The Apple iPhone 4 is flying off the shelves, and sales records are expected to fall. But what’s in this groundbreaking device? The engineers at iSuppli plan on getting their hands on one and ripping it open, and they expect to find some key innovations based on Apple’s new UI-oriented (user interface) approach to design.

“Apple in the past has always doubled the amount of NAND flash memory in the newest version of its iPhone line. However, with the iPhone 4, Apple is standing pat at the 32-Gbyte level,” said Andrew Rassweiler, director and principal analyst, teardown services, for iSuppli.

“This shows that the iPhone has reached the point where data-storage memory is no longer one of the most critical features. Instead, the focus has shifted to the UI, with the major innovations of the iPhone 4 occurring in areas including the Retina display, as well as the use of gyroscope-based control,” said Rassweiler.

STMicroelectronics probably supplies the iPhone 4’s gyroscope, iSuppli says. Beyond being used for the UI, the gyroscope can be used for navigation and image stabilization as well.

Also, iSuppli expects the iPhone 4 to include a version of the A4 processor seen in the iPad, with some important differences. As in the iPad, the A4 will use an ARM Cotex microprocessor core and will be manufactured by Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. using 45-nm semiconductor manufacturing process technology.

However, iSuppli says, the iPhone’s A4 likely will operate at a slower clock speed than the 1 GHz in the iPad, most likely at 800 MHz. The iPhone’s A4 also is likely to add additional accelerator cores for encoding and decoding high-definition video, supporting the phone’s HD camera.

In addition to the A4 enhancements, the iPhone 4 will include other features designed to support HD. For example, it likely will double its mobile DRAM content to 4 Gbits, up from 2 Gbits in the iPhone 3G S. It also will add support for HSUPA, which supports uplink speeds to 5.76 Mbits/s, to allow for the uploading of bandwidth-intensive HD video.

The iPhone 4 employs an antenna integrated into its stainless steel enclosure. Apple may have employed a design that isolates portions of the enclosure to, in effect, separate the enclosure into two or three separate antennas in the product to improve signal integrity. However, there have been some early complaints about reception, which Apple has acknowledged.

“Using two or more antennas enables spatial diversity, which can reduce some of the problems previous models of the iPhone have suffered with dropped calls,” said Francis Sideco, principal analyst, wireless communications, for iSuppli.

The teardown is under way, and readers who pre-order the report of iSuppli’s full analysis before June 30 will receive an introductory, pre-order price on the company’s comprehensive and accurate estimate of the iPhone 4’s hardware and manufacturing costs. They also will receive advanced updates as the iSuppli team develops its bill of materials, preliminary photos, and other key findings.

For more information, go to www.isuppli.com/Teardowns-Manufacturing-and-Pricing/Pages/iSuppli-Takes-on-iPhone-4.aspx.

iSuppli Corp.