Palm Pre and Touchstone dissected for all to see 14
Tue, 09 Jun 2009 5:07 pm EDT 
When a new product launches, there are a few great traditions that still endure to this day. There’s the rumor and speculation, then the early reviews, followed by the lines at launch, and then just a few hours later the shiny new device is ripped apart and analyzed by the folks over at iFixit.com. The Palm Pre and Touchstone charger are no exception to this tradition of splaying open, and what follows is not for the faint of heart: the Pre is nearly as beautiful inside as it is outside.
iFixit notes that the Pre’s logic board is significantly smaller than that in the iPhone. This also proved to be one of the more difficult devices for them to open without breaking, which explains why Sprint has declared the Pre to be a device that they won’t even attempt to repair - they'll just swap it out for a new one. Also cracked open: the Touchstone inductive charger, which looks like just about any other inductive charger on the market. Estimated cost to build: $5 (plus whatever engineering labor Palm exerted to design it). Talk about a healthy profit margin!
14 Comments
There are poor children going to bed with NO PRE and they waste a perfectly good phone like that.
it makes me cry inside. *goes to bed without pre*
It's not fair to imply that Palm + Sprint are making a profit on everything over the $5 cost of materials in the Touchstone. The cost of any product includes not only the cost of materials and manufacturing, but the overhead costs associated with the factories and labor associated with design, testing, marketing, etc. And then add in packaging (not only the cost of cardboard, but someone was paid to design the package, someone has to put the parts in the package, etc.) distribution costs (transportation, warehousing, retail store storage) and sales and marketing costs (those ads you've been praising weren't cheap to make), and the total cost in a touchstone is a lot more than $5.
People just don't understand how product manufacturing and sales really works.
that's certainly true for the pre itself, but the touchstone sells for 14 times the cost of the material! it's a CHARGER. the wireless thing isn't even new technology.
Not only that, but the fact that you need Palms propriety micro usb if you want to plug into the touchstone is crap! An extra one should of come in the box if you ask me.
MicroUSB is not proprietary for palm, its actually the new standard. MiniUSB is going bye bye as it was deprecated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#Mini_and_micro
the information is cited.
+1
I'm glad you said that. I was about to scream bloody murder. I bought the Touchstone Kit (69.99) and my Pre isn't even here yet. :(
For the number of Touchstone chargers that Palm will eventually sell, the overhead isn't going to be a lot. Even if it costs an extra $15 per unit for all the overhead (which I doubt), then it'd still be a margin of $50. The Touchstone is a pure profit machine (as OEM chargers so often are).
Well there is a chance gone at getting a pre. Apparently stores arent getting shipments everyday, or most I would say. All of them near me are holding waiting lists... sucks
From watching this tear down it is quite easy to understand the design choice palm took in leaving out the expansion card.
These guys were first in line at the store I bought mine at. I am actually in one of the photos on their site. They gave me a free hex driver set, which I guess makes up for them taking the Pre apart. Maybe they put it back together?
If the parts for the Touchstone is roughly $5.00 US, could a person simply buy the parts and make one? That would be great, in that you could have several Touchstone-clones all around the house and office for charging!