Here at phonewreck, we’ve found our audience is interested in both phones and other related consumer electronic devices. We’ve been humming and hawing about new devices that we’d really like to play with when the BlackBerry Presenter pretty much landed on our laps.

In the realm of Bluetooth accessories,  this thing is by far one of the most complicated we’ve seen to date. With a ~$200 price-tag, we thought it would be nice to take it through it’s paces and rip it apart to see what makes it beat.

Review after the jump! Make sure to follow @DrWreck on twitter.

Our first impression of the BlackBerry presenter is: Glorius. VGA peripherals are often too light and the heavy guage cable can make it difficult to place them on the desk (pico projector’s etc.). RIM has done a wonderful job of co-designing a hefty device that won’t suffer from this plight. In true BlackBerry form, this device ships with a fantastic faux leather case – complete with magnetic flap. Pulling this baby out at a conference or small presentation is sure to raise some questions – it’s a fairly clever application.

Moving around the back of the device, we can see the VGA, S-video and microUSB ports as well as a NTSC/PAL switch.

Once again, things are solid, minimal and the spacing between ports won’t cause any issues.

The hardware is great – it looks sexy and makes sense. Now, how about it’s functionality!

Boom. Roasted.

This particular device barely worked. In fact, the team only saw it display a presentation once (in about 15 tries) and we were too disappointed in the quality to take photos. The highest native resolution is 1024×768 – missing out on wide-screen supported resolutions seems like an over-sight. That said, most .ppt’s are developed in a 4:3 aspect ratio so it does make sense.

The process of getting this thing working should be simple:

1. Plug it into a VGA or S-video display

2. Plug it into the wall

3. Download the BlackBerry app via some obscure URL you must manually input into your device

4. Load said .ppt onto your BlackBerry

5. Connect to the BlackBerry Presenter via Bluetooth (passkey is on the bottom of the device and displayed on-screen)

6. Launch BB app

7. Select Presentation

8. Click your ball/pad  and select “present”

9. Receive a connection Error

10. Reconnect Via bluetooth

11. Receive Error

12. Unplug everything

13. Receive Error

14. Reinstall Everything

15. Works, yay!

16. Receive Error

17. Wonder why you didn’t buy a netbook to “display” your .ppt’s natively using Powerpoint.

………

17 steps! Yikes, I have a feeling we’ve got a lemon here. To it’s credit it makes for a perfectly sized skipping stone.  Once, it even displayed our ppt long enough for full-navigation. Unfortunately the font was not recognized and our slide transitions were choppy. Any gradiated colours look washed out and grainy – we’re pretty sure it only displays 256 colours.

You can also manually load a .ppt to the device while it is connected via USB. It has 8MB of internal memory. Luckily the device won’t display video’s or any other rich media within your presentation so 8MB should be good for about 30 slides with images.

Unfortunately, you can’t navigate the presentations without a BlackBerry. There are no nav buttons on the device itself. Can’t get your BB to connect? You’re out of luck.

Now, don’t get us wrong. We’ve seen this device work and we really do like the application. Our impression of the functionality is that the BlackBerry App converts the .ppt to a low quality jpeg, and sends it OTA via Bluetooth to the presenter which cache’s the content and then displays it. In a way, it seems like an unnecessary step – why can’t we just connect our BlackBerry straight to a presentation device (monitor or projector)? BlackBerry Devices are first and foremost professional grade smart-phones designed for business related applications. Forking out an additional ~$200 bucks for “video-out capabilities” seems overly redundant. Is there an IC that would allow this transaction? Let us know!

In summary, the device looks great but doesn’t work very well. Thankfully (as mentioned before) it’s hefty. It makes a really cool-looking and solid paperweight.

Dr.Wreck’s score: 3 perfectly sized skipping stones out of 10

Now to take it apart!

The underside of the device has a rubber pad. The 4, T7 hex screws holding it together can be found there. Peel it away.

Once these screws are out, the upper portion of the chassis will pull away from the base-plate and logic board.

Don’t pry on the PCB – it’s secured in place via the VGA port. Use pliers or a very small (5mm) wrench to loosen the “screws”.

That’s it! The PCB should fall into your lap! Let’s take a look at what’s on it.

Texas Instruments literally has a monopoly on this PCB. The Digital Media System on a Chip (DMSoC) is a derivative of the historical and popular TMS320 device (DSP). This particular device also known as the DaVinci Video Processor, has a single ARM9 core, 32KB of RAM a hardware accelerator and co-processor. We estimate it’s running at ~220MHz.

The external video ports runs through a TV Encoder manufactured by FOCUS enhancements. This particular device, part of the FS45x family takes digital video or computer graphics and converts to high quality analog video. These devices exist in products that deliver really high quality content – it makes us wonder what the problem was here with the BlackBerry Presenter. Our thoughts are that the images were scaled and compressed to make Bluetooth transmission faster and more seamless. Output resolutions of 480P to 1080i can be achieved with these devices.

The PMIC is also designed by Texas Instruments – the device is actually designed for Lithium Ion Powered Systems but RIM (or it’s 3rd party designer) found an application in this device.

The flash win went to STMicroelectronics and Numonyx/Micron with an MCP (Multi-Chip package) that includes both memory and RAM. By the looks of it, this is a a 1GBit NAND with 512Mbit of DRAM – only 8MB of storage is made available to the user.

Lastly we move onto the most interesting part of the board, the Bluetooth IC. Look like a product from the well-known Bluetooth IC provider CSR. The BC6450A, a member of the BlueCore family has a -90dBm receiver sensitivity and comes in a very small 3.49×3.21 WLCSP (wafter level chip scale package).

That’s it, that’s all! If you have any questions, make sure to contact us!

@DrWreck

So here it is, the much awaited Palm Pre.   Dr. Phone and Dr. Wreck have been following the handset industry from the days of the so cool Zack Morris brick phone (which we were happy to see once again appear on a recent episode of Jimmy Fallon) to the astronomically popular Motorola Razr, all the way through the Apple iPhone.  Its not even hyperbole to say that at no time ever has one single phone meant more to a company than the Pre does to Palm.  With the Research In Motion branded Blackberry redefining the smart phone by its Pearl, Curve, Bold and Storm entries, and Apple setting the gold standard for all smart phones by its introduction into the market with the iPhone, the Sunnyvale, CA based Palm had become a distant afterthought.  For years the company struggled along rumors of being bought out or broken apart culminating with the stock price reaching an all time low of $1.42 in December of 2008.   But then, with the announcement and demo of the Pre at the January 2009 CES in Las Vegas, the company built back enough momentum to inject energy into the Palm brand.   The phoneWreck team has been waiting anxiously to review the Pre and promises to break down every nook and cranny of this monumental phone.  As always, we will call it like we see it, and promise to pull no punches so enough of this nostalgia already and in the words of the immortal Michael Buffer, “LETS GET READY TO RUMBBBBBLE!!”  Ding. Ding.

Palm Pre Review

We pay homage to the great Clint Eastwood in this review by going through “Il buono, Il brutto, Il cattivo” for those of you who don’t parlarano italiano that means “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”

This phone was filled with plenty of Goods but also some Bad’s and Ugly’s. At times while reviewing the phone it almost seemed like a phone that didn’t have too much middle ground.

The Goods

Oh where to start?

First lets start with the looks and form factor of the phone.  Image is everything and this phone does not disappoint.  The phone has very sleek curved lines and a glossy look to it.  Mrs. Phone also pointed out that the backside when slid up has a nice little mirror for taking pictures, or doing your hair while talking on the speaker phone and driving!!! (and some of you wonder how we got the name phoneWreck, sigh).  Dr. Phone always likes to judge how good a phone looks by how many double takes he gets when walking into a club while pretending to talk on his brand new phone, and of course Mrs. Phone isn’t around.

Double-Take Rating**: 8 Double Takes Out of 10!!*

* Note this number may vary based on alcohol consumption, lighting, and other factors.

**Scale – Dr. Phone normally gets 0 double takes from 10 women so this is purely the phone and only the phone

Mrs. Phone's favourite phone mirror!

Additionally, as stated in the hardware review, the phone fits into your hand nicely, both its weight and width make it easy to slide into your pocket.

So the thing that was most surprising to the team at phoneWreck was the Touch Screen.

Most other models we have reviewed or torn apart (Omnia, HTC Touch Pro, Krave) use “resistive touch” which means you physically have to press on the screen in order for it to recognize your finger.  Other phones we reviewed like the Storm or iPhone use capacitive sensing algorithms which sense when your finger actually touches the screen and are much easier to use.   Still, as we mentioned in the Storm review we found the touch to be slow, the touch sensitivity not accurate, and no capabilities to press on multiple points in the screen at the same time.  The Palm AMAZED us with its accurate and easy to use multi-touch ability.  Kudos to them for getting it right finally!  We are not saying this is the holy grail of touch screens but is a 10x improvement over Storm/iPhone and 100x over Omnia and resistive touch.

