Hi welcome to the Eev blog an Electronics Engineering Video Blog of interest to anyone involved in electronics design. I'm your host Dave Jones hi in the previous video I reviewed this new uh 3G Third generation Kindle 3 eBook reader and it's really cool. 6-in model. awesome but it the review went for about 30 minutes and I didn't have time to do my usual thing.

So you know what we say here on the Evev blog. don't turn it on. Take it apart. Okay, let's take apart the new Kindle 3 Now I was being a bit uh I was being a bit overzealous there with the screwdriver cuz there's no screws on this thing.

so toss that away and what we need is my trusty Victorinox mini champ. uh knife. any nice blade. uh like, this will do nicely and uh, basically there's a whole bunch of clips now I've already got this open but um, uh now I'll show you how to taken apart.

Okay, now there's a whole bunch of these. uh little Clips around the outside, these little pressure Clips if you can see them now I started um I Started with this one right here. You can't actually see them so you just get your blade in there, you lever it out, you pop out, one, you pop out, the other, and so forth. Once you got one side, you can start doing the top and it's slowly.

Um, you can actually get all the way around. they're in the same position on the other side. There you go the um, you can see the clips there. There we go.

there's All the clips and you just pop them out. There's none under the buttons, so don't try and go under the buttons at all. There's one there. there's another one there.

sorry, the autofocus on this isn't the best and then you, um, but then you can't just lift it straight off. Okay, because there's two inner catchers in here like this and you've really got to wiggle it. Wiggle it around. I tried to push it around I was you know I was working working with it for quite a bit of time, but it eventually just popped out and T there it is.

Check it out. Isn't that pornographic? Oh, just brings a tear to the eye. It's a thing of beauty. Look at that Now as you can see, there's these two little catches under here like this and they correlate with these two.

um, little um, uh, little holders down here. these little retaining like that so you really have to. It looks like it has to. They're both in the same direction so it looks like you do have to slide it that way to pop it out.

Um, but yeah I mean I just wiggled it around cuz I Didn't know when I opened it, but let's take a look inside, shall we? Now as you can see I think this. it's just beautiful modular construction. Check out the metal shielding cans. they've got to meet Uh EMC compliance all around the world.

so they just went. oh buer it. Let's Shield these suckers to to the hilt and um, because it's got Wi-Fi and GSM and everything built in. You obviously don't want um, your GSM antenna which is clearly up here interfering with anything else.

So you've got these modules which will uh, pop off later. but uh, check out the dominant thing is the big battery now. Um, it's uh, assembled in China Of course it's the model Gps10 3463 92100. Don't worry about this.

I'll be putting up higher res uh, photos of all this later. but it's a Lithium Polymer battery. 3.7 volts with a minimal capacity. Oh, it says minimal of 1750 milliamps or 6.5 WS That's a monster of a custom battery.

It's just held down with these two screws. maybe some? No. I think it's just those two screws which are obviously under. There is a one of those um, multicon PCB um spring terminals so that battery batter should just lift out.

Uh, like that. I'm not even going to bother taking that out cuz I know precisely what's under there and it's just beautiful construction. You got the separate Uh GPS GPS GSM module over here S I always get those mixed up H I'm working on Gsm and GPS designs and um, that's the Uh GSM module the 3G GSM It's got a UFL connector here which goes through a little micro coax to the uh anol um, Anol GSM antenna up here. Let's take a look at it.

There we go. It's a Anol which normally make connectors I Assume it's the same ampol but that is the layout of the uh uh GSM uh 3G antenna. and as you can see, we've got the speakers here left and right. That's the uh, that's the top of the Dome there I Can see like the Myer um cone in there as well.

Um, so they're the tiny little speakers. They're not symmetrical. There's I like symmetry in my design I Don't know why they haven't done it, haven't done it. symmetrical there.

Obviously something to do with the Um uh GSM antenna, but the Uh GPS module. Check it out. There it is. It's an any data brand made in China of course isn't everything but there you go.

