The recently released iPhone 3G S costs around $179 according to the hardware analysis made by iSuppli on a 16GB iPhone 3G S. That is $3 more in component parts than what the Palm Pré cost. Shown below is an exploded image from iSuppli.

The iPhone 3G S costs Apple $172.46 in component parts and $6.50 to manufacture. That is roughly $179 compared to Palm Pré's components which costs Palm $170.

photo from iSuppli

The expensive part on the new iPhone is its Flash memory that was supplied by Toshiba at $24. Second is the 3.5in display which costs $19.25, still from Toshiba. And as with Pré, the cheapest component is the GPS receiver which just costs $2.25. The iPhone 3G S have several improvements in hardware which added to the handset's price to increase a bit. Take for example the 200MHz processor of the 3G S which is much faster than the older iPhone but added $14.46 to the new iPhone. Another hardware improvement is the camera which is obviously more powerful compared to the earlier generation of iPhone.

But don't be surprised if it will cost you more than $170 to own an iPhone 3G S beacuse the $170 does not include additional cost like shipping, distribution, packaging and software development.