get an older ipod or a 120gb zune
 
All you need is an 160GB 1,8" IDE hard drive and an IDE to "whatever flash IC thingy apple uses" adaptor.

It exist IDE to flash adapters so it probobly not impossible to do this. But you will not be able to go to radiochack and ask for the components.

It will require some master skills to do this. Some senior engineering student might be able to do this as an part of his education sins a person like this might have access to the components and tools needed for this project.
 
I'm sure it can be done, someway or another. One of the big reasons you won't find any help with frankensteining your phone on these forums is because we don't have an unlimited budget to keep tearing apart iphones and trying different things. Additionally, most of us don't have the time and desire.
 
iWizzard said:
All you need is an 160GB 1,8" IDE hard drive and an IDE to "whatever flash IC thingy apple uses" adaptor.

It exist IDE to flash adapters so it probobly not impossible to do this. But you will not be able to go to radiochack and ask for the components.

It will require some master skills to do this. Some senior engineering student might be able to do this as an part of his education sins a person like this might have access to the components and tools needed for this project.
Click to expand...

I think the adapters you are talking about are to allow you to use flash memory CARDS in place of an IDE interface. For example, I saw people replacing the 4GB drives in iPod Mini's with 8GB compact flash cards.

I'm not sure there is any "off the shelf" device that would convert flash memory CHIPS to an IDE interface. Maybe the chips are on a daughter board with an IDE interface, but I doubt it - there isn't enough room in the iPhone for that.

I could be wrong, but it would seem to me to be two very different things. I'm not saying it couldn't be done, but it is certainly well beyond the scope of any type of normal hardware hacking, etc.
 
TBH this is what I wanted to do too... Thought there would be someone in the world that has a 80Gb+ iPhone...

I guess I was just.... dreaming....
As for all the people insulting the thread starter because he asked a question that lots of people want to happen... idiots...
As for the people that were suggesting the iPod or an alternative. He wanted the iPhone because its everything in one, He could buy and iPod classic and a phone but thats 2 devices... lots of reasons he/I would want a 80GB iPhone.

I guess ill play the waiting game till the 84GB iPhone comes out... of course then my library would have grown and I would need 160GB at LEAST. I might need to change the hard drive in my iPod classic for a 320GB one soon since they've stopped doing the 160GB Classic...

come on apple, I would like an iPhone with alot more storage
 
Switz213 said:
I don't see why you couldnt just pop it open and solder on more chips

-Switz
Click to expand...

Sure just solder them onto the extra pins on the logic board that don't exist. Please don't act like you know what you are talking about when you have no experience

poohbarr said:
I could see working in my head, but don't technically know what would be needed to make it a reality. So after reading all yalls replies, I see that de-soldering the NAND chips and making an IDE bridge (which is what i had in mind) won't work.
Click to expand...

iWizzard said:
"All you need is an 160GB 1,8" IDE hard drive and an IDE to "whatever flash IC thingy apple uses" adaptor "
Click to expand...

Look all you people saying its possible have about zero coding/hardware/soldering experience and are just talking out of your external anal sphincter.


aross99 said:
That is assuming you could find something with more capacity that would work with the same pinouts.
Click to expand...

EXACTLY !!!


Its one thing to modify a flash chip, that has a known pinout, to work in place of an IDE hard drive, which also has a known pinout.

It is a completely different story when you are trying to connect an IDE interface with a pinout that is unknown, and has a set amount of access points. Each chip that is soldered onto the iPhone has a known location, that is, the iPhone logic board knows that if it wants to access information on chip A, then it will go through pins X ->> XX, etc.
 
well i think it is possible, the new macbook air comes with a 128mb solid state hard drive, there for its a memorycard.

the ipod touch uses a CF card, now i know there are 64gb cf cards, so if you got a 64gb cd card, put it in the ipt then you would have a 64gb ipod touch, the only thing is i dont know what kind of solid state memorycard the macbook air uses so if its a 128gb cf card then your good to go with a 128gb ipod touch.

as for the iphone im not 100% sure on that, i heard rumors that you could do the hot swap mod.

you buy both iphone 8gb and ipod touch 32gb.
take the 32gb card out of an ipod touch and put it inside of the iphone, take the 8gb iphone card and put it in the ipod touch, and then sell the ipod touch on ebay to make your money back off of it.
when i heard about this "mod" there was a price list beside it saying how its better to do that then to buy the 16gb iphone.

