Just a quick update today – something Dr.Wreck likes to keep track of and is probably of interest to most of our readers. Thinking of buying a smartphone? Want to predict what’s hot based on last quarter’s sales?

Check out the below chart.

Q1 2010 Smartphone Performance by OS

To be honest, no real surprises here. The iPhone is an ever threat – with it’s new corporate plays it seems to be inheriting a portion of RIM’s “prosumer” share. Android is doing just as well with a matched +2% QoQ (Quarter on Quarter performance).

Interestingly enough is that the two proprietary Hardware Software Combo Makers (RIM and Apple) seem to dominate the market. Cross platform OS’s (WinMo, Android, etc.) don’t seem to be doing as well. Android is a relatively new player (compared to RIM and Apple) – it’s most likely only a matter of time before our little robot friend starts to absorb BlackBerry and iPhone users. What’s your opinion? We’d love to hear it!

@DrWreck

]]> http://www.phonewreck.com/2010/06/07/smartphone-market-share-q1-2010/feed/ 2 http://www.phonewreck.com/2009/06/19/iphone-3gs-teardown-and-analysis/ http://www.phonewreck.com/2009/06/19/iphone-3gs-teardown-and-analysis/#comments Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:35:38 +0000 Dr. Wreck http://www.phonewreck.com/?p=411

The unboxing - courtesy of ifixit

Apple “surprised” us early this month with the announcement of it iPhone 3G “s”. Whenever Apple releases a new device – everyone and their brother/sister has to get involved.

Dr. Wreck is no exception and has been working hard with the gentlemen/women over at ifixit to get the skinny on the new device. Without further ado, here we go!

Explosion - courtesy of ifixit

Those Apple Engineer’s really know how to pack a PCB. They’ve managed to fit almost everything onto the “top” of the main logic board. The 3Gs’ PCB makes the 3G’s PCB look sparse (the apostrophes were probably a little bit confusing there).

Let’s take a minute here to talk about the new Applications Processor Core. Apple has chosen to go from the ARM 11 Samsung S3C6400 to the ARM A8 Samsung S5PC100 with this device.

iPhone 3Gs Block Diagram - In Progress

This is the single largest difference between the 3G and the 3Gs. Firstly the manufacturing process has been chopped from 90nm to 65nm. Pipeline depth has been boosted to 13 – stage from 8. More importantly the clock speed of this newer processor rolls in at 600MHz – opposed to the 412MHz core of the old – obsolete 3G. Samsung has also doubled the quantity of L1 cache from 16 to 32KB.

None of this even takes the new PowerVR graphics core into consideration. Apple is clearly thinking along the lines of a gaming device for this puppy. The SGX is fully programmable – like the graphics card on your PC or mac. Expect some sweet gaming action in the near future.

@ 200MHz the SGX can pop 7M triangles/second and render 250M pixels/sec. That’s roughly 7 times the performance of the old, “obsolete” MBX.

It’s kind of like comparing your old 486 to a Pentium.

Moving around the rest of the PCB – it’s easy to notice the similarities with the previous 3G device. The Power Amp wins once again went to Triquint and Skyworks. We also see the NAND flash going to Toshiba – which as far as phoneWreck is concerned is fairly surprising. The battery has been bumped from the previous 1150mAH to 1219mAH – a much needed upgrade. Only time will tell if Apple’s claim of increased battery life will hold.

Once again the psuedo SRAM win goes to Numonyx. The BaseBand Processor appears to have similar markings to the previous 3G therefore we can assume it’s an Infineon. This has been paired with the Infineon PMIC. The Applications Processor mentioned Earlier (Samsung S5PC100) is paired with a PMIC courtesy of what appears to be NXP.  It’s mounted with a DDR SDRAM coming in at 256MB.

True to form, Apple has re-branded some of the higher profile IC’s we’re very interested in. We’ll be performing some more thorough analysis further identify these. Make sure to follow Dr.Wreck’s twitter or subscribe to the RSS for updates!

