Hi welcome to Teardown! Tuesday When I take a look inside the new Pebble Time SmartWatch And yes I Beat the crap out of this thing at the Tuft Lok Challenge on the weekend. So click here. If you haven't watched that video, you can end. The thing actually survived I Took it through all sorts of mud and crap and beat it against all sorts of obstacles and it survived reasonably well.

So let's crack this thing open. see what's inside? You can see that there's still some residual mud on this thing around the buttons there. I couldn't press the button when I actually got out of it. There's a few scratches on the top of the case there, but generally not a big deal, so of course you wouldn't.

This thing is only 30 meters water-resistant and that doesn't actually mean it can survive 30 meters down in water. It's just that like and there is like a standard for this sort of thing. It basically means you, you really shouldn't take this thing swimming. Not designed for continuous immersion.

Certainly it's designed for, you know, just splashes and maybe showering. and you know things general like that. But I beat the crap out of it. And it did survive.

I Don't know. Maybe there's some a bit of water penetration in the inside I Don't know, We'll find out when we tear it down now. this front bezel is just glued on the front I believe. so we should be able to maybe heat up that glue and get that front bezel off.

So yes, this thing I believe is not hugely repairable if you want it like that, change the battery and I'm surprised that there really wasn't any build-up of gunk inside the contacts there. The charging end are the smart band thing because not only can you charge through this, but you can get like add-ons We will be able to get add-ons that clip on and then hook on to these two things and you can have our smart accessories and things like that. But anyway, there are no screws on the thing so if you want to replace the battery well, you're going to have to open it like I'm about to today and hopefully we won't destroy it. But yeah, it's not going to be particularly easy.

So let's crack this puppy open and see any water got in and also see how it's designed and built right. So to get its front bezel off, we're going to have to I heat up the glue around the front here and I've got my hot air station here set. that's the lowest start temperature. it goes down to a hundred degrees.

That'll do got a nice wide nozzle tip on the thing. So I've got various uh, sponges and stuff. Probably might try one of these, if not, might go to a metal spudger but the idea is to go around heat it up and hopefully we don't do much damage but you want to just soften the glue on there I don't know I don't do this very often so it's like trial and error. So how much we actually need to heat the thing up by and just go right around.

and well, let's see if we can get anything going there. It's a bit of movement at the station. Yeah, it's getting there. it's prying off.

not sure if you can see that, but yeah, these plastic ones aren't are the best. Might have to resort to ever a bit more heat or the metal one. there's a lot of glue that's pretty tough. Jeez, There we go.

Got it? Got it? Tada? haha Beauty, we're in like Flynn We're in. You can actually see the stainless steel bezel around there and the top coating by the way is a PVD or physical vapor deposition process. so I'm not sure what actual material they're vapor deposited on the front, but it looks bland. But the finish is actually quite reasonable.

But as you can see during the torture test, it did scratch up and you can see the bare stainless steel under that. But anyway, it looks like that's not glue. It looks like they've got like a double sided tape or or something like that. So maybe they've got like a piece like custom cut or something like that, which they whack on some sort of double-sided adhesive tape.

Perhaps Rather, you know it's not like they've gone along with the you know, the hot snot gun and just you know. I Dabbed a couple of bits of glue around the outside biggest. This actually determines the waterproofness of this thing. Even though it's not waterproof, it's only you know it's water-resistant splash proof.

Things like that, They do seem to have like a full, at least a full seal around there. Of course you wouldn't survive continuous immersion for a long period of time and eventually seep through all. They could be manufacturing imperfections or whatever. But yeah, you know it's going to do a reasonable task just for general splashes or wearing in the shower or something like that, and it probably do the business long term wise.

I Don't know what the adhesion properties of all that are, but it looks like it's up yet and trying to adhere between the stainless steel and whatever you know, plastic thermoplastic that they're actually using for the main case here. So apart from the front bezel coming off like this instead of a screw on back which is your more traditional watch construction, it is actually fairly typical. We've got the case and we've got looks like the entire module inserted in there. We'll be able to lift that out in a minute and the buttons just push through.

You will see that in more detail in a minute, but then they've just got the contact you can see inside there. just going in there and contacting a little tactile right angle switch on the side of the board. There looks like that's just going to be the LCD now. huh? That just had a little clip there.

The LCD is going to swing open AHA and we're more in like Flynn Look at that. Beautiful. Alright, so with the LCD here, it looks like we've got a little PCB mount board to flex connectors so we should be able to just pop that off. Hopefully that's just a press-fit connected going down onto the board.