It's a Dtp 600 for you so that would just pop out. and surprisingly there is a Sim uh card holder here with a SIM card in it. That's that's the Amazon SIM card to get onto the Amazon Network the Um Amazon Whispernet Network they call it I think and that's surprising I thought that would just be you know, embedded onto the board to save cost cuz you're talking you know that connect to cost money. So yeah, they've decided that they, uh, that they wanted to do that I guess in their infinite wisdom.

So um, now here's an interesting thing. Check it out. these little tabs on the side of the case which I thought were just maybe you know, some access port to hold something in there. It's actually a connector.

Check it out. It's some sort of, um, IO some sort of interface connector I Have no idea what it is or what accessories are designed to be plugged into that, but there you go. It's some sort of connector. and this one over here.

Let's check this out. This one over here has some sort of, um, some sort of, uh, spring mechanism to it. No, it's just some sort of grounding I Think it's just yeah. it's just that, the top of that, uh, metal.

um, that piece of metal there which goes down to something else I Don't know. but yeah, it's some sort of grounding. um, interface. perhaps? I don't know.

I have noidea idea. Strange. Okay, there's the Wi-Fi chipset. It's a Roam Aetheros chipset and I put up the number later.

But uh, there's the filter. as you can see and there is the Wi-Fi antenna. Believe it or not, that little tiny 0603 device. there is the Wi-Fi antenna.

and um, what else do we got here? Now This is rather curious. Check it out. There is a recent switch. it's got reset on the silk screen there and there's no way that I'm going to press that because I don't I don't want to lose my firmware.

So um, yeah, that's rather strange. And the mechanism here. It's got a little. It's got a nice little spring mechanism which engages the Um which is engages the little micro switch there.

very very nice. I Love that mechanism. It's quite neat. Uh, and we've got the USB interface.

Uh, of course the micro AB connector the the microphone there, which um does nothing in this design but uh, it will in future designs. Uh, the headphone interface. Now as you can see the headphone um interface, it's got a separate ground path. It's got a star point back here and it's separated.

Um, the ground. Uh, the audio circuitry has its own separate ground right around there. as you'd expect in a properly design and properly laid out um audio design. So the guys and girls at Uh Lab 126 really know what they're doing when they lay out boards.

it's quite nice. I like it. Um, and that's a uh that audio codec. There is a Wolfson I'll put up a um highres photos later but it's a Wolfson brand audio stereo audio codec.

Um, got another couple little tacked um right angle tack switches there for the for the Uh buttons for the volume control and uh, that's about it along the top. Now curiously, there's a there's a part actually missing on there. But here is a real interesting thing. Check it out.

Guess what it is? it's JTAG If you can read that, that's the JTAG interface for the free scale arm processor which is clearly under here. So there you go. Um, hackers out there. you can access it.

Looks like, um, you should be able to access the JTAG Port directly. Fantastic. And also, this is a REV a board. so I Don't know how many prototype revisions they went through, but it's certainly production.

Uh, Rev A And it's uh, got a barcode there for Um for uh, process tracking and things like that. But interestingly, I'll show you this. Check out the case. The case has got an RFID tag.

Look at that. There it is, Can we? Yep, there we go. The r an RFID tag embedded in the case that probably cost a a couple of cents. You can buy them pretty cheap these days.

It's a stick on that's the antenna around there and it's got the chip in the middle. I'll try and get my microscope out and get a highres photo of that if possible. Um, but yeah, that would be used for um, inventory tracking. Once the thing's fully assembled and it's on there, they just scan it.

um, over. You know, they just pass a scanner over it and or even put it near a scanner and they can, uh, track individual devices. Um, for their. It's most likely got the serial number program into there and maybe you know, use a data and it's attached to the database and all that sort of stuff.

So great for inventory tracking. They've really put a lot of effort into this design for high volume manufacturing and we'll just see if we can use our microscope here to have a look at this um RFID tag. Let's check it out. Not sure if you can see that on the screen, but uh I'm zooming in.

go up to 27 times. can't see much there at all. It's uh, no, you can see the D but that's about it. It's uh, not that interesting.

