phoneWreck » Teardown

Sharp 841SH Teardown

Dr. Wreck — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 20:01:21 +0000

Sharp’s “Waterproof” and Dustproof 841SH came by our desks and we couldn’t resist taking it apart. Most of the devices we teardown are built by large well known ODM’s or OEM’s and have fairly distinguishable reference designs. We knew that Japanese devices were different. What kind of IC’s did they use? Are these asian phones prone to using unmarked, knock-off IC’s?

The answer is not as simple as you might think. Different networks and broadcasted TV capabilities mean different IC’s. The phone definitely includes stuff we haven’t seen before – so what are the familiar devices?

SMSC’s PHY is a device we’ve seen before. USB is a standard in any multimedia enabled mobile phone – even the proprietary connectors on these Japanese phones require a USB transaction device.

This device has both an application core and a baseband – a common design decision employed in many American devices. The difference being that the Toshiba app-core in this device is more or less a fixed function “Multimedia Engine”. This engine handles broadcast TV, and various video codecs render natively on the device.

Taking apart the device wasn’t the most fun thing in the world. Sharp’s ODM used a 5 prong screw – we’ll call it a penta-screw. This is very unlike most phones we see, which have hex screws (6 prongs). Unfortunately, it’s hard to find these in North American, we had to order one from overseas.

The PCB had common, clip-in shields that can be easily pried off with a metal spudger or staple remover.

Once the shields were removed, all of the IC’s were covered with translucent shields, that needed to be pried/melted away. The residue left behind had to be cleaned before we could even ID the devices.

The Applications core we mentioned before is worth a quick discussion. This product is designed by Toshiba and is a device we have not seen in any North American market phones. The T5GE devices contain 3 hardware accelerators – a video codec, a 3D graphics accelerator and JPEG codec. These features are common, with the exception of the support for TV reception. The T5GE’s also incorporate an LCD controller that supports LCD display at resoultions up to FWVGA (864 x 480)

This Phone is also a Dual-band WCDMA ( FDD I / FDD XI ) & Tri-band GSM (GSM900 / DCS1800 / PCS1900 ) Dual mode Cellular Phone. These are bands we definitely do no regularily see in North American devices.

So what’s the skinny? We had a hard time ID’ing many of the chips on this phone. If anything jumps out at you, let us know!

Our conclusion is that some of these devices might be knock-off IC’s but it’s hard to say. The fundamental phone architecture remains the same.

@DrWreck

Stay tuned for a phone review later this week!

BlackBerry Presenter – Review and Teardown

Dr. Wreck — Sat, 15 May 2010 19:52:42 +0000

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

Amazon Kindle 2 – Global Wireless, Teardown/In Depth-Analysis

Dr. Wreck — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:57:11 +0000

I know what you’re thinking… “Dr.Wreck? Why take apart a Kindle? Your specialty is mobile phones!”

Virginia Woolf

The Kindle 2 with Global Wireless technology pretty much is a mobile phone. It’s just missing a few features and functions that smartphones have – such as the super high resolution LCD screen, phone capabilities, palm-sized form factor, calendar, push e-mail service and countless time-consuming “productivity” apps.

Ahem.

Well ugh, even if the device doesn’t function as a mobile phone, the important thing is that we had a feeling the hardware was similar – and well, we just wanted one to play with.

Without further ado, we bring you, the Kindle 2 – Global Wireless Teardown!

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The Kindle is a great device. Everyone has been raging about the E-ink display and with good reason – the display rocks. The images are sharp, high resolution and everyone of Dr.Wrecks 3 friends (including Ms.Wreck) exclaim with joy when they see it.

That said, the device does feel sluggish especially when you consider it’s pairing with some fairly powerful hardware… we’ll get to that later. Also, what’s with the lack of .pdf zoom? Have a big 100MB .pdf file you’d like to sideload onto this baby? Prepare to wait.

Those minor quips aside, the device is a great book replacement. It’s not much larger then your favorite hardcover and it can store roughly 1500 of them! Unfortunately, textbook publisher’s have been a little slow on the uptake, but when you find the right content, the Kindle delivers a very rewarding experience.

The Kindle is fairly easy to disassemble. It’s actually built much like a first generation iPhone, and requires you to use a spudger or similar tool to pop off the matte grey piece on the top of the backside of the device to reveal some screws.

We have to commend lab126 on their simple yet elegant hardware design. The screws are all hidden, it requires a little bit of ingenuity to figure out how its assembled. Once you remove the gray cap, things are easy. The aluminum cover is held in by two small Philips screws that drive parallel with the length of the device. Once these are removed apply a little bit of downward pressure to pop off the cover and reveal your Kindle’s guts.