There this little surface-mount press fit job. Yep, it was. You just get the plastic of course under there and tada. Yep, little board, press fit connector.

That's what you'd expect. Got a little bit of tape there over some programming and or test pads. There we go. My guess would be that, say a maybe a JTAG programming header? perhaps? I got ourselves about a half what our hundred and fifty million power lithium-ion cell in there.

There's our vibration motor, so we've got our counterweight down under. there. There we go. That's A.

That's a decent sized job, taking up a fair bit of the envelope in there. But considering that one of the primary uses for a SmartWatch is to notify you by way of the vibrator motor or like a beep or the LCD then definitely they have to I Give up a lot of room in there for the vibration motor. There you go, you can really see the tactile switches on the side. They're not sure brand they are, but that's quite a typical design for a watch.

Just refloat soldered those right angle tack switches on there. There's no, there's no like real tactile feedback on that. So yeah, I'm not sure you know if they're the best quality switch. And of course, as I've mentioned, you wouldn't go pressing these buttons when you're around water because look at the see the different angle.

I Push that out. You can see that there's actually a lot of play in there and sort of like gap between that button and the case, the plunger and the case. Soap? The yeah, but it's not designed for that tiny Phillips in there. so we'll whip those out and see what's what.

Because of course this suckers going to be a double sided load. Absolutely no doubt. Components on the other side as well. and I thought there was another screw hidden behind there.

Yep, there is. That's a another board to board interconnect. Tada. Now this whole thing should.

Yep, just pop out. Beautiful. You can see the charging contacts on the bottom of the case here. They've actually epoxy.

Well, that's actually not epoxy. That's some sort of like silicon gel or something. Anyway, these are little pogo pins of course. Very nice.

So they've got those just the round type. good enough for a one-off pressure thing like this. So, but that's a nice touch. Little light pogo pins there.

Yeah, they haven't cut corners there. You can actually see the buttons there. You can see that they've put individual Sur Clips around the shaft of each button there. That's that's rather nice attention to detail.

Stop and popping back out. That's a quite a nice way to do it. Once again, they haven't really cut corners there and down near our motor. Here you can see this flat flex which actually connected down on the board down there.

There we go. I Got a couple of passives on the underside there, but anyway, there's two big traces. The two big fat ones there are obviously for our vibration motor there, but there's some other stuff it goes down here and the flat flex goes along here and over to once again, another pass it. couple of passive parts down there.

plus I think I'll maybe a little, um, six pin, you know, tiny s o te edge one of those micro packages. Anyway, that'll be the preamplifier for the microphone so you can actually see the microphone insert in there. My microphone hole of course is all gunked up from the tough bloke challenge. But yeah, there's our little microphone.

I'm not sure why it's so far actually back from here. I'm not sure what they got under there, but hmm, that's rather interesting. It might take off that clip and see what's what. There we go! I'm not sure what their deal is, but there's our microphone element.

They've got a rubber surround on that so it looks like they're doing some vibration deep in there. That's very nice so you don't get to us and we it's on your wrist. You move your arm around. You don't want that noise to be coupled through to your microphone, so that's pretty good.

Not sure what that block that solid lock in there is doing. Maybe just part of the molding or something. Maybe that and I Don't think they've cavity tuned anything. There's not enough room to do anything like that.

But anyway, that's a nice little microphone design like that. Then you can see we've actually got our flat flex coming out from the battery. Here to these two pads, you can see that there these are leaf spring surface mount contacts. They're there, All right.

Nothing wrong with that at all. And here's where we can have some fun with our Tigana microscope. I Love this thing. It'll allow us to zoom in up to 40 times on our board here.

Ah, fantastic, Look at that! What a Bobby Dazzler I Know you don't want to see the boring case or the boring LCD which we'll have a look at shortly lit with fingerprints on it. but we want our PCB Fantastic! Now we can go in there and identify some part numbers and have a squiz. Got to take this stupid barcode label off low to get a look. Okay, the first thing we want to take a squiz out here is the memory and the chip.

Today we have a spent and flash memory that's 128. Meg Beats nothing doing there. But here is our main processor spinned around here. It's an ST Micro-st 32 F 4, 3, 9 and that's a pretty grunty little thing for a watch.

Arm Cortex-m for us with floating-point unit 225 MIPS and Waha 2 megabytes built-in flash 256 K + 4 K separate Ram It does crypto. It's got USB on-the-go It's got all sorts of things even three ADCs 20 comms interfaces, well, camera, and LCD stuff. yeah, it does DES Encryption, all sorts of stuff CRC random number generators to our Bob's your uncle and a real time clock as well. Oh, we didn't see the 32 Kilohertz oscillator in there actually haven't seen that yet.

