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- čas přidán 2. 09. 2013
- What's inside a modern bare bones $5 mobile phone?
The LG800G available from Tracphone for $5:
www.tracfone-orders.com/bpdire...
Datasheets:
www.infineon.com/dgdl/X-GOLD_2...
www.rfmd.com/CS/Documents/7161...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-ele...
www.broadcom.com/products/Blue...
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www.eevblog.com/wiki/ - Věda a technologie
What you call a FULL SIZE SIM card is already a MINI SIM CARD.
Early 1994 I had a phone with a full size card.
It is as big as a credit card!
Nice videos!
theres full size (what kids think it is) and then theres actual full size (which is what you said)
Right
In game: Mexican Cartel
beautiful precision from centimeters scale case to mm scale board to micron rf chip to nm soc
Thanks for adding the Data-Scheets at Mobile Phone Teardown.
a 5 dollar phone has an sd card slot
my 200 dollar phone doesn't.
Why have you forsaken me technology gods?
burtburtist my 700 dollar iPhone doesn't have one either
Because capitalism
Absolutely fascinating as ever!!!
After not checking in with the channel for a while I just thought I would catch up. I have been glued to the screen with this and the air bag tear-down ever since!!!
Repairs and tear-downs are my favourite and I am trying to learn as much as I can from each video.
PLEASE keep them coming - your hard work is hugely appreciated and enjoyed.
I have an updated version of this phone, the LG 848G. The thing went through the washer machine and came out sparkling! And after a few days of drying out it powered up and worked! Now that is one tough phone!
+James Last aha thats what the epoxy around the bga does
Love listening to you go on -- cracks me up sometimes. Put's me to sleep sometimes too.
I for one enjoy the randomness of the tear-downs, keep up the great work!
This is the very last time I will respond to your comments. You have made your feedback very clear on many videos. You are now NOT helping with the same negative feedback on every video you happen not to like. You've had your say many times now, I've heard you, now it's just getting really annoying for me and everyone. Imagine if EVERYONE left negative feedback on EVERY video they don't like, I'd have to shut down the comments, or just quit this business. So give it a break, ok?
Ironically in 1990 this technology would be worth about £50,000. The ARM CPU alone was light years ahead of commercial processors at that time Let alone the memory.
Its 2021 and you can get a very competent mobile phone for $20. Damn impressive.
Hell, back in 2015 most $20 phones where flip phones or god awful smartphones.
It'crazy how fast electronics has evolved. The invention of the transistor is not that old
the reason these are so cheap:
they sell them at a loss with the intention of selling you service
***** I never said they did contract service.
+Kayla Harlow They don't do contract service, but the phones are largely useless without service as they are carrier locked. They only need to sell a few cards to make up for the (fairly small) loss.
Antinull unfortunately I am not stupid and know it cost a lot more than a contract under normal use of anyone has any friends at any age.
I got my mum a Telstra EasyCall. It's just a phone (+FM radio). Has big huge usable buttons, and long battery life. It does one job, make calls, and does it well.
Cool, thanks. international shipping gets real expensive real quick based on weight.
I actually tore down a cheap phone recently that was near the same specs as this one so I found this very interesting. Thank you for sharing your input and knowledge, I love all your videos, they've inspired me to start teaching myself electronics, also to take apart all my stuff and see how it was designed and how it works! Keep up the great work, can't wait for your next video!!!
This was a really interesting tear-down. Found the insights into manufacturing cost and related design effort fascinating. Cheers!
wow, this guy goes the extra mile with details. we need more people like this
I think you do an amazing job and I found this teardown fascinating. Really loved the $30 e-book reader and it's brilliant to see you doing another modern entry level device. Whatever you decide to do, you do it well and I am always more than happy. I'm not one to usually share feedback on videos, but I just wanted to say keep up the great work, love it!
Awesome Teardown Dave! Keep up the great work :)
As always Dave.... 2 Thumbs up!
Thank you!
Due to the simplicity you were able to include glimpses of the datasheets. I liked that touch. =)
I recently brought a Samsung E1270 flip phone - No camera, no bluetooth, not even an SD slot, browser or music player. Does have a colour display though, and extremely satisfying to end a call with.
Cost me just £2.99 delivered, with £4 mobile credit no less! I can remember when even that spec would have been many, many times that price. Crazy how cheap basic phones are.
You can put a micro sim in a full size sim slot, I have done it often, you just have to slide it over the contacts correctly, that lets you examine the operating system.
One that doesn't really give a toss about mobile phones.
I tore down an ATT picocell the other day and posted pictures in the forum on the "other equip" category. Interesting device and I was thinking I would send it in to Dave for his usual thorough board description. I will try to put it back together and ship it over. I think it would be interesting to see tear downs for things like automobile computers, an Apple TV, one of those new Mac Pro's, an old Marantz amp, disk drives, medical equipment, avionics and the like. Love the tear down!!
