Hi, it's tear down time again. This time around we've got sorry Bloody Mobile. Hang on a sec. Got to get it.

Hello? yeah speaking. no. Do not wish to refinance my home loan. Thank you very much.

Bloody hell it's vintage mobile phone time. We're going to tear down one of these old brick mobile phones from about 20 years ago. This should be awesome. Now this one I've got is the Motorola Ultra Sleek 960 uh Dinac series.

It's part of it's about 993, maybe 9094, uh, vintage. so it's bordering on 20 years old. now. Now it is part of the Dino Attac series, which started um in the 80s actually.

but this was one of the last, probably if not the last, analog mobile phone at least from Motorola on the market. So I Thought it'd be interesting tear down to compare this with some even technology from 10 years ago. So this was possibly the smallest and lightest analog mobile phone you could get before they turned. uh, digital? GSM and all that sort of stuff and technology and miniaturization and RF uh, engineering took over and uh, before the functionality of the phone was actually determined by, the size of the phone was determined by like the user interface and things like that back in these days.

The batter's huge. The circuitry inside is huge. the antenna's huge, all that analog type stuff replaced by digital technology which made them much smaller and much lighter. As we know today, or even from 10 years ago, I'm going to love this.

It's going to be interesting. Let's go. So you know what we say here on the Eev blog. Don't turn it on, Take it apart now just to give you a bit of size comparison with even moderately, uh, modern mobile phones.

I've got the Uh Motorola Ultr Sleek 960 the last of the analog mobile phones here, or what they call a brick mobile phone cuz they were the size and the weight of a typical household brick. This is one of the smallest and lightest ones that you could get on the market right at the end of the analog era. So this one there are. They are much bigger and much heavier than this in the original Dino Attac series, but compare that.

so this is 994 vintage. Uh, we've got the classic um Nokia uh, 310 here and that's n 2000 vintage and we got the Motorola C651 here about 94 vintage or thereabouts and just compare the the phones. It's just absolutely ridiculous. But that's the difference that digital, uh, communication, digital electronics and communication technology made possible.

You were limited. The phone was limited by basically the usability, the size of the keypad and the screen. Those sort of usability factors. They could have made them much, um, smaller than this, and they have, um, but they become practically unusable.

So really, you are limited by that user interface usability uh, factor. And of course, you've got the modern smartphones which have gone up in size again because you want greater usability in these things. In terms of uh, watching video and surfing the net and doing all sorts of stuff. Which wasn't around when these sort of Uh phones this sort of 2000 uh, vintage, you just wanted to make calls and do SMS and maybe play a little snake game or something like that.

But back then with these analogs, all you wanted to do was make a call. No such thing as SMS Back then analog mobile phones. In fact, um, these were because they used the analog spectrum. They could.

You could actually listen in to people's calls. and I remember using a Uh scanner one of those Tandy 200 uh, Channel scanners. You could actually I think it was around 800 MHz or there about something like that. Don't quote me on that, but you could actually tune in to people's mobile and log mobile phone conversation.

And it was boring as batshit, you know. I'll be home for dinner. Dear One of the big differences you'll notice is the antenna. These oldfashioned analog antenna here.

which is, actually, if you strip that off there, it actually unscrews and there it is. There's the analog antenna specifically designed for that analog. Spectrum They've been replaced by invisible antennas somewhere inside these modern mobile phones because they're uh, using uh, new Advanced uh, fractal antenna technology which can make them ridiculously small so they can squeeze them into these tiny packages. and their performance is still brilliant.

Amazing technology Are going to be a similar overall length for specific uh wavelength for the frequency they're working on, but they can fold back on themselves in a fractal type uh pattern. which means they can get incredibly small geometries. now. let's actually switch the phone on in here and take a quick look at just the user interface.

It uses a S segment LED display I Love it. Totally old school and it's got a S Digigit display. that's all they could fit on there. Flashing LED uh signals there.