Without showing a video of some of the very cool things you can do with the touch like expanding, condensing photos (or even maps on Google, or web pages) with two finger gesturing, you will not be able to fully grasp how cool this feature is!  Below are charts from the instruction manual on the gesturing just so you have an idea:

Touch-Screen Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Screen Review:

This is a difficult one to review.  The Bold, Storm, iPhone, Pre all have very comparable HVGA (320×480) HVGA 24-bit color screens.  The Pre screen size is at a very decent 3.1 inches and is made by Sony.  The screen looks amazing, and backlight is very bright so the image really shines off of the phone.  Dr. Phone is not a videophile but likes this screen a lot.

Screen Rating: 9 out of 10

Other cool features:

The internal accelerometer senses when you flip the screen to panorama, and 180 degrees so it changes the images in photo, web browser, main screen, etc….   Seeing that the movie Bruno is coming out very soon starring Sacha Baron Cohen, we thought we’d do a little Borat and say VERY NICE!!!

The phone when connected through USB is recognized automatically by iTunes so if this is your method of choice to transfer music (its not ours) you can use this utility.

Cut and Paste!!! (Apple took almost 2 years to release this for iPhone).

3.5mm headphone jack, it sounds cheesy but some phones don’t even support a standard headphone jack but its good to see has one does without doing some proprietary headphone rip-off scheme.

Internet Browser:

The Blackberry browser has been much maligned in reviews, but we chose to use the Blackberry Bold browser since it was easy to configure in WiFi and Over the Air in both Java and non-Java modes. We hear that the Palm browser is based off Webkit which also powers the Safari browser on the iPhone and on PCs.  Aesthetically speaking the Palm browser formatted images much better and pages looked far superior to that of the Bold.  In addition the brilliant touch adds a lot of pros here by being able to scroll much easier and zoom in and out with ease.  The quick refresh and back button are a nice feature and in order to enter in your next address you begin typing on the keyboard and that’s it.   Unlike the iPhone, you get to see the entire screen while you are typing in the next webpage.   Palm has really made a nice browser here.

Lets take a look at the speeds using three of the phoneWreck’s team favorite sites and each companies respective sites.

Browser Loading Benchmarking:

Bold Browser: 4.6.0.167

Pre Browser: 1.0.2

Using WiFi:

Clearly the WiFi browsing on the Palm Pre is not only better looking but faster as well.   Java scripts are running much better on the Palm Pre.

Network Browsing:

Okay so this one we know that the browser on the Pre is faster but we wanted to see how the Sprint EV-DO Rev. A (DORA) network stacked up against the AT&T 3G WCDMA Network:

The above numbers tell an interesting story.  It seems that the Sprint DORA network is slowing down the loading of pages on Pre, but by very little margin over the WiFi which means it is closely matching the internet speed at the phoneWreck lab.  On the other hand the Bold WiFi numbers closely match the numbers of the AT&T 3G network which indicates the browser formatting is probably what is the bottleneck in loading pages, not data acquisition.

This round goes to the Pre without question!!!  The inaugural phoneWreck Kelly Slater internet surfing trophy goes to the Palm Pre.  Surfs up bro.

Internet Surfing Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Camera Review:

Its hard to really compare against some of the super high-end camera phones that are coming out with 8.1 MP cameras but it should be fair to compare against similar type phone like Bold/Storm/iPhone.  The Pre (1520×2032) is capable of higher resolution pictures than the Bold (1200×1600) and is roughly similar to that of the Storm (1536×2048).

Below is a comparison of images between the Bold and Pre:

BlackBerry Bold

Palm Pre

BlackBerry Bold

PalmPre

The above pictures really show the Pre having a more colorful, vibrant and sharper image.  The good thing about the Bold is the fact that it allows you to choose between resolutions, effects, and specific types of flash modes, where as the Pre only gives you control over the flash.   The Pre however makes you feel like you can take pictures as fast as your finger presses the button, which is a great feature and a testament to how fast the image processing is working on the Pre..

Camera Rating:  8.5 out of 10

Operating System Review:

The much talked about webOS!  This operating system is unique and yet probably the closest thing you will see to a PC’s operating system in the sense that it lets you keep as many applications open as the Operating System can handle and as many web browsers as you’d like.  The people at Palm call an open application a “card” for the cool way that it appears on the main screen.  We tried to push the Palm Pre to the limit to see how many cards (applications) we could have open at the same time without slowing down the OS.  We got up 16 (1 YouTube,1 Google Maps, 2 Telephone Prompts, 3 Webpages, 1 video camera mode, 2 camera modes, 1 calculator, 1 notepad, 1 task taker, 1 world clock, 1 calendar, and 1 e-mail) before we quit because the OS still did not slow down.  Very impressive! The ease of switching between the apps is the swipe of a finger left or right, and the ability to close an app is about as simple as swiping your finger up, to fling the app off the screen!!  The webOS is perfect for multitasking is probably the single largest advancement over ANY phone in the market today. Superb job of really understanding how to make an OS easy to use, and to allow users to flip between their favorite applications rather than closing one down and having to open another.   The OS from our time playing with it seemed to be very stable and bug free.

webOS Rating:  10 out of 10!!!!

The Bads

There are so many items on this phone that show that Palm really took their time, with prepared, well thought out features that it was surprising to see so many things that made the phoneWreck team scratch their head.  This phone really appeals to the consumer market and we understand that, but Palm’s core audience has always been the business user as well, which we think they may have turned off with a couple of key features.

The slider button on the top of the phone for muting for instance, is something that is hard to slide especially in the middle of a conference call or in a split instance if you need to talk to someone else.  Why not use a simple push button like the Blackberries.

The speaker, and speaker phone are sub-par.   The Bold really became the phone to beat here, but the Pre doesn’t compete against a Curve, or even and iPhone with its speaker phone.   Not to mention the speaker design on the back looks like its straight out of an 1980’s tape player.

We commend Palm for putting a keyboard on the Pre unlike the iPhone.  The touch screen is so good you could easily get away with using a touch keyboard on the Pre, however it would take away from the ability of viewing the entire screen.  Having said that, the keyboard is way below average comparing it to other keyboards on the market.  Once again Blackberries set the bar high on keyboards, but Palm’s choice to keep their old Centro/Treo keyboard was not a wise move.  The keys feel really slippery, don’t depress much and are very close together.  A nightmare for Dr. Phone who suffers from FFS, and no that’s not a fatal disease, its Fat Finger Syndrome!

Its U.S Open time for Golf so we wanted to type the following sentence in both the Bold and Pre and compare time and errors:

“Unlike Thursday, Friday offered no rain. And by the time the first 78 players had finished the first round, the sun came out and offered up a nice day on a still-saturated course, Tiger Woods who played seven holes of the first round in Thursday’s rain and shot an opening-round 74, tried to downplay the effect of the tee times. But it was clear afterward that those in his predicament got the worst of the situation.”

The above was typed three times on each device and an average was calculated.   The above contains multiple numbers, capitalizations and punctuations which also needed to be correct, as if I was a business user typing an important e-mail to a CEO.

In addition to making over two times the amount of errors Dr. Phone typed almost two times slower.  The keyboard could certainly be easier to use.

Keyboard Rating:  6 out of 10 (we give credit for at least having one)

The Uglys

USB Sideloading

The phoneWreck readers are very intelligent, but we believe everything on the Pre phone should be consistent with its OS and Web Browsing and simple to use.  That’s why we were surprised to plug in the phone to the USB port on our computer (note without iTunes) and see the below:

Luckily, because of Dr. Wreck’s teardown review we now realize the OMAP 3430 is handling the High-Speed USB (hardly fast as you will see).  The average user might go cross-eyed seeing the above.  We expected to plug in the phone and have it look like a thumb drive.  The Bold phone does this and were surprised not to see this easy option on the Pre right away.  Okay so we eventually figured out that we needed to download the “Palm Data Transfer Assistant” to move our music and movie files in “USB Drive” mode.  We think this should have been plug n’ play but we can let that go aside.  The next thing that took us by surprise is that you cannot use the phone while you transfer your movies and music files to the Pre!!!!!  The phone turns off and shows that you are in USB mode.  Neither the Bold, iPhone or Storm do this, why the Pre?!    In addition, we decided to transfer one large 1.4 GB movie file to the Pre and found that it took nearly 12 minutes.   So, before I travel I always transfer at least two movie files onto my Bold so I can play them on my plane ride.  This would take nearly 25 minutes, and 25 minutes which I can’t talk or text to my friends.  Dr. Phone’s 16 year old nephew is texting and talking constantly, he would go nuts if he couldn’t use his phone for 25 minutes, as I practically did..  Here is a side by side comparison of the Pre vs. Bold on Sideloading:

The Bold would take 3 minutes to transfer 2 movies versus 24 minutes for the Pre and You can talk on the phone and transfers files fast at the same time with the Bold, this is the way it supposed to be, a definite oversight on the Pre, especially as a multimedia smart phone!