With it’s rear-end revealed, there isn’t much to see until you remove the some odd 20 Philips screws holding in the plastic chassis. There is a big difference with this Kindle from the countless others we see on the net. This baby includes a SIM card, and can connect in over 100 countries over any GSM network (thanks to AT&T). Keep in mind, there are cost overages on international use. In Canada for example, Dr.Wreck is able to download books with an additional $1.99 fee. Moreover, sending data to the device (via the native xxxx@kindle.com e-mail address) costs $0.99 where in the US this service is free. Don’t worry though, Canadians can still use the “experimental” web browser for free.

In the above image, we can see the 1530mAh battery, SIM and “network card”. That card is actually the part that interests Dr.Wreck most. Underneath those oh-so-hard-to-remove ESD shields lie a hardware design not unlike modern mobile phones.

Here’s the device with the plastic cover removed. Here we can clearly see the SIM, and network card still connected to the main PCB. Unfortunately, all of the goodies are covered by ESD shields. No matter, Dr.Wreck is used to pulling, prying, cutting and melting.

As you can see, the hardware design of the Kindle 2 – Global Wireless edition is much like that of any modern cell-phone. There’s a fairly fast application core, coupled with a baseband to handle network communication. In this case, baseband is handled by the 12mm x12mm QSC6270 which handles WCDMA, HSDPA 3.6, GSM, GPRS and Edge networks. The QSC is located on the network card, which must be removed and de-shielded before you can find it. In fact, the K5E1257ACM DRAM + Flash chip can also be found on the network card along with all of the purple items (power amps) show above. For reference, a QSC device (QSC6085) was recently unearthed in the Motorola Droid Hardware Analysis.

You might be asking yourself, “Dr.Wreck? Why the heck would they put these circuits on a separate card when there is so much room on the PCB?” The answer as it seems is probably so that Amazon/LAB126 can swap out these network cards to work locally on CDMA networks, or for this global edition – GSM networks. It makes sense, previous teardowns of the non-global Kindle 2 revealed a missing SIM and different looking network card.

Top of "Network Card"

Another part worth mentioning here is the TQS 7M5012 Power Amp. We’ve seen this device before in a few of our teardowns (including the Sony Xperia X1). It’s apparent that TriQuint is branching out into other applications – not just focusing it’s products on the smartphone market. The bottom of the card features two more of the infamous Avago power amps.

Bottom of "Network Card"

So, the “network card” is a self contained unit that handles Amazon’s patented WhisperNet technology. It can be easily swapped in and out, depending on the market of sale.

The Main PCB houses the SIM card, USB PHY (SMSC USB3311), PMIC (FreeScale MC13783VK5) E-Ink Controller (Epson D135211B3), Samsung NAND (2GB) and 32 MB Samsung SDRAM.

The FreeScale MC13783VK5 is the same processor we saw on the original US Kindle 2. It features a 532MHz Arm11, processor core – packed into a 14mm x 14mm package. The associated FreeScale PMIC (MC13783VK5) contains both Audio Codec and USB Transceiver. The USB PHY is once again brought to you by SMSC with the USB3311.

E-Ink is making waves in the industry. We’re starting to see some solid Kindle competitors and even watches breach into various technology blogs. One thing for sure, this technology is perfect for the Kindle. Battery life is astounding and text/image clarity is phenomenal. Dr.Wreck is sure we’ll see a touch screen kindle in the near future – perhaps even colour E-Ink? What about a Kindle that plays movies? Haha.

That’s all for the Amazon Kindle 2 – Global Wireless Edition folks. Stay tuned for more wrecking action!

-Dr.Wreck

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BlackBerry Tour 9630 Teardown and Analysis

Dr. Wreck — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:44:18 +0000

Ah yes the BlackBerry Tour 9630 – RIM’s answer via Sprint and Verizon to the very successful Bold (available on GSM networks).

Design wise, the Tour shares similarity with all 3 of the current and very successful BlackBerry devices available on the market. It’s got the shape of the storm, the screen of the 8900 and the keyboard of the Bold. In Dr.Wreck’s humble opinion, this device takes all of best physical design features from the current roster tosses them in a pot and mixes up a delicious cup of chowder. This device has good weight, good size and good functionality (screen, keyboard, software).

Alot of you have had difficulties with the trackball. Luckily RIM has disbanded this gosh-forsaken mechanically unstable and frequently unreliable piece of junk for the new optical trackpad we see on the Gemini and the newly announced 9700. Gone are the days of blowing on your trackball in hopes that a gust of bad breath can fix it!