I took one of those apart semi-recently. Neat to see it taken apart by a pro!
great teardown! really enjoyed it.
Don't let people like Anton get to you Dave. I've learned SO MUCH from you in just the few short months of watching your videos that it's ridiculous. I was even able to do a board-level repair to a piece of training equipment at work and save my boss $1,500 in repair fees with a $0.40 part , all because of what I've learned from you.
Keep up the good work! And expect a package from me in a month or so with some interesting medical devices ;-) (Just need to scrape together the shipping costs!)
Great video. I'm more of a mechanical nuts and bolts person and have very little experience with electronics but I understood everything you said. Very simple once someone explains it to you. I didn't know you could just look up part numbers of the chips and get the whole data sheet with everything that it can do. Just got to learn to program them now...
Gosh it's amazing what $5 can buy you these days! It's quite amazing really!
Quite an awesome video!
This was cool to watch as I wait for my new lg wing.
7:30 that's not for the backlight, that's for the touchscreen digitizer
How would a digitizer have 4 contacts?
that's not an advanced touchscreen, you only need 4 connections 1 at each corner of the screen and you create a matrix out of that and depending on where you put your finger it will change values between the different lines so you can pinpoint where did you touch
Doubtful, maybe it is for the light sensor and proximity sensor.
cool antenna design!
When they refurbish these things its usually replacing the plastic housing, hard buttons and the rubber buttons and port covers. Sometimes they replace the battery as well but thats usually for the higher end models.
Yeah, I watch Dave because he is Dave doing HIS thing! That is what Makes Dave worth watching. Dave is aces in my book!
This was fantastic, thank you so much!
I'll have to buy one of those. Thanks for the video.
I remember taking apart my LG Xenon phone in a very similar fashion, despite it being a slightly different form-factor. I had to do this because I dropped the phone and the screen and buttons quit working. I didn't know what the problem could have been, but an idea came up that the cable connecting the mainboard to the screen might be disconnected. The LG Xenon was disassembled in a very similar way, and lucky for me, the cable connecting the face was disconnected and the mainboard wasn't bad.
Great teardowns come and go. We are on episode 514, let's say 10% of the episodes are teardowns. I don't even think there are 51 scopes currently on the market. Getting interesting items weekly is hard. If you want crazy teardown right now, go to Mike's Electric Stuff channel and entertain yourself while Dave happens to find something interesting to you. I'm answering with respect because you have always kept respect even if you disagree with most of us.
Sincerely,
Ivan747, from the forums.
I have one of these phones, it works pretty good even for a cheap phone. They are sold for prepaid phone service with no contract.
It costs me about $100 a year for one year of service and around 800 mins. I'm not a big phone user as you can tell.
Thanks for the tear down Dave.
The rf connector on bottom of phone is for factory test and calibration of PAs, LNAs and spec requirements
Thanx for this one!!
The four-contact flex at the top of the phone which you mentioned might be the power for the LED backlights is actually the for the resistive touchscreen. All power for the LCD and LED Backlighting goes through the other bigger LCD flex.
$5.00 isn't a bad deal to bring some one to using their pre-paid service. Marketing plans at their best to bring some one to start using the service and hope they keep using the pre-paid plans.
Thanks for all the informative videos and interesting teardowns.
Since the LCD controller is built into the main SoC, I think the LCD will be an 8080/6800 type 8/16 bit parallel interface, or it'll be a 6 bit-per-colour RGB parallel interface.
Either way I'm sure that the LCD itself lacks any controller or display buffer (the display FFC will likely hold driver chips and that's it) and that all of the display refresh and such will be done by the SoC, as they'd want to minimize component cost.
Thanks dave.
Dave, I'm pretty sure that four-contact press-fit bit is for the resistive touchscreen, not the backlight.
The gold or Cooper color chip at the bottom is actually the microphone for the device and the touch screen is that flex cable that presses on the board underneath the headset jack. Fun facks
Those spring contacts that you mention where you thought it was for the backlight is most likely for the touch panel, the backlight connection is probably in the LCD main flat flex
Dave, I think that the antenna connector at 5:30 is not for bluetooth kit but rather for checking RF power and spectrum FCC compliances.
Reminds me of MediaTek (MTK) phones. A lot of tech stuffed in a single SoC, dirt cheap phones with quite a bit of potential. The problem was that many Chinese companies then cobbled together ROMs for them without really knowing what they were doing, so you often had a phone that almost worked fine, but had some really horrendous bugs or atrocious UI design.
