How I Made My Own iPhone in China [video]
youtube.com
youtube.com
As an American, what differences do you see in the electronics community now that you're an expat in China?
So there's just this really different approach of "what can I make myself with the tools I own" versus "what professional services do I have access to, and which of my friends have factories with the right production equipment".
As a result, you see stark difference in quality of initial prototypes.
The flip side is that I think western makers/hackers are more focused on coming up with completely new ideas, with less of a focus on quality of execution, whereas a lot of chinese makers/hackers/manufacturers are more focused on iterative improvement - how can I be really clever to make something cheaper or easier to produce, that looks like a professional product. Both sides are very clever and creative, but focus on different aspects.
Yes, I agree
With one caveat, those folks selling parts definitely treats me with a lot less friendliness than they do with foreign buyers, especially when you're buying just one.
There are also varying level of quality when buying parts, especially batteries and screens. It's hard for repair shops in the area to charge higher prices for better parts, so there's definitely a huge market for screens that's slightly mis-calibrated, has a non-noticeable dead pixel and such. Customers in the area generally care less about those kind of quality.
Yeah, that really sucks. There's definitely a lot of pretty apparent white privilege here, which I try to be really aware of and not take unfair advantage of. But it can be tricky to navigate at times.
Trust me- they treat me better than they treat you:P There are other cases where White makers/hardware people can be a bit problematic on the local scene, but not so much in the markets. I've seen African, Middle Eastern traders accommodated in much the same way. And the good treatment probably comes with a slight markup so evens out in the end.
But I do have to say this comment surprises me even more as many of the expats I've met are either blind to or aren't willing to admit there is white privilege there (and other parts of Asia).
I'm really glad there are people like you as our "ambassadors."
Great to hear:-)
If you do need 10,000 you're probably buying reels anyway, there are places that will sell you those, and if you really are manufacturing get a local sourcing agent to help you they will know who sells reliable stuff at a good price
Currently I'm dealing with an out of warranty Apple Watch where the screen just went and fell right off, and apparently you cannot buy the glue strips for it unless you buy the whole screen. Apple figured out how to stop people from getting glue!
Here's a tweet from John Gruber of popular Apple blog Daring Fireball, who had the same thing happen to his wife's watch: https://twitter.com/gruber/status/783016045481033729?lang=en
For fun? Or what? I have several relatives who still have iPhone 4 and 5 (and one with a 3!), and none of them have replaced any components. Why would you need to?
On a side note, iPhones are really easy to get parts for. I had the digitiser fail on a cheap no-name Android tablet, and as far as I can tell you can't get replacement parts for it.
Here's an example using a Raspberry Pi, touchscreen, and custom-written UI: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/tytelli-a-diy-smartphone/
I am actually surprised it cost this much to make custom.
> Strange Parts 4 hours ago
> Thanks for subscribing! I spent well over $1000, but a lot of that was parts and tools I didn't end up needing. I'd say it's probably around $300 worth of parts in the actual phone.
Source: Direct link to comment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leFuF-zoVzA&lc=z13bd1eposzxs...
So $300 is not really the cost of making them right?
Apple made a phone from scratch, sold it, someone got the parts and refurbished them to on sell them.
So you'd expect the price to be much lower? What's the original cost?
If you visit the markets where he's buying you'll find a virtual disassembly line breaking down phones into component parts (to logic boards if they still work, and chips if they don't) followed by an assembly line of people making 'new' phones from those parts. The thing is that there are people in the "dodgy cell phone market" (people call it that) who are making a good living (by local norms) building iPhones, sometimes from scratch with recycled parts
Why should phones break? It's not like they can't be made much tougher.[1] The real question is, why do people put up with such fragile phones? Is this an interim stage of the technology? Does this stop when iPhone N+1 comes out and the reaction is "yawn?"
So what does all that Shentzen parts retail look like when you're building something new? Can you go into those buildings with a bill of materials and come out ready to load your pick and place machine? Can you get boards fabbed one-off while you wait? Or is it all about repair and simple mods?
It's technology, the average punter doesn't give it a second thought beyond "What does this device do?".
But I can give you some answers for your second set of questions.
> So what does all that Shentzen parts retail look like when you're building something new?
The markets originally started as wholesale components and tools markets to service the electronics factories in Shenzhen, which make a significant fraction of the worlds electronics, particularly commodity electronics. So it actually mostly caters to people building new things, versus repair. But I didn't show any of that in the video. My understanding is that the cell phone repair markets are comparatively much newer, and obviously cater much less to large scale production of new goods.
> Can you go into those buildings with a bill of materials and come out ready to load your pick and place machine?
Yes, absolutely. There are multiple buildings of distributers that do nothing but sell components on reels to load in pick and place machines. You can even buy a pick and place machine there if you need.
> Can you get boards fabbed one-off while you wait?
Not quite while you wait. There are a bunch of booths in the markets advertising these sorts of services though. I think the fastest on the PCB fab itself (without assembling any components on it) is 12-hour turn time, and that's pushing it a bit. 24-hour turn time expedited but pretty standard, and 3-4 days is generally the non-expedited standard for the board house I've used. Sometimes a bit longer if they're really busy. A courier on a motorcycle will bring it to your door.
> Or is it all about repair and simple mods?
The cell phone markets are mainly about repair/refurbishing and simple mods, as far as I can tell. But I don't fully know - there's still a ton more for me to learn. I still feel like I'm barely scratching the surface here.
