Delete comment from: Ken Shirriff's blog
There's no hi-tech feature in this circuit at all... All of these are common electronic components in a common switching power supply design. Delivering 5VDC up to 5W is fairly easy to achieve. Otherwise compare my laptop's power supply that delivers 18V @ 6.5A (117W): it is not much bigger than the iPhone's charger (considering its high power features).
The only innovation I see is the fact of distributing components along the 3 dimensions instead of distributing them in 2 dimensions, as usual.
May 22, 2012, 5:39:49 AM
Posted to Apple iPhone charger teardown: quality in a tiny expensive package