I live in the U.S. and A decade ago I bought an Lg 800G because it was what I could afford working for $7 an hour just out of highschool. My parents wouldnt buy me a real fancy top of the line Iphone or android. They said If I wanted a cellphone I had to buy it and pay for it myself. So I went to tradeschool out in the boondocks with this phone and at first everyone gave me dirty looks for such a cheap tiny plasticky looking phone. But to me it was the world because I was proud I got it and paid for it all by myself and it worked really well. So anyway nobody else had this phone and for some reason my phone was the only phone besides the land line that worked perfectly and unlike the land line you didnt have to pay for every call because it was unlimited talk and text. Suddenly Everyone wanted an lg800g. To this day I have no idea why my phone worked out in the middle of nowhere when everyone elses phone was as dead as a rock.
Edit: the sd card slot and earjack came in really handy for listening to music while I worked out and the camera wasnt great but its not like I was making youtube videos so It is nice to look back at the memories I made in trade school. Every picture just looked like it had a beauty filter lol
I suspect that what you point out as the backlight connections is actually for a resistive touch screen. Could easily be checked of couse but I have found that more often than not backlights are built into the lcd and connector more often than resistive touch. Which given the cost of the phone, is almost certainly resistive touch.
Tactile Domes remind me of all the joysticks I pulled apart and cleaned in the early 90s for the Atari and C64.
Awesome!
External antenna connectors on modern mobile phones are not intended for the user to connect to, but are only used during production to calibrate the RF frontend.
awesome. neet little device!
considering how long the batteries in these things can stay charged when turned completely off, they do make decent emergency cameras considering their size. Something you can throw into an emergency toolbox in a car. Just charge it every couple months.
There are many iPhone teardowns already on the web with full details on their functionality. Not saying it wouldn't be a good video, but it has been done well already.
They probably put in a new battery and (if damaged) new memory card slot (these get damaged quite often). Sometimes (but quite obviously the $5 phone is not the case) they replace the touch layer (if scratched).
Tracphone is a company that sells hourly time cards for calling and texts and that is how they actually make their money.
don't they also have a govt contract for emergency welfare phones?
Amazing you can get an SD card in with the slot facing the can
Probably just clean and sanitizing the case. Maybe replacing the shell if it's scratched up and maybe even the buttons if they're really crusty.
I haven't had a phone with an external antenna jack in many years. It would be useful if you're stuck somewhere and can't quite reach a cell tower to plug in a higher gain antenna to that jack!
Whoa give the guy a break, he spend's his free time to film, explain, edit, upload and respond all the time every week, and this is the thanks you give him?
How ungrateful! I'd imagine it wouldn't be easy to find heaps of super-cool-and-probably-expensive stuff to film all the time and I'm not the type of person to expect it either.
When you don't expect it, it makes those really good video's seem extra special when they do come out, but you've got to be patient.
Besides, this vid was still good
Dave you got the Digitizer flex incorrect. No separate backlight flexes on mobile phones until you get into the LCD unit.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but AFAIK the external antenna connector used in the factory to test the antenna (using a spectrum analyzer) in the fully assembled phone. That's why it's hidden under the back cover. It's not meant to be used by any accessories.
have one of these. took apart to see if could fix screen since touch as messing up. guess plastic bent over time.
I'm surprised to see a camera on it for that little money you would think it would be the bare minimum just to make and receive calls. I was even a bit surprised that it has any physical button aside from power I would of thought it would all be software buttons. Also nice to see a vibration motor.
Seems LG is really committed to making the best products even on this level of cost effective design.
I remembered the tear down of the retro Motorola and it's RF voodoo
my first touchscreen phone. ill be happy to never use a resistive touch screen ever again. when the screen became unusable, i upgraded to the tracfone zte valet (which had horrible wifi, but was android). now ive got a moto g (still on tracfone), and im very happy with it :)
Did you see the 208mHz rating for the cpu? Lightning fast;)
David Sears *MHz
Mhm, sure ^^
+Arek R. Nah,mHz ! millihertz has to b invented^^
^^
+Daniel “Dan” Nichols I think he means a Milihertz soc processor that goes so slow has yet to be invented, but I am not sure.
"We're in like Flynn" ... great to here your catchphrase
how is that first arm computer doing that you torn down in eevblog #507 I loved that fid!
Actually Dave.. I think the camera is in a socket and not directly surface mounted to the pcb.. and a funky-looking socket it is.
Dave got me into Electronics Engineering
And if you're interested - the CAN buss interface cable from the interface box to a patient simulator had been yanked hard, and shorted a +12v 5A line to one of the signal lines. Ended up letting the magic smoke out of a 74HC08 Quad AND-gate IC.
i . imgur . com
Before: J1d0Tz4.jpg
After: Mc5o0Hb.jpg
Board Overview: M8Ri11e.jpg
(The giant ceramic resistor is to dissipate the current from defibrillation - handles 360j of energy up to 3 times per minute!)