Underneath the logic board we have a little surprise! A new combo chip from Broadcom (BCM4325) This puppy packs 802.11a/b/g and Bluetooth 2.1 (+EDR and FM).  This is a fairly substantial change from the Marvel and CSR combo on the old – obsolete 3G.

We’ve received some rumours and speculation about the other devices we weren’t able to ID. There is a guess from a few readers that the GPS chip may be the same as on the previous 3G – the Infinieon Hammerhead II. This may be true but the new package is a different size – this means that it could incorporate the compass hardware as well.

That said, we’ve had some rumours that the compass chip is the  Asahi Kasei – AK8973. We’ll still have to do some more digging!

We’re currently in the process of performing a much more thorough analysis. Keep checking back for more details as they come – we’ll most likely be putting  this device through it’s paces to see how it stacks up with the Palm Pre and BlackBerry Bold & Storm.

Thanks again to the wonderful people at ifixit for gracing us with these great photos! If you want to see how it’s taken apart, make sure to check out their teardown.

Stay tuned and keep wrecking!

Dr.Wreck

As promised, we’re coming at you with the second part of our analysis of the Palm Pre from Sprint. This time, we’ll be talking about the specifics of the form-factor design. What we like, what we don’t like and what is merely – satisfactory.

This review will be a good compliment to what ifixit has already done. Also, make sure an checkout our hardware analysis and UI Review!

So without further ado, we present you the Palm Pre Design Analysis!

Overall

The Palm Pre feels good in your hand and is much smaller than the Doctor’s weapon of the choice – The BlackBerry Bold.

In the next review, we’ll see how it stacks up to this device in terms of performance.

The Pre definitely has a minimalist design. To us, it’s shape resembles the perfect skipping stone… an expensive skipping stone at that. One thing this device definitely has is curves. The screen isn’t made of glass which may have been a cost cutting decision. However from a design perspective, this allowed Palm to shape and flex the screen around the chassis of the device which creates a genuinely sexy look. Unfortunately, as with all plastic screen covers, we’re skeptical about how it will resist scratches.

Smudge Magnet

One thing we’re used to seeing as of late is the faux/real metal border surrounding the device. This is a ploy often used by ODM’s to make the device looks smaller in your hand. Fortunately for Palm, this device is already quite small – this might reduce the devices resistance to drops and scratches though.

Cosmetically speaking, the all black look is definitely attractive and leaves the door open to many future colour options which we’re sure we’ll soon see.

Moving around the edge of the device, things are once again kept very simple – there is only one flap, the one that exists for the  microUSB port. It is flat and flush with the body – a very suprising and clever design move for Palm.

That door is flush.

Of course, there is no external (or internal) slot for removable storage. This thing comes packed with 8GB of internal memory – which as any iPhone user knows, isn’t a whole lot. At least we got a removable battery right? Dr.Wreck is calling future versions with 16-32GB of internal storage – mark his words.

Keyboard/Sliding Mechanism

The Palm keyboard we're so used to seeing

On the outward, this device doesnt feel like it has a keyboard – it’s so small and fits so nicely in our hands! In reality it probably feels like this as the keyboard is fairly small and shall we say… flimsy. The sliding mechanism feels solid although not as smooth as the Xperia’s which we previousely took apart.

The keyboard is the same as previous Palm devices – small and hard to press with anything but your nails. Dr.Wreck has some massive thumbs and as such found it difficult to hit the buttons. Moreover, the space between the top keys and the device is fairly small… stay tuned for some speed typing benchmarking.

Dr.Wreck has some massive thumbs

As we started taking it apart, we revealed the sliding mechanism. We also peeled the keyboard off (turns out the keys are just a sticker with gelled buttons).

The leaf spring

Looking closer at the sliding mechanism, we can see there are two tracks. The entire device has a slight curve which allows the keboard to slide out and toward the user – a very cool and useful feature. There is a small leaf spring which helps pop the keypad into place but is not too loose or too resistive. That said, Dr. Wreck is also abnormally strong… which is also probably why he didn’t experience any binding.