It's no sync cuz it obviously can't synchronize with any network. but oh it's just it's just brilliant and they've look, it's got Auto turnoff on the display there. it's still there, but it they turn it off to save power cuz chewing all of that those um LEDs being bright to see them in daylight, you'd have to have those um, you know, very bright indeed. And they didn't have modern, really ultra bright lead technology 20 years ago either.

So they're going to chew a lot of uh, current just to do the display. That's so why they've I presumably why they've got a quick uh timeout there on the LED display. but yeah, LCDs they didn't even I Guess they didn't even think of using them back there. And the antenna here.

Nice big rugged screw on antenna like that I Love it. Oh, brings back memories and I'm not sure what. uh Jack that is on the side. Is that.

like a headphone jack? I'm not actually. uh, sure what that is. It's not external power because the charging comes through these contacts on the back here and the battery. if you get this clip on the bottom like that.

Bingo It slides off like that and there's the very compact charging adapter for it. You slide it right there and it charges the build-in nickel cadmium batteries. Nikad folks. none of this Lithium stuff.

It's a neat sort of design. It slides in there. can't really go wrong. and uh, they're only using one of the, um, they're not using one of the terminals down here.

So that's where the battery connects on those two large brass terminals down there. And these terminals up here. My guess for those would be considering that they're not used inside. the pack.

Here would be some sort of a car mount adapter. Probably that would be my guess. Um, would be you know you slide on an optional Uh pack on here, which actually provides power through to the phone perhaps? and an external antenna. Maybe Check it out.

Motorola Inc Manufactured in the United States of America Yanks must be shedding a bit of a tear at the moment. Hand over the heart singing Star Spangled Banner Whatever ever happened to the American manufacturing industry? Another interesting thing to note: Look, check it out. They've got the instructions, operating instructions printed on the back of the phone under the battery. Brilliant! and I see some lovely looking torque screws there? two up there.

two down here. Let's crack this baby open. I Love it. They even tell you tampering width or adjustment of the four in Brackets Screws on the back of this radio will void the warrant.

Awesome. Let's void it. Okay, let's see if we can crack this thing open. It's uh, had 20 years to sort of weld itself together.

Oh, it's coming apart Tada hang on antenna up here, getting a bit sticky. Well, it turns out there was a flat Flex cable there and I sort of. the the connector's right down in there and I just sort of, uh, yanked at it and pulled it straight out. Oops, but uh, don't think I broke anything there and Tada there it is.

And of course the first thing you cop in the face is the lawyer crap manufactured under one or more of the following Motorola Us Pton other Pon Pending Beautiful. And of course, something you don't see every day in modern mobile phones is a good old coax cable running up to the antenna. Uh, board up there the antenna connector and as you can see, it's heavily shielded in placees. so let's take a better look at that and this part of the board.

here. There's a few. um, surface mount, uh, components. Few look at the angles there they're actually placed on, they're a little bit off there.

Um, not the best, but it looks like the RF output is down on the bottom uh, end of the phone and they're actually sending that all the way through underneath. Uh, this shielded module here and they've actually solded that uh, the out the braid Shield of the coax directly onto this um, foil here. which we'll have to take a look at what's under there. but they've determined that, um, they should, actually, uh, tack it down in that place I'm not sure whether or not that's for I assume it's for sh building? it's not.

can't surely just be for holding down the coax in place, so there's a reason they've done that. It's rather interesting. Some more, uh, torque screws here. we'll take those off and see what's on the other side.

and I took those four screws off and it gets rather interes in here. Check it out. These boards looks like there's a 0.1 in header connector totally old school to join the two boards together. I Love it.

and if we flip that all the way over like that, that damn annoying coax is still physically connected on there. But there's the bottom of that board which has got a custom fitted plastic uh holder in there and that just unclips from either side of the board like that and Ah that's all. and the shield comes out there. We go.

Go! and Tada And here's the main: PCB Uh, the logic. PCB Anyway, not the RF one. this one's on the bottom. uh, wedge between the keypad and the RF section.