Whichever carrier sold it is making money hand over fist to be sure. Not sure if Australia is like Europe or the US in terms of cell phones and upfront costs. Here in the US, carries rope us dopes into a year or two contract and give big discounts on the equipment. Not so much for popular phones, though. New iPhone upwards to $300US with a 2 year contract. So the retail of the phone is 6 or 7 hundred but at $90/month, someone is making money for sure. Love the tear down!
I love that term you use "jelly bean parts".
This may have already been mentioned, but TracFone actually sells their phones below cost. Their profits come from the prepaid airtime they sell along with the phones. That's why this phone is only $5.
I wonder why that antenna couldn't just be printed as PCB tracks, that would save on the BOM, since the pcb is being made anyway. On the other hand, I suspect LG may be using the same antenna across many models at very different price ranges. If they really wanted to cut the price further, they could omit the built in mic and speaker, making it a headset only device with a noisy vibrator for ringing. Also, a single power/ok button then the rest as softbuttons could shave a few more cents. Get downloadable firmware from the (user supplied) SD card and ditch the flash chip (like on a Pi). Use a monochrome reflective LCD since the base functions don't need color. Use test points instead of a connector for antenna test. Omit the middle plastic layer and let the back and front hold everything in place. Still lots of ways to build this down to a lower price.
Don't worry Dave, you are doing a fantastic job and a great service to all of us. No matter what some troglodytes say, nobody can take away these facts. Keep up the good work and ignore the naysayers. The world (and especially the internet) is full of them.
I got a Motorola W175G from Trac when I was in the US a few years ago. This thing was so locked down it was ridiculous. USB connectivity was completely crippled, and even after unlocking everything stopped working when the "unit" and "service days" counter reached zero even with a different SIM card on a different network. Unless flashed with factory firmware, and good luck doing that with crippled USB, those phones are completely worthless hence why they're so cheap
The fascias. There's a whole market for them on ebay, amazon you name it. If you know what to ask for and have the tools and patience you can make a phone that's 8 years old look like brand new.
Even this has a micro SD card slot hint hint apple
If you could jam a 128 gig microsd into your 8 gig iPhone, no bloody ass would keep buying the higher capacity versions which cost hundreds of dollars more.
@@l3p3 what if you do alot of work on your phone like take pics idk why youd do it on a phone but if a 512gb note 9 isn't enough add another 512 gigs like 10x what most iPhones have
Haha, you commented this 3 years ago. Now most people would say, "Look apple, it has a headphone jack!" xD
hinnit hinni t Apple (hinni is to beLIEve in hungarian amd apple is a lie)
Hello Dave, great video, cheap phones in the USA ringed a bell to me as the richest man in the world owns that provider. His company offers cheap phones in Mexico but nowhere near $5usd that´s crazy.
that gunk is called underfill and it protects the balls against breaking by thermal expansion or flexing of the board
That chip that had so much built in looked like it could be useful
Could you re-use any of the parts? ie power bank the battery or something? I'm assuming the pin out for the lcd is to complicated to just re-use?
That filter was the microphone it has the hole on the other side.
This particular phone is a pay-as-you-go phone sold by TracPhone, I have the exact model.
You should continue the friday lessons and do some eletronics tutorials or experimnts.
Video good.
Wait I thought this was a $50 phone? Well at least you got a sensational title out of the deal.
After watching the JTAG video, I was keeping an eye out for any obvious TAP pads on the board - I didn't spot any though. Is there a trick for identifying likely candidates for TAP pads in board designs (from a design point of view, not electrically)?
The external antenna connector will be for testing
Even the cheapest of the LG phones are still pretty good. I've never had any problems with LG phones. I currently have the LG G3,and it's a pretty good phone.
The Nokia 105 is a current gen $20 phone. You might want to check it out.
Dave,
what happened with the rest of the automotive electronics teardown you received, we only got to see the camera and that yugo relay but the resT?, the ABS unit specially we never got to see it!
4:58 Aren't they just regular ole plated slots that have been milled in half when they've routed the board outline?
As a phone, it's not bad (I had one a few years ago). But to do anything else on it, like text or play games, etc, it's a pain in the ass because its screen is "resistive" instead of "capacitive", which means you have to actually _push_ on the screen for it to register which is a pain when you're trying to text rapidly. But for just a basic phone that _can_ text and play games (limited variety), it's not bad.
JW3HH
And not only that, the profit margin for these third-party prepay companies (mobile virtual network operators) is ridiculously high because THEY buy the airtime from the four major companies in bulk (TracFone from AT&T, and T-Mobile for example) and then re-sell it with a healthy markup.
TracFone is owned by a umbrella company that also operates NET10 Wireless, Straight Talk, SafeLink Wireless, Telcel América, and Simple Mobile. Between all of them, they buy network time from every US carrier.