Hi it's mini tear down time. Thanks to uh Andrew Pong for sending in this little LG 800g Mobile Phone uh that he picked up in the US It's from a company called uh Track Phone Wireless Inc and he got this for $5 delivered. Um yes, it is actually a uh well I believe it's a recondition dat units but it's you know, virtually as uh, new here. really? I can't uh tell any different but it's a, you know, amazing $5 So I Thought we'd tear it down have a look what's inside a $5 phone like this.

It usually goes for about, you know, $49 or or something like that. but they've They advertise this thing for five bucks to deliver. You got to be kidding me. It's a touchscreen.

It's got a web browser in it. it does, uh, play Mp3s. It's got a SD card slot inside. um and it's got Bluetooth as well integrated feature.

Set wise, there's virtually nothing on it. I mean you know there's an Ascend button, Return button, end button. It's that touchcreen. It looks like you cannot actually get into the main screen without actually inserting a Sim I Don't have a fullsize uh SIM card for this thing.

but uh yes, it does have a 2 megapixel camera on the back. It's going to be be bones and absolute Uh crap. Comes with a tiny little um LG lithium ion battery. It's only 900 Mah hours.

but apparently 3.4 hours apparently. uh, like 8 Days standby 4 hours talk time. Something like that. You know? it's absolutely tiny, weighs hardly anything at all.

So I thought we'd tear this down. See what's inside one of these cheap ass phones? I Mean you know, there's really not much to this at all. Is that an external antenna connector there? But there you go. It's got a fulls siiz uh SIM card slot.

We've got a micro um SD card in there and uh, well, looks like we have a couple of screws. Should be able to whip this part puppy apart real quick. Now with a real Bare Bones phone like this, it's not a SmartPhone by the way. Uh no.

I Don't think anyone would classify this as a smartphone even though you can run some sort of app crappy app on it or something like that. But it's certainly not a uh Android or an Apple uh OS that's for sure. So anyway, we expect a whole lot of high level of uh, system chip integration in this thing. I'd be surprised if it's more than like a three chip uh solution or something like that.

You know I mean they're really it's going to be the main ASC in here, plus maybe some external memory and you know, maybe an RF chipset and that's probably about it. So and of course, it'll be a oneboard solution. The LCD on this is not high resolution at all. Um, and we really, they're really going to save every cent on their bomb cost possible on something like this.

so it looks like I may have to prize it open now. There's probably some clips in there and by the way, there's pretty much nothing else on the sides here. There's a micro USB excellent for uh, charging. There's a power button on the top and there's a headphone jack and volume control, but that is it.

Yeah, no surprises for guessing that just was all held in place by little plastic retaining clip around the outside. Still a bit of a Mong but yeah, this is going to be yeah, a oneboard solution. Of course you're not going to piss money away on multiple boards, but let me I think we got a few Clips on the end. there still left and we may finally have it here.

Let's Uh Something's caught in that uh top left corner there. No. there we go. Ah, okay, there we go there it is.

Bang. We're in like Flynn and looks looks like we've got all of the magic under a can here, which you may, uh, hopefully we won't have to, uh, desolder that I don't think it's sold onto the board, but there's you know. As we said, single board solution? uh, in the crappiest 2 megapixel camera possible I'm sure directly, uh, surface mounted onto the PCB down there. we do have a couple of chips we'll try and get in there and uh, have a look at those and we got our Um PCB Mount micro USB as you'd expect and uh, our headphone jack And the Um SD card slots.

and there's a single piece uh rear case with all the various Uh inserts in there for the various contacts. Now one thing I did find interesting is that the little tacti buttons on the side here for the volume there they are mounted on that little board there the tactile buttons. but then we've got the Uh leaf spring contacts there. You'll notice that they've actually got Uh side contacts on the edge of the PCB Like that and the reason I said that was unusual because that's uh, an additional manufacturing Step at the Bebo PCB level which usually costs more.

but you know they're probably making these things I don't know 100,000 of these things. so maybe the price wasn't a huge differentiator. I'm just surprised that they didn't go with a CO a top Uh contact solution like they did on other parts of the board. Over here, it's just, you know, saves that extra manufacturing step.

And speaking of those contacts, well, they're the ones that actually go off to the uh uh internal antenna which is on the case which we'll have a look at in a second. But there's the external Uh antenna contact solution for like a car, uh, handsfree kit or something like that. I'm surprised on a phone of this little level, they even bother having that and there those two contacts on the back of the case there in this complete assembly. this big convoluted assembly that they've got in here is nothing but a holder essentially for there it is.