Lots of tanum uh caps as you'd expect and as you'd expect, lots of Motorola Parts cuz Motor Roller: A huge semiconductor manufacturer. They make a whole ton of stuff, so no surprises that uh, um, pretty much most of the chips on here are going to be motor. Rola There's a bit rate uh generator here. that's an MC uh one41 uh bit rate generator.

um I Have no idea what that is. It's a 99 T30 Your guess is as good as mine I Guess you could find it on one of the obsolete uh component, uh, database searches or something like that main. It looks like probably some sort of processor up here. It's an Sc 39101.

your guess is as good as mine. Um, move over. We've got a what have we got here? another Motorola branded part, Sc4 4675. no idea.

Probably some sort of uh, one of those is obviously, um, some sort of processor. We've got a crystal in there, low frequency stuff, um, and a couple of more devices. two Motorola devices over here, and an app mail which obviously contains the uh firmware one would imagine. And that's the connector for the um, well, for the for that antenna connector which connected that antenna interface.

so it looks like that has some sort of uh, digital interface to those Um pins on the back there. So um, which I guessed was sort of like the car interface or something like that. So there's the logic PCB pretty basic stuff and uh, pretty much as you'd expect. uh components.

um, the smallest they get is, uh, it looks like um 0805 uh technology. So 23 packages so you know no real Ultra miniature O2 01s or smaller that they're using these days in modern mobile phones. So let's take a look at the RF board. and the problem with looking at the RF Board of course is that everything's under these metal cans and they're soldered onto the board.

so I'd have to desolder those H Couldn't be bothered, it's not that interesting. It's going to have Motorola um, RF uh stuff in it, but everything is very heavily shielded on this board. There's a ton of stuff. they've got an oscillator module there and everything else would be a RF type, uh, RF type circuitry, filter blocks, and uh, things like that you'd expect.

and there is some additional circuitry under the metal shielding can on the back. there. just some uh, passive, uh type stuff. Maybe some uh, RF transistors or something like that as well.

But there you go. That's uh, the RF board and there's you know, there's a lot of effort that goes into designing an RF board like that and all the subsections and the filters and the H modulators and God knows what is involved in one of these analog, uh, mobile phone systems. The RF Engineers had, uh, have a fi day with that of course, but all of that's been replaced. um, pretty much with uh, digital Communications technology.

One of the interesting things by looking at this, it's fairly typical of an engineer PCB of the age, but it to me, it just strikes that they haven't really put a massive amount of engineering into making this thing uh, smaller. I It's almost as if like they didn't bother. I Think they? they probably could have uh, made it, uh, smaller and better, uh, packaged if they tried. but they've just gone with a, you know, sing simple header header connector and they've just really I I don't know I I Just get the impression that if they really tried hard back in those days, they still could have made uh, these analog mobile phones.

um, even smaller if they, uh, maybe did some more, uh, custom stuff or things like that. Maybe they really a good use of, uh, double-sided uh layout design. They could have had maybe half the board as the digital section and the other half is the RF or something like that to gain some thickness. Advantage But you know when you got a a huge battery like this to power the damn thing for 8 or 10 hours or however long it lasted I Don't even think it lasted that? Certainly not.

Uh, talk time. Um, standby. I Think it probably lasted a day in standby or a day and a half or two or something at best. but geez, yeah, when you you know when you've got that base to work with, oh, this huge heavy battery like this, you just sort of shrug your shoulders and go, eh, who cares I'll just make my design life easy.

although that's with hindsight I guess back. I'm sure the guys and girls who designed this thing back in uh, would have been the very early '90s Maybe they um, you know they started design on this in say, 92, 1992 or something like that. Sure, they're very proud of it, put a lot of effort into it, and uh, it is. Pro: You know, probably the smallest or one of the smallest analog Mobile phones on the market.