USB Sideloading Rating: 3 out of 10 (At least it has HSUSB, that’s all we can say)

Mechanical Design

The slider mechanism is not very stable, and looks as if it could be very easily broken.  When we were first trying to get our hands on the Pre we went by several Sprint stores who had to remove the Pre displays because people and we quote “Slid the phone too much and  broke the slider.”  This is a very expensive phone, it is almost inexcusable to not have a tight sliding mechanism like the T-Mobile G1, or the Sony Xperia.  The USB mini A/B port cover also fell off Dr. Phone’s Pre after using it three times.  Mechanical design must be more robust!!

Durability Rating (as mentioned in Review Part 2):  5 out of 10

Battery Charging

Battery charging from a dead battery situation is a nightmare.  I pity anyone who is on an important call and their battery goes 100% dead because it took us almost 10-15 minutes to get this thing back from a dead battery using the wall charger.  It charges relatively quickly when the battery is not dead, and standby battery life is not to shabby at all, but the dead battery situation is a catastrophe.

Battery Charger Rating: 4 out of 10

Summary:

The phoneWreck team prides themselves on testing every phone to their limits and not giving “soft reviews” We really took this thing to the limit and we believe it actually lives up to its hype which is a hard thing to do!  This phone took several major steps forward both with the brilliant touch screen and the amazing webOS.  There was some drawbacks that like we said made us scratch our head, like the keyboard, speaker phone, USB sideloading, and mechanical design.  You’d think for a phone that holds the companies fate in their hands they would try their best to get everything perfect and not make simple correctable errors.   They spent so much time on the OS, and other features why not go out of the way to build in a nice keyboard, better audio codecs, faster USB, robust mechnical design and battery charging. Some of these items could turn off one of Palm’s core demographics – business users. We absolutely don’t want to let these negatives get in the way of an absolutely revolutionary phone.   Our numerous positives far outweigh the negatives. If you get the chance to get one on the Sprint Network please do it!! You won’t regret any dime you spent and you will love this phone.  Great work Palm, and we think your company will be fine!

Thanks for reading the review, we appreciate your support everyone, please feel free to  leave a comment.

Keep on Wrecking phone lovers!!!

Overall Rating:  9 “Pre cards” out of 10

Make sure to check out the other Palm Pre Reviews! Also, subscribe to our RSS and follow Dr.Wreck’s twitter!

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

For full teardown analyses, bill of materials, and high-resolution pictures, hit up the wiki: http://www.phonewreck.com/wiki/index.php?title=Samsung_Omnia_i910

The Samsung Omnia is not a “new” device – we had one lying around and all the hype surrounding the fresh Omnia HD had us thinking we might as well break it open to see what makes it hum. The verdict? You’ll have to read on. Simply said however, this device was built for function.

At a time when everybody and their brother/sister seems to be creating an iPhone clone, the Samsung Omnia came out as a fully featured device to meet the requirements and fill the voids that exist in Apples highly acclaimed platform. Man, is this thing packed with features… Let’s see how it stacks up from a design perspective.

Samsung Omnia Review

Greats

The Samsung Omnia is a well built device but it’s no Xperia. Unlike most of the BlackBerry devices we’ve seen the chrome feature around frame of the device is actually metal – not painted plastic that scuffs and scrapes with everyday use. The battery cover and trim pieces that make up the surroundings fit within small tolerances, and there is very little give or “flexible” feeling as you use the device. The screen is resistive but doesn’t feel loose like some of the other devices we’ve seen with the same technology.

That said, you will want to use the provided stylus as most UI buttons are inherently tiny and hard to hit with a finger. More on that later.

In terms of feature set, the baby is solid. Name a function – it’s probably there. The 5MP camera and 8GB of internal storage all helps contribute to this amazing feature set.

Thankfully, Samsung has replaced some of the more arduous components of Windows Mobile with some easier to use and more powerful programs. Notably, the program launcher, browser (Opera 9.5 comes standard) and software keyboards were good selections. Samsung’s touchplayer media “centre” is also a grand improvement that ends up being a lot more finger friendly then Windows Media Player mobile.

If you’ve already taken a gander at the teardown, you’ll notice the device contains a pretty small and pretty packed PCB. One thing that Omnia really shines in when compared to other Windows Mobile Devices is its ability to easily perform tasks while surfing data or making phone-calls. Most Windows Mobile devices either don’t have this ability or really crunch when the goin’ gets tough.

So-So

Unfortunately the TouchWiz UI didn’t really tickle our fancy. The 3.2”, 240×400 screen simply isn’t big enough for all of the necessary widgets and you’ll often find yourself accidently moving the icons around the screen. Moreover, the screen seems fairly small for the overall size of the device. From an aesthetics perspective, it’s a little too tall and narrow. We found ourselves often wishing for a little bit more real-estate during typing related activities.

In another blow to the overall rating, Verizon has limited the usage of GPS within the bounds of its very own VZ Navigator software. This means that Google maps cannot determine your location – major bummer.

Another iffy sentiment is the fact that the stylus is always dangling from the phone, often scratching it up as you toss it in your pocket. The stylus is solid and feels like a high end pen in your hand, but why was there no storage built into the phone? Unfortunately it feels like a bit of an afterthought.

For typing you have a variety of options. The Samsung keyboard, Block recognizer, transcriber and more. In portrait mode, the full QWERTY is very cramped so you’re pretty much forced to use the stylus and poke out your text (similar to the way your grandpa might type). The Omnia does provide haptic feedback by means of small vibrations, but these can be slightly overwhelming and play on your nerves when things aren’t coming out the way you had expected.

The built in accelerometer also rotates the screen when you hold the phone in portrait or landscape configurations but it’s overly sensitive and can be slow to respond. When holding the phone 10 degrees from flat, it often rotates itself with slight bumps. Forget about typing a message while sitting on a bus.

The widget system is really cool, but at the moment you are limited to only Samsung’s selection of stock items. It would be nice to have some cool independently created widgets to play around with.

Gripes

What’s with the proprietary headphone/USB/Tv-out jack? It’s really cool that all of these functions are provided via a single jack, but sometimes you don’t have the specific Samsung cable handy. It’s also annoying to plug your 2.5mm headphones into an included adapter. 2.5mm? ??!!! This is like the BlackBerry of 2002!

Now that we’re on the media wagon, this thing downloads media from your PC really slow. You have an option of either ActiveSync of Mass Storage mode – neither of which don’t achieve a speed of over 3.8MB/s. ActiveSync mode is incredibly slow and barely reaches 2MB/s in its best scenario – it’s like watching paint dry. These numbers are a far cry from the BlackBerry Bold or 8900/Javelin which we’ve previously seen achieve speeds of well over 13MB/s. If you’re trying to load music in a jiffy, forget about it with the Samsung Omnia.

Conclusions

The Samsung Omnia is a solid device with a few major media hurdles holding it back from being either an iPhone or a BlackBerry. Windows Mobile inherently offers any device some difficulties in the complexities and common qualms of the platform which are hard to avoid. The Omnia has avoided this somewhat successfully by offering software alternatives out of the box.

The device is well built and the camera kicks butt, but this device “simply ain’t” your “do everything well” pocket companion…. One day, Dr. Wreck, one day…

phoneWreck Score: 7 Widgets out of 10.

Samsung Omnia Teardown

This device is well built. As such, it was a little bit tricky to take apart. Thankfully, all shielding was clip in and the device’s brains were easily revealed. Muahahahaha.

Notably, this device runs on the Qualcomm 6800A and Marvell PXA312. These devices are connected via a Cypress Dual-Port bridge and have separate Power Management Devices. Note that this PCB is impressively packed and impressively small! Another thing to point out is the presence of an SMSC USB PHY. We’ve seen these devices on a variety phones we’ve ripped apart.

Bluetooth goes to CSR and Wi-Fi to Marvell. The GPS win goes to Avago. Note the massive quintplexer!

The one thing we knew the phone had but couldn’t find was the 8GB internal memory. Where could it be? We eventually found it hiding underneath the shield covering the processor side of the PCB – very sneaky!

So there you have it! We hope this teardown helps you decide which device you want to buy! Stay tuned for more exciting stuff!

If you have any questions or comments, don’t be afraid to fire us an e-mail @ phonewreck@gmail.com, make sure and check out the wiki entry for more data!

-Dr. Wreck

For full teardown analyses, bill of materials, and high-resolution pictures, hit up the wiki: http://www.phonewreck.com/wiki/index.php?title=BlackBerry_Curve_8900

So here’s the big kahuna, the mountain giant, the piercing javelin, if you will.  The Curve 8900 (Javelin) has done well to garner a lot of press, because it’s a well functioning BlackBerry, in a tight package, fitted with some crazy insides, yet lacks 3G.  Many people have stated how gorgeous the phone is, but they take a step back when they learn it doesn’t include a 3G radio.  How does this impact the final use of the phone?  Let’s take a look shall we?

Oh, and of course, let’s smash the darned thing while were at it (with über care, of course).  Read on!

