The iPhone X is the most expensive smartphone on the market. It's also the most expensive to make, according to a new IHS Markit teardown, which pegs the cost of the phone's components at $370.
You always have to take these teardowns with a grain of salt—they don't mean that after $370, it's all profit. A device like the X has massive R&D and marketing costs—all those flashy TV ads aren't cheap. The bill of materials (BOM) also doesn't take software into account, and a lot of the Apple experience is in software. IHS says the X has "typical hardware margins" for Apple's iPhones.
Setting that aside, if you were to go to Apple's suppliers and just buy the parts for an iPhone X, how much would that pile of chips and circuits cost?
According to the teardown, iPhone X is the most expensive iPhone yet, at $370.25 as compared to the iPhone 8 Plus's $288.08 and the 7 Plus's $270.88. The X's bill of materials is also more expensive than the Galaxy S8, at $301.60, according to IHS. IHS did not do a public BOM reckoning for the Samsung Galaxy Note 8.
The most expensive part of the iPhone X, according to IHS Markit, is the display. It costs $110, compared to $52.50 for the 8 Plus display.
The X's two main cameras cost $35 (compared to the 8 Plus's $32.50), the 64GB of memory and 3GB of RAM cost $33.45 (compared to $31.20 on 8 Plus), and the A11 processor, in both phones, costs $27.50, according to IHS Markit.
The unusual L-shaped battery costs $6 to make as opposed to $4.45 for the 8 Plus's more normal battery.
The TrueDepth front sensor module is a brand-new part for the iPhone X, and it costs $16.70, the teardown says. That's a perfect example of a part where the development costs were probably quite high. The module is a custom component with pieces from Sony, ST Microelectronics, TI, Finisar, and Philips.
"The assembly and testing of the TrueDepth system and its individual components is challenging and likely a factor in the production delays," said Jérémie Bouchaud, senior director for MEMS and sensors at IHS Markit. "For instance, the assemblage and test of the Texas Instruments and ST Microelectronics subsystem for the flood illuminator is far from trivial and requires a high number of test equipment pieces."
A lot of other components are the same between the 8 Plus and the iPhone X. The two phones use the same Murata Wi-Fi/BT module, for instance, so they should get the same Wi-Fi performance. They use the same Qualcomm and Intel modems, for the same LTE performance, and the same Cirrus audio codecs, for the same audio performance.
IHS Markit's teardown follows iFixit's teardown, which found the same components, just without estimating their price.