One of the more interesting things here is to actually look at how thick just this bottom section is I haven't even taken out this digital board here and you can see the thickness is pro. I Don't expect to find much, if any circuitry on the bottom. maybe just the c um keypad? uh, membrane, uh, part of it and uh, and look at the amount of space thickness which is wasted in this speaker up here. It's just it's It's just crazy if you compare that to a modern thickness of a modern mobile phone.

Just the keypad membrane thing here is as thick as is the same thickness as a modern mobile phone. It's It's amazing. So there's quite a bit of wasted space on there. I think I'll find when I Prize this board out.

Well if you flip the board out here, let's take a look at this and I I forgot about the uh screen of course, but they've mounted this on a separate board like this with its own little with its own plastic carry and that's taking up a bunch of room. And check out the this uh holder they've got in place with the spring contacts for the speak down there. And just the the advances in technology in speaker and uh, microphone technology has made mobile phones incredibly tiny as well. Can you imagine having one of those huge things in one of those huge speakers in a modern mobile phone? and we're only talking like 92 1993 Uh.

technology here? So you with hindsight, you almost get the impression that well, couldn't they have found something better or a better solution that was smaller and Slimmer I don't know. it's to me, you know, 94 is not that long ago. but I guess it is 20 years maybe I'm just uh, you know I'm just remembering a different age or something like that. But anyway, here's the Uh membrane keypad which is what I expected they've got LEDs on there.

looks like they've got some Led uh backlight that's quite Advanced uh for its time I think um little uh 08, sorry 1206 uh package LEDs there and the microphone down here. Once again, you couldn't imagine having a huge microphone insert like that in a modern, uh mobile phone. Most of them these days are all the uh, digital uh microphones and uh, the micr machined ones. Really tiny.

Really advanced technology. And once again, they got some discreet wiing here. but yeah, I don't know. I Maybe if they put some more engineering into it, they could have made it smaller perhaps? but I don't know.

Maybe that is a remarkable feed of engineering for 1993 or so now. Looks like there's a can, a metal can under there with some extra circuitry. You can see all those pins through there, so may have spoken too soon. The LED display pops off like that and they've got a looks like they've got a flat Flex connector fairly.

uh, still fairly common to find those in stuff these days days. Nothing. uh, old school there at all. The I like you know, all these custom plastic Clips they've used on these thing.

Oh, there we go. so that's that's popped off. There we go. Bit of extra circuitry once again with, you know, there's a fair bit of space on this if they went.

um, if they worked on that layout, uh, you know, put a bit more effort into miniaturizing that layout. They could have put all that stuff on the top I'm sure and uh and made it all smaller. but well. I guess they had their designed decisions at the time.

Oh no, the LED module is made in Malaysia and the date code on some of these devices 9339 that's 993 39th week so that uh dates the manufacturer of this board to at least after that. Interestingly looks like there's some laser marked Motorola Copyright 9241 on there. That's rather curious on a 9339 device. some of the other devices the 38th week, 93 there, the 16th week 93.

So we're talking the end of 93 possibly uh, uh, the beginning of 1994 when this board was actually manufactured. giving you know a month or two lead time for the devices from the factory to the manufacturing uh plant to actually assemble this thing at best. And if you compare that with the Nokia 3310, just the speaker Alone Look at the thickness and size of that old school speaker in there compared to the Uh Tiny. Once again, it's a moving coil uh speaker.

but it's smaller, tinier, and just allow these phones to get much, much smaller. And really, this is Uh 2000, uh, vintage even before that, so there's only you know, five or six years. uh, difference tops between um, just what speakers were used in phones back then. Amazing.

and I can't really, uh, remember very clearly back to 94 of what speakers were available back then. But you would have thought that when you're designing something like this mobile phone, you would have thought, look at how much space is taken up by this speaker. That's a real bottleneck in, uh, today's technology. Can't we come up with something? Or find something smaller? Um, that works I'm I'm surprised they couldn't do that in 94.

Who knows. So here you have inside the Nokia 3310 and you can see the DraStic difference in the Technologies there in the RF shielded technology and look how thin they've become. They've sort of turned all of that and we're only talking. You know, 5 years difference.