I'm afraid. sorry. Okay, now I've taken all these metal cans off. They just lift.

uh, straight off. very easy. Just get your knife under the side. they're just a uh, they're just a standard um.

metal shielding can. Now let's take a look what we've got under here. Check it out. There is our free scale.

There's our free scale processor. so I'm not sure if you can see the number under there, but it's it's basically a Um IMX 353 processor. Um, there's the Samsung uh dram as well. Um, now over wh there we go Samsung dram.

Let's see if we can see if we can get that on camera. sorry, it's upside down. I'll uh there's the free scale device and and the Samsung Dam under there. Now let's move over to here.

and here is the Um Samsung uh flash. It's a nand uh, flash memory under there. there's your that? that's your 4 gig of flash memory. Now there's an Epson E in controller.

As you'd expect. Um Epson I think there's only a couple of people which make E in controllers and Epson's the uh, Epson's the biggest sorry I can't get a good can't get a good view on that I don't think I'll have to review the camera shot later. but um, yeah, that's a Samsung sorry Epson eink device and uh, that under there is obviously another Um component to do with the E in I presume. Now this device under here is another free scale device.

It's it's hard to read, but um I've managed to see it and it's an MC 13892 and that is a Um power management and user interface chip designed to work with the Uh free scale. uh, free scale processor. So it's got a realtime clock and power management and all sort of all sorts of stuff. and that's responsible for the uh, low power consumption or partly responsible for the low power consumption.

And I forgot to show you this little aspect to the wireless land antenna too. You can see that uh, uh, goldplated strip around the outer part of the case there, which connects straight into there. Now one of the really nice things about designing I Love large product like this as opposed to a modern mobile phone is that you got plenty of real estate. which means that you can, uh, populate all your components on one side.

You only have a single side uh load which means you can um, uh, pump out boards from your manufacturing facility twice as fast cuz they don't have to flip them over and and place Parts on the other side and you can use Um As you'll see, all the parts are are minimum. Um, like they're 0402 or bigger. So really, you know you don't have to go down to those. You know, those much, much smaller um SMD components which you'll find in Mobile phones and those exotic manufacturing uh, exotic manufacturing techniques you'll find in today's mobile phon.

So that allows them to, uh, lower the manufacturing cost of this thing and increase the yield and the manufacturing reliability and everything. It's just a luxury you don't get um very often these days in uh, consumer gadgets and you see these large value caps on here. they're on a uh, they're on another board at a lower level or is that a that could actually be a membrane on top of the eink? uh display. Now they're obviously um, separate to this board.

They're part of the eink uh display driver um, circuitry, maybe a switched cap filter or something? I Don't know how. um, how uh, you know these E in displays are actually uh, powered what power supplies they actually require. But obviously this connector here goes off to the Eink display down the bottom. Um, there's another couple of there's uh, that's obviously uh key I think believe that's for the keypad.

um that obviously I'm pretty sure that's the keypad. um, interface cuz this is near the eink uh display driver here, so that's obviously the eink. There's another one goes down here to a couple of buttons. a little little micro ribbon goes off there, but that's about it.

There's not too much else in it. I Think this has been a very interesting tear down indeed because it just the um, it's a textbook example really of uh, producing, designing, manufacturing, and producing a high volume Consumer Electronic product to meet a certain price. Point it it it's using bleeding edge technology I mean the Um I'm sure the E in display alone cost you know, a third of the price or something like that. but uh, to get the rest of the uh price point down, theyve put a lot of effort into high volume manufacturer.

The shielding is brilliant, the design um, and the layout of the board. My hats off to the guys and girls at Lab 126 who designed and uh, and built this thing. It's just it's just fantastic. It's lovely and it's a beautiful, beautiful design example.

So I hope you liked it that's inside the Kindle 3 I'm impressed I Give it a huge thumbs up.