White iPhone 4 Teardown

In an interview with Steve Jobs and Phil Schiller last week, the 2 executives commented on how difficult it was to make the white iPhone 4. So how did Apple finally get things right?

It was certainly inevitable that someone was going to open Apple’s white iPhone and look inside. After a 10 month delay, due to several design and manufacturing problems, who wouldn’t want to take a glimpse of what’s going on inside this thing?

AppleInsider posted some preliminary teardown pics of the white iPhone yesterday. The photos were shot by a Japanese Apple blog, MacOtakara, and they show the changes in the hardware of the white iPhone 4 versus its counterpart.

The snapshots confirm that Apple has changed the proximity sensor. This was reportedly due to issues with the original sensor and the opacity of the white paint. We’ve also seen that the white iPhone 4 is a bit thicker than the black model. Has anything else changed?

The teardown photos reveal that the rear camera lens has also been slightly modified. It has been set back farther in the casing, reportedly a result of the lens capturing too much light in its previous form.

This light leak was echoed by Steve Wozniak, who commented back in December that his white conversion kit was causing his iPhone 4 to take cellophane-looking photos.

While this wasn’t a complete teardown, it was one of the first glimpses that we have seen into the problematic device.

It looks like Apple encountered a few obstacles that required hardware changes in order to produce a higher quality product. But it also appears that they have learned from the issues, and it’s not likely we’ll see a color-related delay like this again.

What do you think?