Apple's recently unveiled iPhone 5 device is the company's thinnest, lightest, and presumably the most costliest to produce iPhone model to date. We know the first two to be fact (unless Apple was inexplicably trying to temporarily bamboozle the masses during its press event yesterday afternoon), and the latter is an educated guess based on an estimated bill of materials (BOM).

TechInsights compared the cost of parts in the iPhone 5 to that of the iPhone 4S and iPhone 4, all 16GB models, and the latest version is $35 more expensive to build than its immediate predecessor, and $55.50 pricier than the regular iPhone 4.


Those figures are based on estimates of what the individual cost of parts are in the iPhone 5. TechInsights says it will update its BOM on September 21 after it has a chance to tear into Apple's latest smartphone, but in the meantime, it appears the A6 processor is the most expensive component, carrying an estimated price tag of $28. After that, the baseband/RF transreceiver chip is the costliest at $25, following the by the 4-inch display ($18), non-electronic parts ($17), camera components ($10), and so forth.

In the original iPhone 4, the processor set Apple back $14 and was the second most expensive single part, coming in a dollar behind the display at $15.