Hmm. I'm not entirely sure how they're actually implementing the clocking this thing, whether or not it's a external one. the internal RTC because that would require a set of 32 Kilohertz crystal which I couldn't see on the board. So I Guess they must be actually running it off the main processor and in low speed low power mode.

Something like that. Anyway, there's the block diagram for those playing along at home. She fit a lot in the micro these days. Unbelievable when I was a boy right under the main processor.

You can see that puppy there, which looks like maybe an LED but it's not. It's actually an ambient light sensor. and there's our crystal oscillator there. So yeah, and I don't know about our part number on there.

Well, whatever it is. part number on the ambient light sensor couldn't tell you. and above the processor an ambient light sensor there we have ourselves a bare die flip chip I Hope that's not photosensitive. Maybe we can flash it.

Mmm that might be interesting. It's a CC 2, 5 or 6 for that. one's actually a TI part that's a Bluetooth controller. Let's go to the datasheet and this is actually a pretty nice chip and quite a common one to when it does our Bluetooth 4.0 and all the bells and whistles.

So yeah, they haven't cut corners there at all. Used a nice TI part. the users a horrible evil dual-layer Qfn package. yak a little bit of a bit with that ambient light sensor there.

with its placement, it's actually under the LCD so you've got to wonder how it's getting the ambient like as it's covered with the black tape on the bottom. I Guess it eventually like seeps in through the glass and around and things like that. So I guess it's you know, good enough to get. Is it light or dark? Now if you're wondering where the Bluetooth antenna is on this puppy, then you're looking at them right here.

Or at least the contacts for them because if we have a look down in there and zoom in, see they've got these little spring contacts there I Love the Takano microscope. Look at that for our beautiful in the working distance by the way is like 300 millimeters. Absolutely incredible. Anyway, that is not the clever part.

The clever part is that these meet up to a stainless steel front bezel and you'll see inside the front bezel that there's actually these little La protruding parts up here. So our board sits in there like that and actually makes contact with those points. so the fret metal front bezel is being used as a Bluetooth antenna. Clever.

I'm not sure how optimum it is. it's almost certainly not optimum, but hey, good enough. And there's nothing else particularly interesting on the top there. just the connections.

So yeah, it looks like we've got some programming header pins probably J2 One of them's got to be like a JTAG interface. and you know, maybe some production test pads as well around here. Things like that. couple more down.

I Know they're they just fiducials. They could just be fiducial marks. So here's the other side of the board. We've got a few more active parts on there.

Of course, the most interesting looking stuff is happening down here, particularly around there. Let's check those out. Well, that puppy is interesting. That's a latter semi LP 1k Fpga.

What the hell have they got an FPGA in there for? Let's go to the datasheet. LCL Beastly this thing is. or whether it could just be a tiny thing Used for some more glue logic perhaps? Okay, so that's not much of a beast, it's just one of these are very nice Up let us. low power devices, 21 micro amps, standby power consumption it's got.

This is the one we're looking at the LP 1k here. only talking about twelve eighty logic cells. you know, not a huge amount. It's got 64 K of RAM though built-in it's got a PLL and you know it's got some high current lead drivers.

That's interesting, but yeah, we're only looking at the one of the little like ufn probably that 32 pin Nye Qfn package is what we're looking at there so that just you know you can get larger devices just has different number of our iOS That's pretty much it now. I Haven't seen anyone mention or any like them advertise that this thing has any sort of a user configurable FPGA stuff on board. so presumably it's just like used as some system glue logic and Ii thought they could actually be using this as maybe like a little LCD controller. perhaps? I mean, well, the LCD retained has its own memory.

It retains its own stuff. but I don't know. Maybe they're doing some page caching or something, but they've already got that big-ass ARM processor. so yeah, I don't know.

Anyway, they went to a little bit of expense to, you know, an extra buck or so to add in this Fpga. Hmm. actually it's not particularly cheap at all. I mean, we're looking at three bucks a digi-key for ten thousand quantity.

Yeah, they're not buying from digi-key but still, you know it's not gonna be far off the mark it's coming. You know it's probably going to be costing them two bucks. And this little puppy right next to the Fpga that's a 14, 6, 9 TB e WX If you're playing along at home and for the life of me, I can't find any data on that. but I reckon that's odds on to be a power system controller chip.

and this puppy here, which we can see better if we tilt the board. Getting to see part numbers is all about the angle. Here we go. it's an LD KD 5, 6, 4c and that means absolutely nothing but being right next to the power terminal is here.