Six years tops or something like that. They've gone from analog technology to GSM uh, digital technology. The sort of, you know, the Nokia You know, the 5110 or something like that. a bit older.

a bit bigger than this, but you can see the differences in that sort of stuff. and and it's all on that one board. They've shrunk all the digital stuff into one little part of this. The RF is much smaller in one part, up near the top or something like that.

Massive, massive difference. and as you can see the speaker technology, of course, much. you know, much, much smaller. so they' fitted that in there.

The microphone is absolutely tiny compared to the microphone that's you know used in this thing. Can you imagine that on you know, taking up a a ton of space on that board down the bottom here, but you could probably still maybe fit it in there these days. And the difference in the Battery Technology of course, is massive. The size of one of these modern uh lithium ion batteries compared to the old Nikad battery pack and the low power Uh technology.

the Um decrease in Uh silicon sizes meant lower uh Power uh technology just vastly vastly different and uh Sims and just the packaging technology 3D tools that went into this and uh, you know, 3D design efforts, the membrane keypad they've made smaller, they haven't got big rubber Keys they've gone to a little uh, more like more of the tactile um type uh keys and just vastly vastly different. It's amazing, and there's not much. in years. you know there's only five years difference between this analog technology and digital.

Incredible. Uh GSM antenna on the top there coming through these um uh Pogo pins here directly onto the Uh backs side. well, the RF section of the board up the top there. so that would be the RS section or one or both of those sections along with the processing down here.

And really, you know that's a vast difference to the analog Um antenna antenna technology um, that they had only 5 years earlier. and needless to say, the LCD Uh technology just totally totally. you know. Worlds Apart Massive power consumption for Led that just choose a ton of power, virtually no power.

A couple of milliamps for one of these Matrix LCD displays massive amount of difference in terms of Uh information you can provide for orders of magnitude many orders of magnitude, um, less power consumption and just other small differences in packaging technology. like having a like the power button on the top here with a little uh TCT little surface mount right angle TCT uh switch down in there just enables much. those little things add up to enable much smaller package in technology. So some of the big drivers in uh, a very quick drop in mobile phone uh size and massive increase in technology battery was a big key factor in that going to these uh uh lithium ion Uh batteries uh increased integration in the Uh digital Uh GSM uh Well, the converting from analog to digital old school integration complete in a single IC Uh.

As far as the Uh base as as far as the proc processing section goes: RF Section: totally shrunk antennas uh technology just general Uh packaging, surface mount packaging technology, much smaller resistors if you compare and just general Uh PCB technology as well just laying out the board. they've gone from, you know, 0805 size components down to 0402 or smaller devices on these boards and just a massive, massive massive difference. And they've designed it. They put a lot of engineering into integrating this so it's all on one side of the board whereas they were sort of uh, hamstrung they with these, this analog phone, they laid it out.

it's on two sizes, two sides like that. they compromise that instantly doubles you know, extra 30 40% thickness on your board. Crazy. Just the shielding.

um. thicknesses here of the you know, thick shielding on there. Once again, double-sided They've had to go for the double-sided board there, they've used 1.6 mm. um PCB They've gone for a thinner uh PCB here and it all adds up to all these minor things add up to make a huge difference in the size, weight, power consumption of course.

modern low power uh processing technology with the smaller silicon geometries and things like that have enabled a lot of stuff. But wow, and you add on the smaller speaker and uh microphone technology. the LCDs the tactile uh Dome keypad instead of the uh rubber membrane one. and bingo, you got yourself much smaller, high-tech modern mobile phone.

You can actually fit in your pocket as opposed to one of these bricks. so that's a look inside. One of the last of the analog era mobile phones, the Motorola Ultra Sleek 96 I Hope you enjoyed that. If you want to check out highres photos of the turn uh, tear down they're available on my Uh Flicker photo account.

so check that out and I'll catch you next time.