iFixit Dismantles iPod Touch, Finds Bluetooth Chip, Microphone Support

Not long after Steve unveiled them to the world, iFixit got their hands on one of the new iPod touches and did what comes naturally to them: cracking it open and gawking at it's insides after dismantling it down to it's core components. Luckily for us, they posted pictures of the entire process for us to gawk at too in the form of a tear-down walkthrough.

So what did they find in there? Not that much that was different from the previous version, with the exception of the new things Steve Jobs announced it would earlier this week, like the internal speaker. One thing that we weren't expecting to see that they found was the addition of a Broadcom BCM4325 Bluetooth 2.1+EDR chip.

There was no mention of bluetooth being added to the new Touch. While Bluetooth uses the same frequency as what Nike+ is said to operate on, Apple's site specifically states that it uses a "proprietary low-power 2.4 GHz radio protocol" that they claim is neither Bluetooth nor Wi-Fi, but it is very close to Bluetooth, so Nike+ is the most likely explanation.

If you want to get technical, check out Engadget's explanation.

iFixit also found that the headphone jack now has 5 wires leading from it instead of 4, confirming microphone support.