It's got to be some sort of regulator and as you know, 6 pin package. Fairly typical. that's got to be it's big output pin. so let's go see if we can find some data on that.

Well, it turns out that's a linear technology LT 3 Double O 9 LDO low dropout voltage regulator. And yeah, it's They don't have the room to put the real part number in there I Think they bloody well could have a clip of 3w 9 instead of LD KD There it is. So it's a 3.3 volt job. No surprises whatsoever because there they would be powering that directly from the battery.

So that's why they need the low dropout. I'm not sure what that puppy there is I've had to put a bit of spit on that to bring it out and that's a looks like a little flipped died by the looks of a JG Tbq I Don't know. Hmm, not quite sure. Maybe some sort of regulator, a little tiny piece out regulator based on the inductors or the inductor near it? Maybe some sort of additional regulator power thing to this one over here? perhaps.

Or maybe it's just some ESD protection perhaps for this interface, which isn't just for the charging cable. Of course, it's got that smart strap interface as well. And because we've although you know we've got some, they've got an inductor right next to it. two big-ass caps there.

It's almost like it's some sort of regulator, but they're not entirely sure. Is that another? That's another similar looking one, but that's a Bkj A88? Hmm, not quite sure. but once again, see regulators around there. selector? Maybe a couple of local regulators perhaps? And my guess is that puppy.

The OO xty is the accelerometer in this thing. This is the Bosch BMI 160 I am you in no shal measurement unit IE It's got a tri-axial accelerometer and a tri-axial gyroscope in at 16 bits. thank you very much. and that seems to be confirmed by the marking code here.

You can see that the first letter of the second row is RT and that identifies the BM 160. Come on, they could have could have put B in 160 on there. Ridiculous. Anyway, they've got a three digit code on top.

You know we had that Odx thing or zero DX and that's um, that's just a trace code and well, the elves just for internal use. It's not an engineering sample because it would have had CC down on the second row. It doesn't. We've got T Y and following on from our accelerometer there today, this is a dead giveaway because this: I know this thing has a magnetometer.

It's advertised as such. Then there we go: Meg on it. Meg TBT and that is a very nice free scale. Meg 3 double 103 axis magnetometer and I squared C interface.

No worries and sensitivity point: 1 Micro Tellez Tesla's for those playing along at home and noise 0.25 microteslas Rms Yeah. I Got no feel for it, but that's like half Abby's dick isn't it? And once again, our marking code our confirms line across atop the mag. and then they've just got the away friend and a date stamp on it and this thing here in between the two I'm coming up short on that one. I'm not sure what that puppy is.

Hmm, maybe yeah. I know the switches have to be going back to the micro. wouldn't be some like I/o expansion. You wouldn't need that.

So yeah sure, that. puppy's doing. It's only surrounded by maybe a bypass cap and two passes. but these resistors could be just the pull ups for the switches.

You'd have to have a look see where the traces go. So I know, hang on on the back. Aha, there we go. Fooled by the old double-sided loads.

so we got some larger caps there. Yeah, okay, I think they are some sort of ears. Something's happening with thee. Something's happening with the switches there.

so maybe it is some sort of something for the switches. But anyway, I would have expected the switches to go straight into the micro and this puppy on the corner. Here you might think, well, what's he doing slapping out in the breeze right out there. But as always with tear downs like this, if you flip him over, Tada Oh, that's the connector that goes off to the vibration motor and microphone board.

So we know that the preamp is going to be right up next to the microphone. So it's not a preamp. So what do you need to drive a vibration motor? Well, you of course need a motor driver. and that's exactly what it is.

the 2603. And of course you can't just call it a motor driver. No, this is 2015. You've got to use some wank words.

It's a haptic drive with auto resonance detection rule for linear resonance actuators BA It's a bloody motor driver. Anyway, it's designed solve common obstacles in driving about linear resonance and eccentric rotating mass. Haptic elements designed for low latency, excellent efficiency, blah blah blah extolling the virtues. I'm sure there are haptic driver aficionados out there who are just getting a little bit moist right now.

Hmm. and as far as the PCB thickness goes, it looks to be bang on one millimeter there based on my little micro roar. Um, yeah, I would have expected that point I Don't have expected maybe point five in this or even lower to get some more volume space. but I guess they didn't need it.

I Mean their watch is already pretty darn thin, so they've done a really good job there. But yeah, they could have made that board thinner, that's for sure. Maybe the reason they didn't make it thinner is am I right? They probably didn't need to unless you needed to get like another. Milliman half a millimeter on your hide or something like that.