The BlackBerry Curve 8900 is an update to the BlackBerry Curve 83xx series.  Of course, ditching the traditional xx10/xx20/xx30 customs, the Javelin (easier to say than Curve 8900) includes both GPS and Wi-Fi options, similar to RIM’s recent devices.  The one we have here is actually one of the first device launches from T-Mobile in Germany, but the hardware should be exactly the same — except of course, the QWERTZ keyboard.  So without further ado, here’s the review.

BlackBerry Curve 8900 Review

Greats

First and foremost, the Curve 8900 (hereon referred to as “Javelin”) is a gorgeous device.  It’s got the same chrome trim as the Storm, relatively the same shape, and a faux-brushed-aluminum backing.  While I prefer the Storm’s actual metal backing, the Javelin makes up for this in weight.  It’s an astonishingly light device, even with the brick of a battery.  The keyboard is similar to the old Curve’s, but almost seems to fit tighter.  In reality, the size differences of the Javelin aren’t very different from the existing Curve, but gosh, the improvements to the aesthetics are amazing.

When you turn the device on (after its traditional white screen + hour glass sequence), the screen blows you away.  It’s bright, it’s clear, it’s gorgeous.  It runs the same resolution as the Bold, but in an even smaller screen.  You won’t notice the difference in pixel density (even though it’s higher on the Javelin), but heck, everything you look at becomes beautiful.

In standard RIM fashion, the keyboard is better than ever.  To the grunts of the meeting-filled corporate employee, the keyboard is a little louder than normal.  You might get looks from a few more people than you normally would with the Bold, but WOW does this thing type fast.  The distinction is clear between the Javelin and the Bold.  The Javelin sports a separated keyboard similar to the Curves, but the Bold has accented keys that are stuck together.  This is completely a subjective category, as they both type ridiculously fast.  Needless to say though, your friends better get a BlackBerry themselves if they want to catch up to you in e-mail speediness.

In terms of media playback, the phone rocks.  Everything is pretty much the same across BlackBerry’s, so what we said here and here, remains the same.  The only thing to note is that the speaker seems to be the same as the Storm’s.  In terms of sound quality and well, bulk, the Bold still dominates.  GPS navigation is simple and easy with your choice of BB Maps or Google Maps.  E-mail, calendars, and most of the rest of your applications remain the same.  In fact, the fundamentals are all here, including the most fundamental of them all: BrickBreaker.

Mellows

Although most of the apps remain the same, the real question many of you really want to know is how well the browser works.  The verdict is: it’s nothing mind-blowing, but it’s definitely an improvement.  The browser seems to handle Javascript a little better than its predecessors, but for regular use, you still want it off.  CrackBerry had a great posting on the Javelin’s browser times.  They’ve shown that the improvements to the Javelin’s browser are pretty darn significant.  So much so that it nearly compares to the Bold’s 3G speeds even though its on EDGE.  Another interesting thing is the new cursor movements.  Before, you had to run your thumb down the trackball dozens of times just to scroll through a website.  To the delight of those who needed treatment for “BlackBerry Thumb“, the new system has an accelerated trackball motion that lets you move the cursor from one side of the screen to the other side in a quick flick.

The camera implementation on this phone is also decent.  While it won’t replace a good point and shoot, the 3.2MP camera with auto-focus generally fits the bill for on-the-go captures.  Our complaint with the camera is its limited zoom (digital zoom only goes to 2.0x) and the excessive effort it requires to get there.  A good long flick moves the zoom from 1.0 to 1.1.  It does take relatively good pictures in low-light however, and the capture lag time is similar to the Bold’s.

Gripes

To be honest, we’re being a little nitpicky here, but the Javelin’s battery cover is quite annoying.  It uses the same latch as the Curve’s, which isn’t really a bad thing, but the build quality of the cover is pretty crap.  The plastic back, which differs from the Storm’s metallic back, is rather flexible.  In effect, the battery cover “pops” in and out near the latch when you’re grasping it with too much force.  Perhaps it’s this particular unit, but the annoyance of a flimsy battery cover has always got to our heads.

Conclusion

The Javelin doesn’t really have too many gripes rather than the flimsy battery cover and the lack of 3G.  We didn’t include the latter, because we understood RIM’s position in marketing this as an update to the Curve — because it is a Curve.  And in fact, the improvements to the browser make the lack of 3G much more bearable.  The tight, new form factor really has us drooling though.  It’s a great device to use, and definitely tops our list of favorites for the moment.  The Javelin presents a good alternative to the faux-leather backed bigger brother, and we’re very satisfied.  Enough chit-chat though, let’s get to the goods!

phoneWreck Score: 9 trackballs out of 10

BlackBerry Curve 8900 Teardown

Here’s probably what the bulk of you came for — in fact, your eyes are probably not even reading this line.  In any case, a lot of people have been requesting for higher resolution pictures.  So ta-da!  Click on the picture for slightly higher-res marked pictures, and the links below for unmarked ones.  Hope you enjoy!

So right off the bat, much of what you see here is actually very similar to the Bold.  The most significant change is the Freescale chipset including the SC29746VK processor and the MMM7010 RF transceiver.  Skyworks takes the win for modulating power for the RF transceiver with the SKY77526.  Looking at the datasheets for these ICs, it seems as if everything was built to be as small as possible.  Judging from the main PCB and its insanely small size (shown below), our guess is that RIM is really looking to make things thinner.  The Storm had a similarly sized PCB as well.

Click here for the high-res unmarked version

Cypress Semiconductor continues to win designs for their West Bridge solution, with their CYWB0124AB chip, enabling fast transfer speeds as we earlier noted.  MtekVision makes an interesting entrance as well, claiming quite a large space for their camera signal processor.  We’re guessing this is what’s responsible for their relatively quick and strong camera captures.  Texas Instruments, as always, makes some notable wins with their audio codec, Wi-Fi chipset, and the power management unit (shown above and below).

Click here for the high-res unmarked version

Finally, SiRF continues to provide GPS units, and CSR provides Bluetooth functionality.  This is the interesting part, as CSR and SiRF, who provide most of the GPS and Bluetooth ICs for a wide range of handests, have recently announced their intention to merge.  We can’t really speculate as to how this will affect the semiconductor industry in the wireless world, but we imagine that they would definitely offer some hard-hitting competition.  So that’s mostly it!  We’ve posted some of the more important ones below, and the rest, we’ve stuck into our wiki (link below).

Click here for the high-res unmarked version

Click here for the high-res unmarked version

Hope you’ve enjoyed.  Thanks!

If you have questions, comments, concerns, humorous anecdotes, be sure to let us know in the comments or through e-mail (phonewreck@gmail.com). Also be sure to visit the wiki for more pictures (http://www.phonewreck.com/wiki/index.php?title=BlackBerry_Curve_8900)! Thanks!

For full teardown analyses, bill of materials, and high-resolution pictures, hit up the wiki: http://www.phonewreck.com/wiki/index.php?title=HTC_Touch_Pro

Many praises have been given to HTC ever since its recent diversion into the self-branded handset space.  Being the newer, more functional, but bulkier sibling of the million-selling Touch Diamond, the Touch Pro now zooms its way into CDMA networks on both Sprint and Verizon.

In traditional phone wrecking fare, we give the Touch Pro some good words, some bad words, and we rip it open for amusement.  Read on!

HTC Touch Pro Review

Greats

HTC has done well in this phone (probably more than any other Windows Mobile phone) to cover up, well, Windows Mobile.  With its TouchFLO 3D streamlining a lot of the WinMo functions for touch use, it’s definitely much more pleasant to use.  Given normal circumstances, a regular user wouldn’t even see much of WinMo except the Start button and the typical icons on the top right.  The interface is fluid and it runs really smoothly without too many hiccups.  The Sprint color schemes are also pleasing to the eye.

Moreover, the resistive screen is among the best of the resistive world.  The screen is very bright, there’s minimal distance between the film and the screen, and it’s very solid underneath.  With the minimal distance, it almost feels like a glass screen.  It’s easy to glide your finger across and doesn’t require much effort.  Traversing the menu on the bottom of the TouchFLO 3D panel feels very satisfying.

Finally, Windows Mobile.  As annoying to use as it is, Windows Mobile presents functionalities that aren’t offered on any other phone.  In the true sense of the word, smartphone, the Touch Pro provides access to everything you’ll need on a handset.  It gives you a good connections manager, task manager, a bevy of standard applications, and even lets you manage memory statistics and whatnot.

Middle-Earth

In the land of Tolkien, Middle-earth is presented as a place of struggle where people battle for control.  In this section, each of these functionalities and characteristics struggle to find their way between good and evil.  First up, comes the aesthetics.  The chrome sides and the glossed and tinted metallic front are quite the stunner.  The logos from Sprint and HTC are also among the best and the sleekest.  Unfortunately, the back cover feels rather cheap, as it’s basically a thin sheet of plastic.  Also, the sheer size of the device is a pretty big downer.  Those looking for a QWERTY device may be expecting the size, but in hand, it feels even bigger than the pictures.

