Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, Vivo, Poco, OnePlus, Honor, Realme all taking notes. Good guy FCC looking out for global competition.
Granted, there are some specifics that could be interesting from a design analysis perspective like the bill of materials (BoM) cost, or the specific choices made in the design (e.g. using a buck regulator IC to improve efficiency, tradeoffs between cost and redundancy, etc...).
I maintain that most of the specifics contained in the schematic aren't useful for an engineer designing another phone. An experienced electronic engineer facing the same design problems would make similar decisions regarding which components to use, based on known principles - but that's only if they could access Apple's proprietary chips in the first place.
Everything we can see in the schematic could have been generated from a teardown as you mentioned. Not sure what "certain consumers" you're referring to - I imagine the schematics would help repair shops most in knowing what test points to diagnose and what components are involved.
Huawei, Xiaomi, et al. don't need Apple's schematics. They have plenty of design engineers of their own, and can't access Apple's chips anyway. The parts that do use market-available chips don't have any critical details that might take away Apple's edge.
Because the FCC didn’t publish specifics. I think one would get better, more specific information from a teardown. It’s even in TFA:
”Competitors could simply buy a handset and open it up to get to this information…”
You talk as if that's some secret.
Common "jellybean" passive components like resistors, capacitors, inductors... are designed to be standardized and interchangeable with any other component of the same specifications. The remaining factor might be cost and manufacturer (their quality control), but knowing which makes of capacitor are consistently reliable is hardly trade secret knowledge.
Not even close to true for capacitors and inductors. True for resistors mostly, but inductors and capacitors have wildly different specifications depending on their intrinsic parameters. The derating curves (AC, DC, etc) vary wildly depending on the individual part selection. One capacitor may have double or triple the capacitance of another for the same size, nominal rating, and type at a specific voltage condition.
Sure you can overbuild and not worry too much, but given the wildly small size of phones don’t be shocked if the individual components selected are very critical.
Most of it, yeah.
Any teardown org would be absolutely salivating at this info.
I'll disagree and say that any teardown org would be able to figure this out on their own in an afternoon, and end up with more information than the PDF in the process. You vastly over-estimate the value of schematics showing wire traces from one black box to another.
HTC built up the required R&D and supplier-structure in China then, years before they put their own logo on the first device.
The remaining gap was the lack in experience on mobile platform/UX design and localization, something Microsoft wasn't very experienced themselves. But Google came to the rescue with Android, so Chinese vendors just had to study the UX on other devices and rebuild them in Android...