SAN FRANCISCO It took Apple more than six months to build the iPhone but curious gadget fanatics needed only minutes to tear one apart.
Within hours of the first iPhones going on sale on Friday, enthusiasts scrambled to be the first to discover what makes the devices tick, posting photos and videos of disassembled phones on the internet.
The information is more than just academic. Apple keeps a tight grip on information about parts suppliers so "tear downs" of its products are closely watched by investors keen to figure out how to place their bets.
In the past, word that a particular part was being used in Apple's popular iPod music players has sent that company's shares higher.
"With every new release of an Apple product, the hype and interest ratchets up a notch," said Andrew Rassweiler, an analyst with market research firm iSuppli.
Rassweiler and his team at iSuppli were working through the weekend to catalog the phone's guts for a report estimating the cost of every component, crucial for figuring how much it cost Apple to make each iPhone.
Apple is offering the phone in two versions costing $500 and $600 depending on memory capacity, but the high price and limited availability wasn't enough to stop some people from giving into curiosity.
Some dissected the phones with the clinical skill of a surgeon while others resorted to brute force. By Sunday afternoon, a video on YouTube showing two guys banging at an iPhone with a hammer and nail had garnered 56,000 views.
Ifixit.com, an Apple parts and repair guide site, conducted one of the most sophisticated dismantlings, posting dozens of high-quality photos alongside technical commentary.
"They've done some things that are above and beyond. They did some very innovative things," said the site's cofounder Kyle Wiens.
Their efforts yielded a few nuggets of information. It has a main processor and memory chips from Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, an audio-processing chip from Britain's Wolfson Microelec-
tronics Plc and a WiFi wireless chip from Marvell Technology Group Ltd.
For many, the real prize is hacking the phone to get it to do things Apple never intended, such as run on networks other than that of AT& T Inc, the exclusive US service provider.