Build quality.  The phone is generally quite solid with front facing buttons that look great and give a good feeling when depressed.  However, here is where the back cover ruins things again.  The cover creeks a little when you firmly grasp the device, and considering the amount of use by a smartphone like this, the lack of foresight on this part really hurts it.  Also, the sliding mechanism is definitely not as smooth as the XPERIA X1′s nor the G1′s.  The bottom of the screen module scrapes over the keys, resulting in an inelegant transition.

Speaking of opening the device, the keyboard is another mediocre solution.  Having a massive 5 rows of keys is great in theory, but the final implementation is why it’s in this section rather than the Great section.  The keyboard is very useful.  It types fast, and the keys are all where you would expect it to be.  There are, however, minor annoyances.  The grippiness of the material coupled with the flatness, causes you to subconsciously revert to using nails — which gets rather tiring.  The space bar is also ridiculously small and the placements of the symbols are awkward to get used to.  When we did however, we flew through the emails and text messages, with a moderate amount of effort.  It’s good, but it’s not great.

Processing.  The phone uses a Qualcomm MSM7201A processor that handles most of the dirty work.  Running Windows Mobile is perfectly fine, and it swallows everything you throw at it.  The TouchFLO 3D interface runs smoothly most of the time, but accessing some of its functions will expose some lag issues.  When syncing and sideloading onto the computer, Microsoft’s ActiveSync works as it should, but slows down file tranfers dramatically when compared to Mass Storage mode.  ActiveSync ended up at 1.4MBps while Mass Storage gave me about 3.2MBps.  The speeds are expected as the hardware architecture is very similar to the XPERIA X1, but its still nowhere near as fast as the Bold’s blazing 15MBps mark.

Gripes

Windows Mobile.  Similar to the XPERIA X1, the most annoying thing about the phone is the use of Windows Mobile.  It’s unattractive and totally does not work well with the thumbs.  It’s greats in functionality are totally leveled with its gripes in usability.  Let’s hope Microsoft finishes their updates fast.

Conclusion

All in all, HTC has done a good refresh to the Diamond, adding in much better functionality with the QWERTY keyboard.  Unfortunately, it’s still bulky, it still has a resistive touchscreen, and in the end it’s still Windows Mobile.  I don’t mean to completely bash WinMo 6.1, but it’s totally outdated and is dying for a refresh.

In the end, the Touch Pro targets current users of the Tilts and other hardcore smartphones.  The sheer bulk of the phone isn’t much different and totally not comfortable in the pocket, but the new look, and the fresh TouchFLO 3D UI definitely are worth taking the plunge over — if that’s what you’re looking for.

phoneWreck Score: 8 slides out of 10

HTC Touch Pro Teardown

We chose to do this teardown, because most people have noted the insides of the GSM teardown and its highly similar architecture with the GSM Diamond. Instead of the Qualcomm MSM72xx processors, the CDMA Touch Pro uses the Qualcomm MSM7501A along with the traditional Qualcomm chipset – including the Qualcomm PM7540 and the Qualcomm RTR6500. So check out the block diagram below!

Again, the processor integrates the GPS, audio codecs, and also the USB controller. Shown on the main PCB (below), we see that Anadigics has won the design for the dual-band CDMA power amps, with EVDO Rev. A capabilities. Samsung, in traditional memory fashion, has gotten the win for the memory chip with integrated NAND Flash and RAM.

On the other side of the PCB, we have the processor and most of the rest of the chips. The USB PHY is an SMSC chip, similar to pretty much the rest of the HTC devices. Texas Instruments has its Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chipset, BRF6350BL and WL1251B respectively, with the WL1251FE power amp.

Shown below is the screen module. Here we see an Epson IC for what we believe controls the resistive touchscreen, as it’s also found on the XPERIA X1. Also interesting to note is two ICs for microcontrollers, from Atmel and Cypress.

Finally, we have the rest of the parts of the device. The camera module and the board comparing the USB are shown below. The other interesting thing to note is the four torsional springs implemented just to slide the device. In fact, the small and light cover, uses a dual torsional spring, just to hide the ribbon.

Finally, everything together! Enjoy!

If you have questions, comments, concerns, humorous anecdotes, be sure to let us know in the comments or through e-mail (phonewreck@gmail.com).  Also be sure to visit the wiki for more pictures (http://www.phonewreck.com/wiki/index.php?title=HTC_Touch_Pro)!  Thanks!

For full teardown analyses, bill of materials, and high-resolution pictures, hit up the wiki: http://www.phonewreck.com/wiki/index.php?title=Sony_Ericsson_XPERIA_X1

The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 is one device that’s not afraid to brag.  It’s got the looks stylings of a sophisticated modernist, an interface to temporarily boast, and the price tag that’ll blow up your mind and your surrounding minds.

So how does this device actually stack up?  We give it a good review and we blow it up as well, to find out whether the boasting continues on from inside the device.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 Review

Greats

This device is one of the most gorgeous devices I’ve seen.  Not only does it look good, it feels like a million bucks (it actually does cost a lot though).  The sliding mechanism is the smoothest and most solid mechanism to date and actually tilts the screen slightly towards you.  It works, and it works well.  There’s absolutely no give to the device due to its brushed aluminum components.  Heck, the battery door is fully aluminum, the base of the keyboard is aluminum, even the keys feel aluminum (we’re not sure they actually are though).

Sony Ericsson/HTC has also done an amazing job on the fine details.  Look at the hidden notification lights!  There are accented front buttons, rubberized feet, and the curved sliding is gorgeous.

And of course, the screen.  The X1 sports one of the first WVGA (800×480) screens, and it’s beautiful.  Colours are vibrant, small texts are clear and very visible, and watching the included Casino Royale trailer is more than satisfying.  It’s sad that they’ve chosen to run with a resistive touchscreen rather than a capacitive, but Windows Mobile 6.1 is definitely a beast to run without a stylus, especially with the small fonts that it so brilliant displays.  Of course, they’ve given it one of the best resistive displays, with very fine film-to-screen gaps.  It’s also quite responsive.

Finally, thank you SEMC/HTC for including a 3.5mm headphone!  Media is a pleasure to use with one of the “Panels” (more on that later), sporting an interface very similar to Sony’s Xross Media Bar employed on the PS3 and PSP.  It makes it easy to sort through your videos, music, and pictures, with an elegant background.

So-So

Unfortunately we had to rate the widely touted “Panels” as so-so, comme ci comme ca, or the officially official “meh”.  While it’s brilliant in concept, it’s less attractive in implementation.  The Panels interface essentially provides you with up to 9 different “desktops” that you can use, customize, and even download.  Many of these actually look very cool and are dedicated for various functions (Calendar, Media, RSS Readers etc.), but that same fact is also the bane of its existence.  Constantly using it is a pain as it’s takes up to SIX seconds to fully load a panel!  Fun Fact:  In the time it takes to load a panel, Usain Bolt can run 62.4m!  The Panels interface actually uses a pixelated screenshot that it brings up with the animation.  After the animation, it’ll slowly load your actual interface.  The fact is, using Panels is a nuissance to use regularly.

Another so-so, is the keyboard.  The 4-rows of keys is definitely useful for regular typing though, and it’s even laid out with a staggering QWERTY effect that makes it easy to get used to.  Unfortunately, this keys are very flush and rather soft, giving it subdued tactile feedback.   Technically, this is a general complaint about slide-out keyboards, because they have to be nearly flush so that the screen can slide on top.  Nevertheless, it still hinders this from being a great keyboard.

In-line with the keyboard is the front keypad and navigational buttons.  The optical joystick is easy to use, and rather fun, actually.  However, it’s imprecise and requires you to use the actual arrow keys for quick, snappy, decisions.  What gives everything a really bad flavor of mediocre, is the cross-use of these two.  When using the keys, the overly senstive joystick senses your thumb and typically makes you over-traverse during menu selections.  It’s quite annoying, especially when the items are too small for your finger.

Finally, processing.  The processor in this device is able to chew through most applicational functions without a sweat.  However, it seems that it has trouble running the Panels interface, for reasons listed above, and the the laggy and jagged animations switching from horizontal to landscape.  Our guess is that graphical capabilities of this processor are not up to par with its intentions, while its raw computational abilities seem rock solid.  We also tried some sideloading benchmarks, transferring movie files from PC to MicroSD card, and we were max out at 2MB/s through ActiveSync.  In Mass Storage mode (activated through options), it was able to pull out close to 4MB/s.  Decent, but definitely not up to par when compared to other phones.

Gripes

This phone doesn’t have too many gripes, since the complaints are usually validated by some design virtue.  The resistive touchscreen is one of the best in its class, is gorgeous to watch, but a pain to stab at something small.  The buttons are well laid out, easy to use, but a pain to type quickly without functional feedback.

Our largest complaint about the device, has to be the use of Windows Mobile 6.1.  It’s natural flaws really have most to do with the annoyances of the phone.  What Sony Ericsson has done is provide a simplistic overlay, but in the end, its a Windows Mobile phone through and through — built for functionality, robust, but rather old and crusty.

