we've heard rumors about Apple
revolutionising TV for years but so far
all we've seen our incremental upgrades
and a price drop in the existing Apple
TV well earlier this month we may have
gotten our first glimpse at what Apple
thinks that revolution is going to look
like with the announcement of the brand
new Apple TV complete with a totally
redesigned operating system TV OS the
official release of the Apple TV isn't
until October but we got our hands on
one and today we're going to tear it
down
hi I'm Gwendolyn with iFixit and today
we're tearing down the fourth generation
Apple TV apart from a little growing
there's not much different with the
externals of the Apple TV it now
measures 35 millimeters high up from the
third generations 23 millimeters but it
keeps the same footprint as the last
generation measuring in at 98
millimeters wide and 98 millimeters deep
the Apple TV also got a bit heavier
weighing in at 425 grams on the back of
this new Apple TV you'll notice that
some ports have changed the familiar
power Ethernet and HDMI ports are still
there but gone is the optical audio port
and the microUSB port which has been
replaced with the USB C port the remote
for the new Apple TV has been completely
redesigned and now includes a button to
activate Siri microphones to hear you
and a touchpad for navigation this new
remote also decided to ditch a
replaceable battery in favor of
recharging through a lightning connector
located at the bottom of the remote
getting inside the new Apple TV proved
easy enough all it took was some prying
with an opening pic to release the
plastic clips good news no adhesive our
first look inside the Apple TV was a
little uneventful just a large EMI
shield held in place by some Torx screws
knowing that something better lurked
underneath we broke out our pro tech
screwdriver set and a few screws later
we find that the EMI shield is also a
bracket that clips into the lower panel
and a heatsink
with the EMI shield bracket heatsink out
of the way we get our first look at the
logic board on the board we see apples
a8 system-on-a-chip that has two
gigabytes of sk hynix lpddr3 SDRAM and
on the other side we see the 32
gigabytes of sk hynix nand flash storage
plastic um out of the box a great
big chunky heatsink with a cute little
power supply board tucked away inside we
noticed a distinct lack of cables
connecting the power supply to the logic
board
we're theorizing the power is either
transmitted by magic or through the
heatsink screwpost and that's not all
we're giving you to tear downs for the
price of one on to the new and improved
Apple TV remote with a little heat and
Prime we finally crack open the remote
and I do mean crack just a heads up if
you're taking your new Apple TV remote
apart be warned there is a cable
attaching the two halves if you want to
separate it correctly use a spudger to
gently disconnect the cables before you
pry it all the way apart
live and learn on the rear case we see
the brains in the heart of our magic TV
wand the logic board is home to the
Broadcom touch screen controller also
seen in the iPhone 5s 5c and the iPad
air the stmicroelectronics ultra low
power arm cortex-m 3 MCU and the csr
10/10 bluetooth radio last out of the
remote is the 3.7 8 volt 1.5 5 watt hour
410 milliamp hour battery that
supposedly lasts up to three months on a
single charge dead batteries and TV
remotes will soon be a thing of the past
we've come to the end of our teardown
which means it's time to talk
repairability and iFixit it's our
mission to teach people how to repair
everything so we give every gadget we
tear down a repair ability score between
1 and 10 10 being the easiest to repair
and 1 being the most difficult the Apple
TV fourth generation got a 8 out of 10
and here's why on the upside modular
construction and only a few major
components simplifies repairs the
separate power supply with no cabling to
worry about is handy and there are only
standard Torx screws throughout but on
the downside everything important is
soldered to the logic board meaning
replacement or board level soldering is
required to solve problems with your
ports and that's our teardown don't
forget to be on the lookout for our
iPhone 6s and 6s plus tear downs later
this week you can check out the complete
Apple TV tear down including tons of
beautiful high quality images over at
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calm / I fix it