Edit: found the link lower :-)
I suspect it's due to the short effective lifetime due to obsolescence.
Ruggedised phones and cases are already available. The average person doesn't mind much, although there's strong nostalgia for the indestructible era of early Nokias.
The vertically integrated nature of the industry means you have to choose one of Apple or Android; and if you choose Apple, you're stuck with whatever products they choose to offer.
EDIT: NVM all - downthread it was explained what this guy did, and how he didn't go true DIY on the whole thing. So no special 4G module needed.
My personal opinion (not necessarily correct): it means that electronic industry could no longer only compete on low prices but newer designs and newer technologies, for better or worse, because Shenzhen, China can always catch up with your price fast with its astonishingly cheap parts.
There are already plenty of cheap Chinese phones you can buy. Even their flagship phones with top of the line specs are half price. They just don't support all overseas bands yet.
Apple should add many QA steps filtering out the vast majority of bad parts. First there would be incoming QA on any received shipments. And any well run assembly line contains many check steps to make sure the unit has good constituent parts. This way you don't burn good parts farther down the line on a unit that was never going to pass. Then there is out going inspection and burn in testing.
All that testing increases overall quality and value.
> Battery – These are everywhere, and _really_ cheap. Like $5 USD cheap. No clue if it’s real, but I was told it is, and it looks like it is.
quote from the blog about the logic board: "The one I bought is refurbished/repaired, almost undoubtedly from a real, legitimately purchased phone made by Apple that was recycled at some point."
Really interesting documentary from Wired that tangentially touches on this mentality.
Interesting topic, well filmed given the market circumstances, clear audio, and well edited.. and it definitely didn't hurt that I'm currently learning how to design and build electronics from scratch as a hobby ;)
Already there are more and more malls and fashion shops slowly appearing in the area, and landlords will be more and more willing to replace sellers selling resistors over a fancy fashion shop paying double or triple for that space.
If you find a genuine part, that works, is it stolen? Some aesthetic problem? Some defect that doesn't quite render it unusable?
I had to laugh at the hand-drawn logos on the kiosk of the guys who owned the 'Remove Bubble Machine'.
And the screen repair booth art is totally legit. As is their workbench organization scheme.
As a sideline to my daily job that pays national average I spent a couple of years repairing iPhones for friends, family and colleagues, mainly screen replacement which are trivial after a few, but also battery / switch / button / port replacements which are also trivial but often require a small insight into the mechanics of the part as differing screw lengths, different torquing forces etc can Stop power buttons depressing smoothly, all the way down to minor board level repair with (single SMT component replacements, a few BGA REFLOWS { which have a relatively low success rate with only a hot air station }).
The biggest tips I would give to anyone who wants to perform trivial repairs such as battery replacements is to buy a quality set of screwdrivers (PH000, PH00, pentalobe for iPhone, flathead that will be used 2 or 3 times per board) an openesesame type pry tool, a rigid pry tool (never lever against the board, always the side of the case and then with care)' a cheap suction device to remove the screen, a spare set of screws for your phone (you will lose screws with quite a frequency). Apart from that buy some E6000 glue with small applicator nozzle, some quality superglue (sometimes it's needed), small amounts of Methy Ethyl Ketone (MEK) solvent as well as 99.9% Isopropyl Acohol (IPA is often mixed 70/30 with water for medical purposes, don't use this).
Always keep your screen away from the solvents, MEK will dissolve even the most stubborn glue on the battery, IPA Should be used with a cotton bud (Q-Tip for the Americans?) to lightly clean both male and female FPC connectors prior to replacement, let the solvents dry before putting your screen close.
Apply a small amount if E6000 to everything that's meant to already have adhesive pads on, and with regard to screen replacements the FPCS for then LCD, digitiser, screen auxiliaries (earpiece, front camera) has a metal cover which keeps everything secure, one or two of the screws is a fraction of a mm shorter than another, put the longer one in the shorter hole and you get a BSOD where you have cut screwed through a layer of PCB to the next and broken its trace.
The biggest watch out is that spare parts come in 3 categories, reused from original iPhone, generally superior, "OEM" grade (thought strictly they probably aren't OEM, but they are superior grade) and generic. Try to avoid the generic, often the original/OEM are a few £/$ more expensive but when you've spend an hour stripping a phone and installing a part only for it to not work or to have a partial defect, you will wish you bought quality (anyone remember the black iPhone 4 with the proximity/ambient light sensor from hell, until you used a genuine part that had a polarised film and small foam gasket that stopped ambient light creeping in from the backlight?
You might wonder why I chose to make an iPhone 6s and not an iPhone 7. I had two reasons...
However, the other reason, which turned out to be far more important, is that iPhone 7 parts are pretty hard to come by in the markets. It’s not totally clear why this is, but I have some ideas. A lot of the parts come from recycled/broken phones, and so it would make sense that there just isn’t that much supply yet.
He then adds, "But there's also credit due to the many thousands of people here who have figured out how to turn trash like this [shows mangled screen assembly] back into beautiful working phones."
Dear friends in Shenzhen, not all Westerner's are as shallow and fantastically, well, douchey as this asshole. We praise you for your ingenuity and unwavering work ethic. Thank you.
The 1st person face is a bit shocking, and he does seem a bit naive at some points, but from that to call Scotty Allen "shallow and fantastically douchey asshole" is totally uncalled for.