The two tracks (phone is in closed position)

Back Cover/Touchstone Charging Kit

The back cover is suprisingly easy to remove – although with no removable storage or SIM card, there is very little reason to remove it – unless of course you got yourself the Touchstone Charging Kit. If you purchased the kit, you need to put the new backcover on. At this point, Dr.Wreck wanted to give a science lesson on inductive coupling. We figured that might be a little bit boring and decided to forgo it. That said, it charges the same way as your electric toothbrush and isn’t really that ground-breaking – unless of course you consider this as the first time it’s been implemented on a mobile phone.

Touchstone Charger and Touchstone Cover

It’s worth mentioning that the touchstone cover has a matte finish while the original cover is glossy. The glossy cover looks nice but is slippery and susceptible to smudges and scratches. We prefer the matte touchstone cover.

Conclusion

In conclusion this phone is fairly well built and very well designed. If you’re a sprint customer looking for an upgrade, without a doubt this is the phone to choose. If your thinking of switching carriers to get this phone we suggest you try before you buy.

First Impressions: 9

Build Quality: 8

Estimate on Durability: 5

Keypad/Interface devices: 7

That’s it that’s all! In the meantime, subscribe to our RSS, watch Dr.Wreck’s Twitter and check out the Pre’s hardware review and UI Review!

Keep WRECKING!

Dr. Wreck

If you haven’t had a chance yet, make sure to check out our Sprint Palm Pre design analysis! Check out the UI Review!

Note: Most images are courtesy of www.ifixit.com

Here it is, the phone we’ve been ramping up for since it was first unveiled earlier this year.

This puppy has been touted by many as the venerable iPhone killer. Here at phonewreck, we’ll be taking this thing through it’s paces over the weekend and the next few days in order to give you, our readers a proper review that includes benchmarks for all of the functions this device can perform.

Make sure and keep it locked on www.phonewreck.com as we continue to put our Palm Pre from Sprint under the wrecking ball.

Fortunately for you guys, we had a chance to work with the gentlemen/women over at ifixit to get some high quality images of the PCB. These people  really have their stuff together and resorted at nothing to be the first with a fully documented teardown of both the pre and the pre touchstone charger.

Anyways, enough rambling from us – we know why you guys are here. Time to get our hands dirty and see what makes the pre hummmmmmmmm.

Oh and don’t forget to subscribe to the RSS to keep posted as the updates come!

There are some pretty interesting things that popped up on the Pre’s PCB’s. This is the first production device we’ve seen on the OMAP3 (Open Media Applications Processor) platform. OMAP3 is powered by the 600MHZ ARM Cortex A8, PowerVR SGX 530 (GPU), 430MHz C64x, DSP and ISP (Image Signal Processor) and was clearly designed to pack a punch – Dr. Wreck thinks we’re going to see this processor popping up in future netbook endeavours.

On the connections side we see the usual wifi/bluetooth combo going to Marvell and CSR with the W8686 and 63823 respectively. We also see the BaseBand win going to Qualcomm with the heavily integrated MSM6801A platform. The OMAP3 PMIC comes loaded with a USB tranceiver and Audio codec which even further reduces the overall board density of this device. We’re not fully sure – but it looks as if the Pre’s cool new multi-touch Touch Screen Controller win went to Cypress Semiconductor with the CP6944BA device.

The device packs a 1150mAh battery – just like the iPhone 3G.

More Info after the Break!

On the top of the communications board we can spot the BaseBand Processor (Qualcomm MSM6801A), SDRAM, RF power amp and Duplexer by TriQuint.

On the bottom of the communications board we can spot the BaseBand PMIC (Maxim MAX8695Q), RF Transmitter (RFT6150) and the RF Tranceiver (RFR6500) both by Qualcomm.

On the main logic board, we see the OMAP3 PMIC – the Texas Instruments TWL5030. As mentioned before, this PMIC is packed with a USB Traceiver as well as Audio Codec. We also see the Bluetooth and Wifi Tranceivers with the earlier discussed wins from both Marvell and CSR. This device contains a microUSB port and 8GB of internal memory from Samsung.

