iFixit tears down the player, finds nothing changed except the storage chips

Jun 27, 2014 15:02 GMT  ·  By

Despite announcing a $199 / €199 iPod touch with much fanfare yesterday, Apple didn’t actually introduce anything new, according to iFixit. The repair shop tore down one of the units and found nothing different inside, except for the halved storage.

Granted, Apple has never said anything about the 16GB iTouch being new in any way. The company’s press release expressly states that “Apple today announced its 16GB iPod touch is now available in vibrant colors and equipped with a 5 megapixel iSight camera for just $199.”

However, some people apparently take Apple’s announcements a tad too serious, and so the “new iPod touch” talk was born. iFixit took part in the criticism and released a brief teardown report, accusing Apple of falsely creating a refreshed product.

“We delved inside Apple’s ‘refreshed’ device and found the same components we’d seen in Touches of yesteryear, but with 16 GB of on-board flash memory. So it’s not really that this 16 GB variant gains a camera — instead, it loses half of its 32 GB of storage,” says the repair shop.

“Unfortunately, the same construction means the same dismal repairability,” it adds. “All the issues from the previous generation are present, leading to its 3 out of 10 repairability score. It’s tough to pry open, the battery is soldered on, and most of the other components are linked together via interconnect cables. If one component fails, you’ll have to replace two or three functional components in addition to the broken one.”

Indeed, Apple has never created its products with repairability in mind, for the sake of a seamless construction. Tinkerers such as the people at iFixit see this with different eyes, and probably for good reason too.

“We’re hopeful newer versions of the Touch are more fixable, but it looks like we might have to wait a while until a proper refresh is released,” the company adds.

Starting now, the entire iPod touch line features the 5 megapixel iSight camera capable of shooting 1080p HD video, a 4-inch Retina display, the dual-core A5 chip, and FaceTime camera (on the front). The player comes in six distinct colors (pink, yellow, blue, silver, space gray and (PRODUCT) RED) and is available in 32GB and 64GB capacities as well.

In all fairness, Apple could have simply announced a price cut yesterday but instead chose to market the player as a new item. However, the Cupertino giant did not deceive customers in any way, as some may have you think.