We kept hearing that the iPhone 4S has "only" 512 MB of RAM, not the 1 GB that everyone was hoping for. But we wouldn't believe it until iPhone 4S teardown was complete today. Their results are official -- the iPhone 4S contains 512 MB of RAM.

How could they tell? The code on the A5 processor highlighted in red by iFixit in the photo at the top of this post has a string denoting "E4E4". According to Anandtech, each E4 indicates a separate 2 Gb LPDDR2 die. That's 4 Gb altogether, or 512 MB of LPDDR2 RAM.

Before you get too upset, note that Anandtech posits that faster and/or more RAM would have affected the iPhone 4S battery life, and that it may take a year for processor technology to progress to the point that iPhone users can have speed, RAM, and the battery life they desire.