And there's the antenna shaped to, uh, you know, form over the plastic molding in there and that's you know. Um, they've gone to a a reasonable amount of trouble to do that, but once you do, uh, actually design that, it is very low cost to implement. Once you uh, get those dyes made and just Stamp Those things out and these two contacts on the board here that looks to be like the Bluetooth antenna sorry which is another plastic molding inside here which I'll try and get out and bingo there it is. If we flip that over, you can see they've done exactly the same thing there as what they did on the other one.

and I'm not exactly sure what we've got there. Have we got ourselves of some sort of filter? perhaps? And for those playing along at home, there's all the detail on the internal label. and for the power button on the top, you can see that's just another little uh, tactile dome in there. and I'm surprised that they've actually, uh, sprung for the extra little flat Flex cable going over to the main board like that I know, pissing away half a % there in the manufacturing cost.

maybe could have optimized that one out if they tried a bit harder and I flipped the board out here just near the uh Power tactile button and you can see these four contacts on the bottom here. They actually go down to inside the unit down in here and you can see that that's obviously the Uh flat Flex membrane going in there and driving the backlight for the screen. so that was just a cheap and easy way to. uh, press Fit connect the board and uh, get that down onto the Uh LCD down in there.

But the main connection to the LCD of course is your more traditional Uh flat Flex connector up on here, which then just pops right on over like that. That's the data we got on the LCD Flat Flex and the only number we've got on the LCD is that one and I can't find any info on that at all. So the type I don't know if anyone's got any info on the LCD Please leave it in the comments and underneath this plastic section on top here. that's just our vibration motor there and we just have our speaker and another little chip hidden under there.

Of course, there's absolutely nothing on the back side of this board except they have done a double-sided load. and clearly that's just a little uh, headphone, driver amp there, and some more uh, cheap ass. Just little tactile domes directly mounted on the board there for the buttons on the front of the case. And of course you're not going to, uh, you know, get any more than that.

Cuz these tactile domes. they ridiculously cheap. They uh, you can get them pick and place uh, solder directly on the board. or you can just put them in like individually.

Uh, pick and place or you can get them, uh, you know, is a complete sheet or something like that that sticks over. very cheap manufacturing process and it works just fine. There's nothing wrong with it whatsoever. Some of these tactile domes depends on the manufacturer, can have incredibly long operating lives, and it looks like we can just pop off this metal can on the top with these tabs here.

Easy peasy. And we got a few chips. more than what I was expecting, but you know, not too much. Out of the ballpark, really.

We got ourselves a backup battery there. We'll take the label off there to see exactly what we've got. and they've got. is that a heat pad? Yeah, that could be a heat Sinker Yep, Pad on the top of there.

Uh, that actually connects through to the metal case. So let's take a look in more detail and this is where all the magic happens. This is the main system on chip I See, it's an Infinion X Gold 213 and this contains everything including the kitchen sink. I Think let's go to the data sheet and here it is: the Infini: X Gold 23 Lowest cost Edge Single chip solution for mobile internet browsing and messaging is the first single chip 65 nanom process Cosos technology that integrates baseband, RF transceiver, power management unit and FM radio.

After successful Market introduction of the second generation X Gold 101, fly the eold uh the 213 now takes a next step towards bringing new features into lowcost segment. That's what we got here, thereby setting new industry standards in system on chip and this is how they get the price point. It's got an integrated FM radio high performance Arm processor Edge functionality uh that enables U WAP browsing music and video camera FM broadcasting messaging all the of stuff Due to the single chip integration, this functionality can be realized in a very small PCB area. Given the handset manufacturer highest design flexibility in this case doesn't really matter.

They really had plenty of room in this side in inside this phone in the scheme of things, but uh, this you know, look at the main features: direct conversion receiver fully integrated digital control RF synthesizer including Delta Sigma transmitter FM radio stereo recording quarter VGA screen 256 2 2 62 colors so it displays that uh handles all the display directly all in the one chip up to 3 megap camera We've only got uh 2 megapixel here that's 8bit parallel interface um direct Sim support us Uh USB 2.0 goes directly in memory card interface Bluetooth Agps WLAN Oh and it's got the power management I told you it had the kitchen sink. it's all in there class. D Audio amp um stereo headset without coupling. then I'm not sure what that extra chip near the Uh external headphone was.

Maybe it's a microphone amp coming back in? Uh, perhaps that might explain it a bit better. Um DC to DC converter for the Uh backlight handles all the charging, everything else and it handles Jpeg encoding and MPEG playback and the whole shebang I mean fantastic and it's a point pain in the ass5 mm pitch um BGA device requires they even tell you requires a six layer minimum PCB just to Route the thing out. So there you go. You can't just get this on a four layer uh board? uh, most likely not unless you can pull a few tricks.