Conclusions

The Sony Ericsson is a rather pleasing device and feels rock solid.  The greatest satisfaction from using it is that its aluminum shell, just feels so good.  The screen is gorgeous and the Panels experience gives mobile UI a whole new flavor.  Sony Ericsson’s first attempt at a Windows Mobile phone is definitely respectable (with HTC’s help), but these phones are really in dire need of Windows 7 or even 6.5.  While Panels covers all the initial functions, anything deeper requires you to use Windows Mobile at its core, which is rather unpleasant.

phoneWreck Score: 8.5 panels out of 10

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 Teardown

For this phone, we had to be particularly careful when we tore it open (we love our gadgets, after all).  It was relatively easy, but hidden screws are always deadly.  Luckily, the shielding on the chips were easily removed.  But first, as always, the block diagram!

What’s interesting to note is the really smooth sliding mechanism.  This is achieved through a curved backing of the screen with rollers clipped to the inside tracks.

Next up are the internals.  The actual chips being used are very similar to the ones found on the G1 (teardown).  Instead of the Qualcomm MSM7201A, it runs the MSM7200A.  Included in this particular Qualcomm chipset is the PMIC, Qualcomm PM7540, and the RF transceiver, which we believe to be the Qualcomm MXU6219.  Qualcomm transcievers are typically labelled with RTR, and we’re actually unsure what MXU stands for.  But nonetheless, there’s no other IC big enough to be a transceiver.

The X1 also uses a Micron NAND Flash + RAM MCP, sporting 256MB RAM and 512MB storage.  The Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are run by TI with similar chips found on the G1, the BRF6350BL (G1 uses BRF6300C) and WL1251B (same as G1).  The Wi-Fi is also managed by the same power amp, TI WL1251FE.  Power amps, like the G1 are run by Avago for UMTS bands, and TriQuint for GSM bands.

Another interesting thing to note is the Mini-USB port.  It’s actually eerily similar to HTC’s traditional ExtUSB ports.  In fact, it looks just like it except that it’s symmetrical enough to only fit a Mini-USB connector inside.

There’s not too much to note on the front except the USB PHY, which we believe to be developed by SMSC.  Again, similar chips with similar markings were found on other devices.

On the screen, there’s actually two PCBs.  One controlling the main front buttons, the optical joystick, and a logic microcontroller from Atmel, and the other that we believe houses an Epson controller for the resistive touchscreen.  Finally, on the right, there is a connection to the front CMOS camera.  Both camera modules are shown side by side, below.

So there you have it!  Hope that teardown helps some of you folks unwilling to open up such a pricey phone.

If you have questions, comments, concerns, humorous anecdotes, be sure to let us know in the comments or through e-mail (phonewreck@gmail.com).  Also be sure to visit the wiki for more pictures (http://www.phonewreck.com/wiki/index.php?title=Sony_Ericsson_XPERIA_X1)!  Thanks!

For full teardown analyses, bill of materials, and high-resolution pictures, hit up the wiki: http://www.phonewreck.com/wiki/index.php?title=T-Mobile_G1

What does HTC, flavoured with Google, and served with a plate of T-Mobile give you?  Apparently, its a a flavourful dream, as HTC liked to call it.  Of course, we’re talking about the T-Mobile G1 here, and it’s an important device to discuss, because it’s one of the most forward-thinking phones out there, with Google’s baby resulted from an Open Handset Alliance marriage of 30+ parties.

What’s better than a G1?  The G1′s guts you say?  Alright then, we’ll tear it apart, give you some good old fashioned teardown analysis, and plenty of pictures.  Click on for more!

T-Mobile G1 Review

Greats

The G1 has a lot of meaning to the “1″ in its name.  Not only is it the first phone to sport Google’s Android OS, it’s the first phone to use T-Mobile’s 3G network, its HTC’s first capacitive touchscreen phone, HTC’s first trackball phone, and their second attempt at a 5-row keyboard (correct me if I’m wrong).  Of course none of these firsts compare to this device’s greatest achievement:  the first “swoop” sliding mechanism.  It shocks and stuns people the minute they see it and wins their hearts over temporarily.  We could go on and on about how awesome the sliding mechanism is, but we wouldn’t be running a teardown website.  The fact is, this phone has a lot of greats to back it up.  These include its relatively decent build quality (varies across units, however), a massive 5-row keyboard, a responsive touchscreen, and great navigational tools to come along with it.

The user interface of this phone is also another winner.  It seems like it’s difficult nowadays to have a regular desktop with icons and not be dumped into the stereotypical category of being a copycat of the #1 selling US handset to date.  Google’s engineers, however, have been totally innovative in giving users a pull-down notification bar, a slide-out menu, and three different customizable desktops.  The backgrounds even slightly move when you switch desktops, giving it a sort of, 3D effect.  Very cool.

To back up the UI, the trifecta of Google Apps — Gmail, Calendar, and Maps — are hands down the best implementation on a mobile phone.  Maps, on this phone, has turned into entertainment.  With the inclusion of a GPS, accelerometer, and even a compass, it has a Street View mode that mimics what you actually see on the device.  It’s an absolute joy to use.  Of course, the regular functions of Google Map work as expected.  It’s browser (Chrome’s little brother), is WebKit based and eats Javascript up like no tomorrow — provided you’re actually in T-Mo’s 3G coverage area.  It’s safe to say that it’s among the best of mobile browsers, bested only by Safari and possibly Opera Mobile.

Another great for this device is its e-mail handling.  Now if you are a Google user, prepare to be in e-mail and calendar heaven.  Everything works amazing, and you can do all your little Gmail labelling and whatnot with the phone.  If you aren’t a heavy Google user, you’ll have to sign your life away to Google.  However, if you’re like us and you have multiple Gmail accounts, it’ll be difficult to manage the others as easily as your main account, since the actual Gmail app only manages your primary account’s e-mail.

Medium

With medium being the mediocre flavor in between SPICY and honey garlic chicken wings, the G1, unfortunately, has a few components which are medium flavored.  First, it’s important to note that the G1 was targeted towards T-Mobile’s Sidekick users (and there’s quite a large following apparently).  Everything from the trackball implementation, to the sliding mechanism, to the very typable keyboard, was all targeted at them.  Sadly, the aesthetics also falls into this category.  Matte black all around doesn’t give it an attractive, sleek, and sexy look, and neither does the ”Leno chin”.  Fortunately, the chin does help with ergonomics and we found navigating in both portrait and landscape mode to be comfortable.  Some other reviews have stated that it bothers with typing, but in our experience, our hands are way bigger to be bothered by a measly chin.

The OS is also another one of the G1′s “medium” attributes.  Though the UI was definitely a winner, Android 1.0 definitely feels like version 1.0 (as echoed by Steve Ballmer and many others).  There are some quirky bugs while navigating both in touch-mode and trackball-mode.  There’s a lack of integration with the rest of Google’s suite of apps.  No Google Reader, Google Docs, Google Picasa, etc.  What you do have access to, E-mail, Calendar, and Maps, are probably amongst the best I’ve seen.  And if that’s all you care about, this phone does those brilliantly.

The Android Market, Google’s key application into finding the apps that you need, is also down here in the mediocre section.  While it’s implemented very nicely with descriptions, images, ratings, and sorting by popularity/date, the actual apps you find on the G1 aren’t anywhere near App Store level.  While some of the apps — like the one good RSS reader — are useful, the problem is that there is no selection.  Furthermore, the other essential apps like the video players, music players, and even most of the games are mediocre at best.

Gripes

Contact management.  While Google has tried to give your phone a connected feeling, they have totally failed at the implementation.  On import, it loads every single one of your contacts from Gmail.  People you have barely know, people who you talked to once — and most likely, don’t want to talk to — all get imported and are stuck in your Contacts.  With a long-standing Gmail account, this was one of the greatest pains ever.  Of course, with a properly managed contact list, the concept is rather nice.  It has capabilities to call/IM/SMS/e-mail/charter a map route to any of your contacts – even through Gmail.  It’s just the actual management of the contacts is the problem.

Apps.  We mentioned the lack of apps, but the gripes section needs an actual mention.  First, the lack of Google apps, which we really wanted, is noticeably missing.  Even more so, do we really have to resort to a third-party video player?  It’s just plain annoying that many of the essential apps for the consumer aren’t there.  It’s quite a big gripe considering this was a phone geared towards the consumer.  Heck, if we were more whiney, we’d complain about the lack of PC sync, lack of exchange server support, and document support.

Another gripe about this phone is its battery.  With a full day of 3G data usage, calling, Wi-Fi connections, mapping with Street View, and a few games, you’d be out by about dinner time.  This is unfortunate, because we actually thought that this battery looked the coolest, with its sleek “htc innovation” tag line.

