Andrew Rassweiler, the firm’s senior principal analyst for teardown services, noted that other smartphones use a distinct capacitive touchscreen assembly that is physically separate and placed on top of the display–with different suppliers for those two components. But the iPhone 5 partially integrates the touch layers into the display glass, which makes the handset thinner and reduces the parts needed.
Rival Samsung Electronics, which makes both smartphones and many components used inside them, supplies an integrated display-touchscreen module using an approach called “on-cell.” The in-cell approach represents a step beyond Samsung’s, in IHS iSuppli’s view