But there you go. Here's the internal block diagram for the thing and well as you can see. yeah, I can probably see the kitchen sink in there somewhere as well. It's got even secure Ramen Euse and all sorts of things.

handles the keypad and ah man I What? I didn't see here is a touched screen controller I didn't mention C mention of that. So we might need an external uh, touchscreen controller perhaps? um maybe that's the look over here next to our transmitter. got our sore filter sore filter block external so maybe that's what we? that's what was inside that uh cam we saw over here. but look at this.

it drives the vibration motor directly, handles all the uh lithium ion Lithium Polymer charging everything else. It's got the microphone inputs Direct Ah, Fantastic. Another tiny little BGA device down in there, lots of caps hanging off it. Not exactly sure what that one's doing at all.

Likewise, for that one there, what is it? Ksr? BR No idea. And of course there's all the external uh inductors and caps around there as part of the power management circuitry for that thing that was inside it. Got external crystal out here and uh, what else we got. Looks like we possibly got another oscillator module there I Can't quite make out that number on there.

but uh, clearly we have an Intel uh memory device right next to the main system on chip. and isn't it? always remarkable how this has the kitchen sink on it, this incredible system on chip device and the memor is bigger and you'll notice that they've actually gunked up all around the chips around there. Why they've done that uh, could be for moisture Ingress uh reasons. Maybe if it's a uh, hard type to stop any uh, thermal expansion issues with the main BGA devices there just for a bit of reliability.

And there's our transmit module there. It's an RF Micro Devices RF 7161 to the data sheet and here it is: transmit module. it's a quad band does Gsm850 uh, Edge uh, 900 and 1800 as well and there's not a huge amount in there. Just got a main Uh Power Amplifier here and some filtering, some switching and basically goes out to the antenna.

Some built-in ESD protection in there which is quite nice, but there you go. That's just a Uh a complete transmit solution for a GSM phone and it also contains uh four receive ports as well. And here you go. It's got P HMT switch technology that if you don't know is stands for HMT is high Electron Mobility Transistor Wikipedia that one And of course that system on chip was lacking one thing and that was the Bluetooth capability which is handled here by this broadcom BCM 2070 and that's a Bluetooth Uh 3.0 compatible module.

so that's all there is to it. But that's extra cost in this sort of phone. so you can see that this exact same model without Bluetooth capability. Well, I don't know how much they're paying for that chip.

you know what? 50 cents in volume I don't know. You can shave that cost off, that's you know, a fairly sub substantial part of your bomb cost when you've only got you know, like, four major devices here. and and sort of, you know, a few miscellaneous uh, jelly bean stuff around here. It all adds up.

One of these devices could be the Uh touchscreen controller cuz that's not built into the main. uh s So so I don't know I can't make out those devices, but we got a few jelly bean stuff around here. some part of the camera module down here, but uh yeah, nothing much doing so. So there you go I hope you enjoyed a brief look inside that LG 800g uh barebones mobile phone bottom of the Range phone which Andrew got for $5 delivered crazy from uh Tac phone.

Sure it's a refurbished model but unbelievable what you can get for the price these days and big single on chip solution. You can see how they got the price down, although this one is of course you know, built up to a bit of a spec with the extra Bluetooth chipset. Woohoo! You know you can probably get chipsets now which integrate uh, the transmit functionality in there as well. Almost getting sorry, almost getting down to like a single chip uh solution these days perhaps.

but basically this is if you ignore the Bluetooth uh functionality. for example, it's almost a two chip uh solution there. Really? Yeah, there might be an external touchreen screen controller and a couple of other miscellaneous uh, glue stuff, but really, no big deal and that's how they get the price down on these things. It all comes down to that bomb cost in the end.

and uh, how much they can, you know, shave the cost off that and shave the cost off in manufacturer. So I'm not sure exactly how many of these suckers they would have uh you know, tooled up for in production but you know could have been like 100,000 or something like that. They probably wouldn't even get out of bed to manufacture less than 100,000 uh of one particular type of phone. So this isn't quite as Bare Bones as you can get because they didn't have to in include the Bluetooth they didn't have to include the micro SD card, they didn't have to include uh, the camera and other stuff and their headphones and stuff like that if they just wanted oh Shock Horror, a phone that just actually made and receive calls, they could have got the uh, you know that bomb cost down even further.

But as you can see, there's bugger all in these things. and if you can compare them with phones of you know even 10 years ago, the system chip integration these days is absolutely incredible. So there you go if you want to discuss that jump on over to the Eev blog Forum that's the best place to do it or you can always leave YouTube comments of course and thank you very much Andrew for sending that one in spending the whopping five bucks to get this thing including postage I Think it costs more to send it to me here in Australia than it did for him to buy it and get it shipped to him in the US I mean that's just it's crazy. what's up a world are we living in I don't know.

Catch you next time.