Finally, the damned ExtUSB port.  Give it to HTC to falter in letting people use a standard 3.5mm audio jack.  The stock headphones are ugly and subsequently forces us to bring our own iPods for media..  Thankfully, HTC is providing free adapters for new purchases (ours didn’t have one unfortunately).  Moreover, sideloading music and movies (although a rather pointless endeavor), is a little slow for our tastes.  The only redeeming factor is that your standard Mini-USB connectors plug in fine for both charging and PC connections.

Conclusion

What Google has done here is lay a foundation for what they envisioned a great phone to be.  HTC focused on delivering a navigational machine.  T-Mobile put its effort on making sure its 3G network was up to snuff and that enough people knew about the upcoming T-Mobile G1.  On the three fronts, we believe they succeeded.  However, a GREAT phone needs to be more than the sum of its parts.  And in that regard, the G1 doesn’t come very close to it.  It’s a great phone to use and serves as a good source of entertainment, but the forced Google integration, lack of Google apps, lack of media integration, horrid contact management, lack of a great Market, and the bland aesthetics, makes the device feel like it’s still in its beta stage.  But then again, Gmail has been in “beta” for more than four years.

phoneWreck Score: 8 out of 10 wrecking balls

T-Mobile G1 Teardown

Note: We have aggregated information from various articles to aid in our teardown.  These include Bob Widenhofer’s article featured on TechOnline, Nikkei Electronics Teardown Squad featured on TechOn, and of course, our own sources (Thank you!).

The T-Mobile G1 was a mind-blowing experience to crack open.  There’s an insane number of parts, and the way they put it together seems, well, complex.  Make sure you give the sliding mechanisms a peek near the bottom.  For starters though, we introduce to you, the block diagram.

The Qualcomm MSM7201A, which was previously used in later US iterations of the Touch Diamond and the Touch Pro (teardown coming!), comes full force in the G1.  Similar to the BlackBerry Storm, the GPS and audio processing components are embedded into the processor.  Fortunately, HTC has had much experience using the processor, although it runs a brand new OS.  Running alongside the processor is the transceiver and power management ICs, Qualcomm RTR5285, and Qualcomm PM7540, respectively.

For the actual PCBs, there are two main PCBs housing most of the components.  The main PCB is shown directly below, while the “Chin” PCB that’s literally housed in the chin section, is shown underneath.

As shown above, Avago makes an appearance, providing amplifiers for both GSM and UMTS power amplifiers (ACPM-7381 & ACPM-7391), and TriQuint comes with its usual GSM power amplifiers (TQS 7M5008).  The NAND Flash + DDR SDRAM is handled by a Samsung MCP.  SMSC provides the USB PHY handling the connection from the processor to the PC.  Asahi Kasei makes an interesting appearance with the first (to our knowledge) appearance of a compass IC.

Texas Instruments takes care of the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi chips (both on the “Chin” PCB, shown above).  The trackball, as noted by other teardowns, is the same module as the one on nearly every BlackBerry (except the upgraded trackball found on the Javelin).  Another interesting thing is the two vibration motors included.  One on the display module, and one on the main PCB.  The display panels are shown below.

This part is pretty cool, because housed within the screen casing is four large parts.  On the front of the actual casing (image above, below left) is the capacitive touch panels, with Synaptics handling the controllers and everything else touchscreen-related.

Finally, the moment you’ve all been waiting for.  The back of the casing (shown below), showcases swooping action (we’re seriously too in love).

The translational springs on this puppy are strong as hell.  But it needs to be so, since it has to drive a large screen around an arc.  It’s interesting to note how much effort HTC seems to have put in to produce a clean swooping action.  Perhaps we’re overthinking this.

With everything set to go, here’s your aggregated image!

If you have questions, comments, concerns, humorous anecdotes, be sure to let us know in the comments or through e-mail (phonewreck@gmail.com).  Also be sure to visit the wiki for more pictures (http://www.phonewreck.com/wiki/index.php?title=T-Mobile_G1)!  Thanks!

For full teardown analyses, bill of materials, and pictures, hit up the wiki: http://www.phonewreck.com/wiki/index.php?title=BlackBerry_Storm

Being another first for BlackBerry, RIM has delved into the widely competed touchscreen market.  Not wanting to be sucked in as “another iPhone wannabe” however, RIM has developed several unique technologies in an attempt to diverge from the traditional touchscreen stigma.  So how does this phone actually fare in-hand, and how does it stack up to its competitors?

After the break, we find the answers to this question, AND we smash the thing apart for some good ol’ teardown analysis.

BlackBerry Storm Review

Greats

First things first, at first sight, this phone is gorgeous.  We think its one of the better looking phones on the market today.  It’s got slants to the device, along with metallic backings – a first for BlackBerry.  Not only that, but the battery door ACTUALLY WORKS.  It’s buttons are well placed, the piano black/matte black/metallic black trims complement each other very well, and the chromed sides actually don’t feel like cheap plastic.  If this is any indication at what the Javelin will look like, then I’ve got good feelings about it.

Next off, the screen is another winner.  Although it doesn’t have the brightness nor the sharpness and pixel density to match the Bold, its HVGA screen on a 3.25″ screen seem to work just fine for movies, tv shows, browsing (we’ll get to that), and anything else that requires lots of screen real estate.  Visuals are obviously accompanied by sound, and while the sound is definitely capable of producing loud obnoxious noises, it doesn’t match the Bold’s quality; it doesn’t have much depth and just sounds like pure treble.

Media experiences in general, on the Storm, are fantastic.  It’s built in way more codecs for audio and video, has a decent interface for finding and playing music, and works as music player.  In fact, though their SurePress technology isn’t mentioned in this review’s “Greats”, it works really well for controlling your music.  RIM has mentioned countless times their intention to dive into the consumer market, and with these capabilities, it definitely works.

Luke Warm

Luke warm features are features that aren’t good, nor are they bad.  The first feature on the Storm to receive this fairly mediocre grading is, you guessed it: SurePress technology.  RIM has attempted to really give BlackBerry owners a touchscreen alternative without feeling frustrated by their keyboard.  By giving tactile feedback, you understand the timing for typing, and once you get rhythm, you get rhyme speed.  It’s implementation works rather well for menu selections, the dialpad (it’s honestly fun to type numbers), and as mentioned, the media player.  Unfortunately, typing, even on a gigantic landscape keyboard, just doesn’t feel right.  It’s mucky, because once you gain speed, you instantly hit an error.  This is due to the touchscreen not being able to recognize another finger while the button is being depressed.  If it had multi-touch functionality, letting you place your finger while you’re pressing another finger, we bet that implementation would be glorious.  For now, however, we got to stick with infuriating spelling mistakes from going too fast.  Not only that, but typing on the screen takes a lot more effort than a traditional QWERTY keyboard, and a regular touchscreen keyboard — you have to press the WHOLE screen down.  It’s easy near the edges, because the radius from the centre gives you easy torque, but anything middle-to-top-row is becomes a pain when you’re hammering out gigantic emails.

Another luke warm feature is the browser.  Without going into performance metrics, the browser still isn’t up to par with its webkit-based friends (i.e. Safari/Chrome-Lite-ish).  While it’s true that it’s drastically improved over previous generations, it’s nowhere near the level of Safari.  Format pages like IGN still give it your good ol’ lists of links and text for you to scroll around.  This bring us to our next point: capacitive touch.

What’s annoying about Verizon phones is that their capacitive touch phones (including the Motorola Krave) always come with a STICKY screen protector.  It leaves a nasty sticky feeling to the screen, which totally harps on first impressions.  What the Storm needs is a good glossing of the screen – it’ll just generally feel more touch-accepting.  The use of gestures is also inconsistent, and without the rubberband effect deployed by other phones, scrolling feels, lacking.  Viewing any relatively long page will have you scrolling like a mad man, because the screen stops when your finger is lifted off.

Gripes

Applications.  Back in the old days, BlackBerry was competing against Palm for the enterprise space, and even then, the distinction of Palm was its better third party support.  Storm seems to be the first to really try and break this stigma, but… it fails (obviously, since its in the gripes section).  What Apple and Google have done was generate application “outlets” in which you can download and install third party apps, with the latter even focusing their entire handset around this concept.  RIM has developed an “Applications Centre”, which was carrier specific.  This was a poor choice, as carrier-specific applications (namely, VZ Navigator, and other VZ products) are pretty useless, and aren’t anywhere near as diverse as the App Store and the Android Market.

Finally, performance.  This is what totally kills the device in our opinion.  Everything about this phone lags.  Ever since the videos were leaked showing its UI, people have been complaining about the animation lag and hoping that everything would sort itself out by launch.  Unfortunately, even with the last-minute flashing of devices, nothing has changed.  Right on the main menu, scrolling through applications gives a choppy feeling.  Even the media application takes a while to boot, and you end up double clicking in an attempt to get things going.  When I plugged the unit into the computer attempting to sideload, even that dragged in performance.  Typical BlackBerrys have been awesome at sideloading when enumerated through Mass Storage Class, but this one, in traditional Verizon fare, runs on MTP mode for syncing with Rhapsody and Windows Media Player.  Transferring movies to watch on your phone, just plainly sucks.