Elpida offers up some mobile DDR memory and is stacked on top of the venerable OMAP3 processor. We’ll have to wait and see how this thing benchmarks.

And there you have it! Thanks again to ifixit for the wonderful teardown scans and images. Make sure and pop over there if you want to see how they took it apart!

Keep posted as we plan on continually releasing Palm Pre content over the next week!

Until next time, Keep WRECKING and make sure to grab our RSS and follow Dr.Wreck on Twitter! Also be sure to check out our Palm Pre Design analysis or UI review!

]]> http://www.phonewreck.com/2009/06/07/palm-pre-teardown-and-analysis-review-coming-soon/feed/ 47 http://www.phonewreck.com/2008/11/21/phonewreck-launch/ http://www.phonewreck.com/2008/11/21/phonewreck-launch/#comments Sat, 22 Nov 2008 07:30:23 +0000 Dr. Wreck http://www.phonewreck.com/?p=48

These past couple of days, we’ve been busy filling this site up with content.  We’ve gotten the review and teardowns of the: BlackBerry Bold, Motorola Krave ZN4, and the Nokia N95.  We’ve also put up the wiki, so you can access any of the content whenever you want at: www.phonewreck.com/wiki.

We’re launching this website the same time we’re launching the teardown of, well, the above.  Make sure you give that post a good read and a good look!

We’ll be honest with you.  We want this site to be popular and viewed by you folks regularly, because we want this site to have a purpose!  We’re truly passionate in our work of opening up phones and we’re fully willing to share our work with you. So keep checking this site out!  We’ll be having weekly teardowns, reviews, and maybe even hardware designer guests come in and write a couple articles (we have connections).  We’ll also be updating the wiki as often as possible, and we’re hoping that you’ll use it as your source of information for all your phone-related needs!

We hope that YOU, whether you may be an engineer, hardware designer, systems analyst, or just a curious blog reader, will use this information for rightful purposes.

… We’ve also never started this many sentences with “We”.

You can access the phoneWreck Wiki at: www.phonewreck.com/wiki

Hope you folks are ready for a teardown show.  We’ve put a wiki up with content across all handset manufacturers, carriers, and most importantly: handset teardowns!  Keep in mind, this wiki is still in the making and so content is relatively limited at the moment.  However, the teardown content we do have, is pure quality.

Of course, this blog will be continually updated to showcase our latest and greatest teardowns.  Subscribe to our RSS feeds (through that handy button at the top right), or continue checking here!

We hope you will continue to use this blog and this wiki, as your source of good teardown indulgence.  Please enjoy responsibly!

We are thrilled and excited to showcase: phoneWreck.com! Over the next few months, we will cover some of the latest and greatest cellphones, smartphones, and mediaphones out in the market today. As our service to you, the reader, we’re going delve deep into the device, provide full breakdowns, benchmarks and anything else you want or need – and we’re going to do this FREE.

We know there are other companies whose biggest source of revenue is providing specific documentation on each of the little bits and parts that make up a cellphone. We know that many of these companies rely on people like you to pay upwards of $2000 to view the specifics of a measly cellphone. But we are going to grab your attention, because we’re going to do this for FREE. Obviously you ask why – and here’s the answer.

We’ve got a whole cabinet full of phones waiting to pose for pictures, and waiting to be opened up by cellphone surgeons (i.e. Dr. Phone and Dr. Reck). We love cellphones, and we can’t stop looking at them or researching about them. Furthermore, community collabation is cool – just look at how awesome Google appeals to consumers like you and us. The latest HTC Dream/G1 with Android, emotionally feels like a dream come true! Okay, here’s the truth: we’re big fans of Star Trek. Apparently in the future, we don’t require money to research. We do it because of the passion of advancing humankind. And so be it.

Stay tuned, buddies. We’re going to launch, launch hard, and launch proud.

- Dr. Phone and Dr. Wreck.