But not that saving half a millimeter on the size of your board translates into a half a millimeter thinner watch. There's it's. all the systems engineering and how everything else in here fits. and you know all that sort of jazz.

So it's actually a fairly complicated systems engineering problem. There's our volumetric design, which is one of the aspects of electronics designs I Love doing is that you know, making things fit in volume. It's really a fascinating aspect to design anyway. What them? Maybe what they did here is maybe they did it because of penalisation and things like that the thinner the board gets, the more the more warping you get.

It looks like they've got three, at least at least three tabs there where it was connected into the panel so you know you're picking place it. Once it gets too thin, there becomes a pain in the ass. you pick and place machine, especially for double sided load where you can't just you know, whack it onto a flat. I carry our better or something like that.

So yeah, maybe they're They stuck to one millimeter for a reason there. and if we have a close look at our LCD display here, no, it's not Inc as I think correctly said in the previous thing is habit of have a habit of saying that it's actually a ePaper display but it's essentially an LCD which has a memory which has an individual memory per pixel and if you go in there sorry the colors not the best red color rendition, it might show up better. In the final edit there, FLE you can see there we go, that's better. it's matter getting the color at the right angle, you can see the red, green and the blue lines there fairly clearly.

Now the part number for this LCDs display is actually LPM oh one, two, a 220 A and the nearest datasheet we can get which is basically an equivalence and one except a slightly different resolution is this one from our it's manufactured by Japan display Inc and this is a low temperature poly-silicon memory per pixel LCD display. so it actually contains individual memory in there to throw each individual pixel to turn it off and on for the all the RGB elements. And it doesn't look like a SPI interface thing. It looks like it, you know, has its own custom interface and there is data in here about how to actually drive the thing and stuff like that.

There's like the power on, sequence and power off and stuff like that. So um, half Chinese, half English sheet so you could actually work with this. Oh, and by the way, on these buttons, I'd bet my bottom dollar that inside there they've actually got a ring seal and feels like there's a spring in there as well. So that's actually they've got to quite a bit of effort to produce that.

Don't mind that at all. And if we pair it up and display the white time screen, you can see the red, green, and blue in there. Like that way it's going to focus. not quite about.

The only thing I'm not really happy about is the fact that, well, you can't change the battery in this thing. Sure, you know you can. If you've got a heat gun, you can soften up the that double-sided gluey tape and take off the front panel. But you're going to ruin the waterproofness if you try and stick the damn thing back on.

So yeah, it's not certainly not for your average. Joe So yeah. okay, you know you can at least get in there and fix some stuff, but I would have preferred like a screw on case back. and by the way, with some of those exposed chip scale packages in there I Thought: yeah, I might be able to I kill it by flashing the thing, but no I can't So yep, no problems.

So I'm actually fairly impressed by the engineering in this thing. They certainly have undoes, skimped, or cut corners pretty much anywhere. There's a pretty decent use of the 3d envelope inside this thing, and they've done well to get it into that really thin package like that. So yeah, my hats off to the designers at Pebble we've actually done this either.

They're the real miracle workers now. I've actually done a bit of a quick bill of materials breakdown on this based on a thousand of our quantity and although they've sold, you know a million of these things I don't know how many they be, you know, buying up front they'd have a lot of purchasing clout anyway. I Just got you know thousand of quantity pricing around the place and we're looking at about you know, for the board, around about 30 33 bucks. maybe just for the board but then we've got assembly looks, cream, we've got the motor, we've got the microphone, we've got the battery, we got the case.

We've got the you know, the front glass and the the molding and the buttons and the little circlips. and the o-rings and pogo pins and all their little flat flexes and stuff. so you know all up like I'm estimating around about you know, 50 55 bucks something like that. probably for the whole thing.

So yeah, it might cost him a bit more than that I don't know, but they'd have as I said, a lot of purchasing a clout considering that they've already had. and so they claim a million of these things mate. So yeah, I think they're making a decent profit margin on it. so I hope you enjoyed that rather lengthy look at the pebble time SmartWatch inside the thing and yeah, I still have to glue it back on? Hmm, what's the best clue two years I Don't know, leave it in the comments.

maybe some silicon may I just get out the hot snot gun. No. needs something a bit better than that anyway I hope you enjoyed that. Um, there's like going to be some mah high-res teardown photos on Eevblog comm and as always if you want to discuss it jumping over to the Eevblog forum.

and as always if you liked it, please give it a big thumbs up. Catch you next time! Unbelievable you you.