Dr.Wreck has gone ahead and ripped this thing apart to perform a full teardown and analysis. Click through for all the juicy details!

The first step to taking your Tour apart is to remove the battery cover and battery. There you will see 4 hex bolts embedded in the plastic frame. Grab your T6 for the best fit. Remove all 4 screws but take note, the screw about midway up the right side of device has a white sticker covering it.

After you remove the screws, you are NOT ready to pull this cover off. Don’t pull, pry push or break.. There are six screws holding the device together – the top two are hidden and getting to these can be somewhat difficult.

To get to these well hidden monsters, you need to pry away the plastic piece with the BlackBerry logo and earpiece grating. Dr.Wreck uses a staple remover for all of his leveraging needs – he recommends you do the same.

This piece is adhered with double sided tape. Pry it away but be careful not to crack the plastic!

Voila! Now use your T6 to remove the screws you just found underneath – pull away the rear cover and reveal the PCB!

It’s important to keep in mind that your PCB won’t look like Dr.Wreck’s. In order to identify all of the integrated circuits we had to remove all of the “cans” (Metal shields) that provide heat and ESD shielding. Removing these shields is a bit of an art, we’ll keep that secret to Dr.Wreck’s dainty hands!

You can now pop off the flex cable tabs like Dr.Wreck is in the image above. These connectors are fairly robust however – delicacy should be practiced. You will also need to pop off the antenna which is located at the top right of the PCB.

You should now be able to flip the PCB vertically to reveal the underside (where the real brains are!). There are 3 flex cables attached to the PCB. These are used for The LCD, Trackball and keyboard. Pop them off to fully remove the PCB!

This is a good point to discuss the design of this device further. RIM has opted for a “floating” PCB design. This both saves money and makes these devices MUCH easier to take apart and service. The drawback is with the trackball (which we will see/discuss in a moment).

As soon as you pry away the chrome, face-plate and device border, the keyboard and track ball fall apart. This is where the design flaw lies that has created a massive warranty issue for the carriers. On the bold, the entire track-ball module clips into the PCB via a small malleable metal frame. This piece was totally discarded on the tour and consequently the ball more or less floats inside of the device.

If your trackball stops working, put a thumb on either side of the module and press firmly and evenly across the front of the device. This should reset everything and temporarily let you use the device again.

The Bringer of Pain

Now – for the reason you’ve all been reading – the Teardown Analysis. What devices make this puppy tick?! Check out the functional block diagram below.

At the core we once again have the Qualcomm MSM7600 which provides both the Baseband and Application management functionality. Not surprisingly, this is the very same core that resides in the current BlackBerry Storm. As a matter of fact, when we look further we see many other shared ICs from the same Qualcomm reference design. These include the Qualcomm PM6658 for Power Management, the RTR6500 Dual-Band Transceiver and RTR6285 RF Transmitter.

It looks as if RIM went away from CSR for bluetooth with it’s decision to use the Samsung BTTM53C2RA chipset. This ia not entirely the case. Delving into our resources reveal the same CSR core, disguised in a Wafer-Level-Chip Scale Package.

Looking even further we see the same USB Phy from SMSC coupled with the now BlackBerry standard MicroUSB port.

Unfortunately the 9630 falls a fair amount short of the mark in the memory category. Sporting the ever-common Samsung MCP K5W2G1, we note that it only has a 2Gb OneNAND coupled with the 1Gb SDRAM. This falls short of the Storm however the phone really does perform admirably well – under almost every benchmark test we could subject it to (with the exception of sideloading).

And that’s all she wrote! Any comments, or questions – feel free to pop them into the comment section below! Dr.Wreck is going to be spending some time with two new devices over the next few days. Stay tuned for lot’s of data!

-Dr. Wreck

iPhone 3Gs – Teardown and Analysis

Dr. Wreck — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:35:38 +0000

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

Palm Pre – Part 2: Design Analysis (Software/UI Analysis coming soon!)

Dr. Wreck — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 21:16:32 +0000

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

Palm Pre Teardown and Analysis – Review coming Soon!

Dr. Wreck — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 06:08:01 +0000

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!

Samsung Omnia i910 – Review and Teardown

Dr. Wreck — Mon, 18 May 2009 18:48:12 +0000

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

BlackBerry Curve 8900 – Review and Teardown

Dr. Wreck — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 21:30:09 +0000

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

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!

HTC Touch Pro – Review and Teardown

Dr. Wreck — Sat, 20 Dec 2008 01:30:59 +0000

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!