8gb iphone 400$
16gb iphone 500$
8gb ipod touch 300$
16gb ipod touch 400$
32gb ipod touch 500$

so then the whole thing is:
you buy a 400$ 8gb iphone, and a 500$ 32gb ipod touch, you do what i said about swaping the memorycards, then sell the now 8gb ipod touch on ebay making 300$ back there for total price spent was 900$, then you make 300$ back from seling the ipod touch, which makes 600$ total so then its 600$ for a 32gb iphone.

BUT like i said i have noidea if the iphone and ipod touch use the same type of memorycards.
i think the iphone uses the same memorychips as the ipod nano, which can be piggy backed like in the tutorial on how to make an 8gb 1st gen ipod nano.(when 4gb was the highest you could get)

because for some reason apple decided to use al 2gb chips in the nano, but on the nano theres 2 flash chip spots for it, so instead of using both 2gb chips side by side on both pads they decided to piggy back them one on top of the other so there was 2 2gb chips stacked on top of eachother and the other pad was left empty.

so to do that you take a working 4gb nano, and a broken 4gb nano off of ebay, de-solder the 4gb chips off of the broken nano, then simply solder the 4gb chips you took off onto the blank pad on the working 4gb nano making a total of 8gb in chips on it, but now they have a single 16gb flash chip. back then the biggest was only 2gb chips so i think thats what the iphone uses, now if thats true then you could just as easily do that with the nano to the iphone.

might be a tight squeeze depending on what its like in side the iphone, i dont remember, my last iphone was stolen almost a year ago so i havent had one till yesterday when i got another one :p
im yet to open it up tho.

so theres 2 ways to getting more space in the iphone or ipod touch that you can look into, if one of those methods DOES work then let me know cause id be very interested in doing this if they are true
 
Problem Solved

Ok, so I know I haven't posted for a while, but I have been busy going through and trying out different handhelds and such. Although it has a been a timely project it has also been a lot of fun :)

My best work around that I was just made aware of is using the Nokia N810 Wimax I can plug in my external 1tb drive (2.5 ide) into the N810 plus I have internet, phone, and the linux distro supports or already has running all the apps that I need/want.

Also it is great because I can use my bluetooth headphones, something the iphone doesn't have and all for less than what helios's work around would have cost.

I don't know about yall, but the N810 does it for me and I would suggest checking them out if you have similar interests. OR the closest competitor was the new archos 7 internet tablet with 320gb. I liked it alot but it was kinda big for me and i download all my movies so the dvr thing wasn't a big hit with me.

Oh and just on a side note after getting my new macbook and talking with some programmers for another project i am working on they were telling me now os x runs off a kernal just like any other linux distro! So really os x is like linux on steroids :) just thought that was funny!

Thanks everyone for the advice/critiques,

Poohbarr
 
You might (emphasis on 'might') be able to desolder the existing chip and replace it with a higher capacity one. IIRC Toshiba and Samsung make 32GB modules. I know people have done similar hacks with the first-gen iPod nano, but I have no idea how easy/hard such a hack would be for the iPhone.
 
mcdj said:
the iphone does not use an HDD. it uses a chip. there are no 120gb chips yet, or even 2x64. basically, between an extended battery, an extended back, and a 120gb drive, you are dreaming. come back in 3-5 years.
Click to expand...

Well. It took 7 years. Now you don't have to "haXor" your iPhone to 120gb. Just order one from eBay.
 
Here is your "mod"
http://www.redmondpie.com/istick-pr...unced-with-convertible-usb-to-micro-usb-port/

You can now have removable storage options for the iPhone 6 or 6 Plus that is commercial. Now is just a waiting game until it comes out.

Also, I just don't like how rude some of you replied to the original posts...sometimes I ask these type of questions and it wouldn't hurt to ask. Many of you doubted this could be possible but I think this would be a viable option now...
 
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