Conclusion

Everything about BlackBerry is defined around efficiency and its ability to get things done.  The Storm stays true in its ability to feel connected, with perfect integration of corporate e-mails, personal e-mails, texts, contacts, Facebook, My Space etc.  Unfortunately, actually using the device, causes an uprising of frustration.  It doesn’t flow well, and goes against what all the other BlackBerry’s have been so good at.  I feel that RIM pushed this out the door for the holiday season, when it actually should’ve been released in 2009.

phoneWreck Score for the BlackBerry Storm: 7 wrecks out of 10.

BlackBerry Storm Teardown

Enough about the phone!  Let’s dig into the juiciness of the Storm.  Remember how I said that the Bold was one of the easiest devices to teardown?  The Storm is the complete opposite.  There are a bunch of hidden screws that require prying off areas such as the camera plexiglass cover, the chin of the device, and the stickers that surround the back.  Also, the shielding around the ICs are even harder to get at than before.  You’ll need some razor sharp wire cutters to get through that (or you could solder the sides off if you’re that keen on it).  But if you were intending on opening up this device, without a scratch in the end, I wish you good luck.

Nevertheless, we got the thing open for you all to see.  The PCB is actually ridiculously small.  And everything actually fits on there including the processor, memory units, all the transceivers and power amps, and things like Bluetooth ICs.  There’s some random spots of circuitry on the other spots of the phone as well, but its amazing how well everything is integrated.  We’ve put the block diagram out below.  Note: several things on here are educated guesses.  We’ve noted these with the asterisks.  Unlike previous teardowns, the ICs on this device seem rather hard to identify.

Most important to note is the implementation of Qualcomm’s latest MSM7600 processor.  When you view the datasheet, its pretty easy to guess what’s wrong with this phone.  There’s just too much functionality jammed integrated into the processor, including audio codecs, graphics processing, and even GPS functionality.  Samsung’s memory MCP from the Bold makes another notable appearance.  Avago takes care of the CDMA Power Amps, but the GSM Power Amps seem unmarked, which makes it hard to find.  We’ll update this if/when we find out though.

Update: We have discovered the GSM/UMTS Power Amps from a little help by our commenters!  TriQuint takes care of the GSM Power Amp, while Anadigics designs the UMTS Power Amp.  Thanks!

This being primarily a CDMA device, Qualcomm brings their entire chipset onto the line including its RF Transceivers for both CDMA/EV-DO, an integrated GSM/UMTS chip, and its PMIC.  TriQuint Semiconductors also makes an appearance.  They’ve previously been used for Duplexers in previous mainstream devices, but its difficult to identify what this IC does, so we’ve assumed that it’s something to do with managing power.  Bluetooth functionality is again won by CSR, while SiRF is notably absent due to the GPS integration into the processor.  A West Bridge chip is also notably absent, with USB functionality also being driven by the processor.  STMicroelectronics seems to have developed the Accelerometer, as the chip in this phone seems eerily similar to one of their other Accelerometer chips in a previous breakdown.  Finally, with Synaptics boasting much of its multi-touch capabilities, we’re making guesses that the BlackBerry Storm uses a Synaptics IC for driving the capacitive touch.  It’s possible that a full multi-touch can be implemented on this hardware, but whether it’ll require updates to the actual hardware or just the firmware, remains to be seen.

Of course, what you’ve came here to see is not just the circuitry.  You wanted to see how the actual button looks like, no?  Here it is, in plain view!  It’s a regular button, pushed by a marked Magnesium Alloy plate with a bump.  Enjoy responsibly.

For full teardown analyses, bill of materials, and pictures, hit up the wiki: http://www.phonewreck.com/wiki/index.php?title=BlackBerry_Bold

BlackBerry’s latest flagship, the Bold, is definitely a bold piece of hardware.  We’ve gotten hold of a Rogers unit, and have given it a good rundown including mashing our screwdrivers and pliers inside to give you the enjoyment and excitement of a freshly torn BlackBerry.

Check it out after the break!

BlackBerry Bold Review

RIM delayed its entrance into the 3G market as long as it could, before introducing its new flagship.  In a sense, I’m very glad this happened, because the Bold was a great phone to review (and teardown!).  Although launching through AT&T was very sketchy due to firmware issues, they’ve gotten many of the issues fleshed out on its BlackBerry OS 4.6.

Greats

The Bold works beautifully as your traditional BlackBerry.  Any users stepping up from the Curve or the 8800 should find yourselves totally at home, with tons of extra features at your disposal.  First, the Bold sports one of the most jaw-dropping screens.  When you first turn the device on, the glaring Rogers background stares you right in the face, and its an awesome experience.  It’s got a great contrast ratio coupled with some high pixel density action (HVGA on a 2.65″ screen).  Movies and video clips look great on it.

Sound is even more impressive.  The Bold is single handedly the best sounding (and loudest) device on the market today.  This, coupled with a really great screen, give the Bold a really strong media playback experience.  The actual player is simple to use, with looks akin to Windows Media Player, and works as it should.

Performance on this machine is also top notch.  Using Marvell’s Hermon Processor running at a speedy 624MHz, it chews down on any of the applications you want running.  Getting into menus and applications are lightning fast, which works particularly well with its trackball navigating device.

Sideloading music and videos on this phone was lightning quick as well.  A 700MB movie file was transfered in 48 seconds, making for a speedy 14.6MBps transfer speed.  Great for packing in movies on your MicroSD card on the go.

I don’t even have to talk about the e-mailing and texting experiences, because that’s RIM’s spotlight, that at this point, will be really hard for them to screw up.  Everything was quick and easy to use, which brings us to our last Great: the QWERTY keyboard.

It’s freakishly fast.  We’re heavy BlackBerry users, and we’d venture so far as to say this is on par with the Curve (which we thought to be the benchmark).  Those dimples work fantastically for our fingers.

Middle Class Features

With Americans always focusing on the middle class, we thought we’d title this accordingly.  The first middle class feature of the Bold is its browsing experience.  Browsing on 3G data was a long awaited feature on BlackBerrys, and we conclude that, while it’s amazing for a BlackBerry, it doesn’t nearly match its competitors performance.  When compared to the iPhone and the G1, iPhone’s Safari implementation consistently boasted double the speeds of the Bold when viewing heavy websites and pages, and G1′s Chrome-Lite-ish ran through at around 1.5 times faster.  RIM really needs to revamp their browser.  It’s good, but its not great — and for their flagship, these things need to be great.

Gripes

The Bold is unfortunately a little on the big side.  When compared to other consumer-oriented phones, it’s very chunky and fills the pockets pretty quickly.  Holsterers will be fine, but those of us not wanting to venture into the business-class look, will find the extra bulk a little annoying.

The leather backing and the chrome sides are also questionable design choices.  If it was implemented a little better, we’d totally dig that.  Unfortunately, the fake leather coupled wih cheap feeling sides, leave a little to be desired for a phone that just dented your wallet.

Conclusion:

The Bold is a pleasure to use.  It’s fast, it’s efficient, and it’s even friendly to you.  Take heart, young QWERTY padawans, you’ll be enjoying RIM’s latest 3G device.  Just keep those speakers blasting.  We wanna hear ya.

BlackBerry Bold: 9/10

BlackBerry Bold Teardown

Here is where we get down to the nitty grittys of the device.  The Bold was as pleasurable to teardown as it was to review.  Opening it up was simple, but the Bold gave us trouble when it let us look at its hallowed PCB.  It’s a complicated mess there.  ICs seem to be relatively organized, but there are so many pieces to this puzzle, that it was a daunting task to build up the BOM and the block diagrams.  Fortunately for you, we love doing this stuff.  So we present to you, the BlackBerry Bold Block Diagram.

The first thing to note is that RIM spent a WHOLE TON of money on their new Samsung-made screen.  It’s an expensive beast; but we’d say that it was totally worth it.    Samsung continues to impress with its multi-chip packaged MoviNAND+OneNAND+Mobile DDR.

Infineon and Renesas got big wins with their RF transceivers.  Cypress also seems to have the West Bridge thing down pact producing those speedy sideloading results noted earlier.  Also, RIM seems to have spent quite a bit of money on TI’s audio codec, and the results, as noted above, are staggering.

One of the questionable design choices was the integration of 802.11a.  Implementing 802.11a, which is rarely used by anyone, meant that a dedicated power amp, antenna, and possibly the cause of another Wi-Fi-dedicated PMIC needed to be included.  Sure there’s plenty of board space, but I’m assuming costs could definitely be saved.

Another thing to note is its antennas.  Instead of the traditional metal prongs used in most phones, RIM has used what appear to be stickers.  These pretty much surround the back of the device.  These placements of the antennas are educated guesses, however.  What seem to be obvious placements of the antennas are due to the use cases (holding the phone to your head, or cradling the phone while browsing will cover up areas of the device.  The GPS antenna is assumed to be the top sticker.  SiRF also makes a big entrance with the inclusion of its GPS + A-GPS functionality.