
Inside a $34 smartphone - zdw
http://projectgus.com/2015/05/inside-a-34-dollar-smartphone/
======
ghoul2
I have actually done a lot of development on a very similar device, based on
the Spreadtrum 6821 (the famed $25 firefox phone). Its a pretty neat device -
128MB RAM, 256 MB Flash, support for upto32GB microsd card, dual SIM (EDGE
only), Bluetooth, FM radio, replaceable battery, 320x480 lcd touch screen, a
seperate touch "strip" which you can configure as capacitive buttons, three
hardware buttons (V+,V-, power).

I did a full kernel build, wrote the device driver for the LCD screen, am
currently writing the driver for the SIM. I have a debian rootfs running on it
- its a nifty little linux gadget. I am currently using a bunch of these as
part of a linux kernel hacking tutorial for college kids.

I believe there is a lot of potential for these as alternatives to RPi and its
brethren for certain applications. If you try to add all the above peripherals
to RPi we quickly cross $500 (of course, you would probably not do so in
reality).

If any one is interested in more info, message me.

Shameless Plug: I am also looking for consulting ops on such and similar (I
have a LOT of embedded and electronic design experience - from vague user spec
to full design).

~~~
fit2rule
"Eval" boards and systems like this have been available in the era before the
raspberry-pi revolution, but rPi got a lot of hype for itself by actually
shipping in large numbers.

These little systems are quite capable indeed! I remember compiling the Linux
kernel on a 1ghz machine with 32Megs of RAM, back in the day .. and here we
are with these little machines in our pockets. Fantastic stuff to be teaching
kids to use ..

~~~
digi_owl
Pi also aimed at a different market. Most eval boards was either direct order
or via B2B distributors. Pi aimed at kids and education, and went into the
general consumer market.

~~~
fit2rule
There were eval and computing-platforms aimed at kids before rPi. None had the
momentum of the nascent crowd-funding movement quite so potently as the rPi.

------
userbinator
Removable batteries are still the norm in the low-end Chinese Android market.
There's a lot of commonality and standard sizes between them too, because
these are all based on the same reference designs and the manufacturers don't
see much point in changing things like the dimensions of the battery since
that requires effort and would make parts sourcing harder - they're not after
exclusivity or vendor-lock-in.

I remember the time when Mediatek was considered ultra-low-end and relatively
unknown, and sellers would be selling MTK phones faked to show Qualcomm and
other more "prestigious" brands of SoC. Faking MTK would be unheard of,
because there wasn't anything below them (there were still fakes between the
different SoCs models from them, and that still continues today.) Now that MTK
has grown past that point and others have appeared below them, they've become
a lot more desirable. I'd consider the fact that someone wants to fake some
other brand as MTK evidence of that.

The interesting thing about the MTK platform is that it's "unofficially open"
\- various people have leaked detailed technical information on the SoCs,
which doesn't seem to bother MTK; maybe it's somewhat deliberate. Many devices
are also rooted by default, and it's really easy to root one (there's no
bootloader locking, and being able to read/write the entire internal storage
in raw format via the official SpFlashTool means they're practically
unbrickable.) This means they're quite hackable, and the low price also helps.
MTK themselves won't provide any support, but a whole community has formed in
its place.

Perhaps the same might happen to Spreadtrum in the future, but the last time I
looked there was not nearly as much information available for SC devices and
rooting was not easy.

The "Time Switch Machine" is scheduled power on/off.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_switch](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_switch)

~~~
stevenjohns
I wrote an editorial on Mediatek[0] that you might be interested in. I
disagree with Mediatek being "open" though, they're so closed source that they
basically violate GPL.

The rooting is definitely to do with company culture though, the Jiayu S3 I
recently played with[1] (and has become my daily driver) actually has a root
toggle in the settings menu. Great stuff.

[0] [http://www.neowin.net/news/the-qualcomm-reign-on-
smartphones...](http://www.neowin.net/news/the-qualcomm-reign-on-smartphones-
and-tablets-is-almost-over-all-hail-mediatek)

[1] [http://www.neowin.net/news/review-of-the-jiayu-s3-hands-
down...](http://www.neowin.net/news/review-of-the-jiayu-s3-hands-down-the-
best-smartphone-you-can-get-for-under-200)

------
gbl08ma
I think there is a market for honestly low-spec smartphones, as there are some
interesting uses for them, for example, a IP camera (plenty of apps for that),
a dedicated XMBC/Kodi remote, or a home automation controller. You can think
of them as Raspberry Pis but less hacking friendly (usually the source code of
these things is not easily available/buildable), that cost more but also get
you two cameras, speakers and microphone, a screen and a (sometimes dual-SIM)
GSM modem, which if you're lucky can do 3G.

By the way, the fact that the author of the blog could not get past 2.5G could
be because the phone only supports 3G in one of the SIM slots and the only SIM
was inserted in the wrong slot. This is the kind of thing that can be
confirmed by looking up the datasheet of that SC6825C SoC, to see if it
supports 3G at all. The main problem is, before buying you can never be really
sure what SoC it has...

The "Timer Switch Machine" is probably a function to turn the phone on and off
automatically at given times. Most Mediatek chips support this (as well as
ringing alarms when off), so it'd make sense if their competitor's chips also
did this.

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pki
The little bubble thing is a weird chinese quirk -
[http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-use-assistivetouch-
on...](http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-use-assistivetouch-on-
iphone-2015-5) if you're interested on that

~~~
digi_owl
Reading about what assistive touch does on the iPhone, i find myself thinking
about faucet design.

These days you find this dual direction (lift to open, left and right to
adjust temperature mix) type everywhere. But as best i can tell it was
originally designed with handicapped users in mind.

~~~
jacobolus
A faucet with an interface in terms of the two attributes you generally care
about (pressure and temperature) is in theory much better for everyone than
one in terms of two implementation-detail attributes (amount of hot/cold water
flowing into the mixture).

Unfortunately many of the one-control faucets have terrible mechanical
engineering under the interface, and as a result you often can’t adequately
control either pressure or temperature, and the two aren’t actually separated
orthogonally (i.e. as you move the control along one axis both attributes
change, and to change just one attribute you must adjust the control along
both axes)

------
historian1066
This device is only running EDGE and not being a 3G smartphone is a big
distinction. In practice, the low memory also makes it a very difficult sell
to consumers, so I’m not entirely surprised by the marketing deception here.

Shameless plug, my startup wholesales a 3G Android smartphone with 4GB memory
running on a Spreadtrum chip that costs $30:
[https://www.voxsupplychain.com/shop/users/#/shop/product/and...](https://www.voxsupplychain.com/shop/users/#/shop/product/android-3G/\(\))

We have found that there are some natural dividing lines on low-end Android
specs. If you cut more corners, it really impedes the user experience.

~~~
janjongboom
Are you sure that 3G license fees are paid on this phone? From my experience
sourcing cheap phones this price is not possible unless you avoid the
licensing.

Lowest we could go for a SC7715 was about 35$.

~~~
historian1066
Yes, it is all rolled up into the price of the device. This pricing is just
for delivery to a port (CIP incoterm), so doesn't include customs clearance,
duties, VAT or a retail markup.

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beagle3
tl;dr: It runs Android 4.0.3/ICS, has 200MB ram, just two cores, possibly only
2G/2.5G, is clunky but works -- despite advertising 4.4/KitKat, 8 cores and
4G.

------
nickpsecurity
A hardware engineer told me in discussions on chip subversion that BS like
this is common in SOC's, too. He said they're so expensive to develop that
vendors often include the functionality of all their chips in one design.
Then, they flip a switch on the chip to enable or disable specific
functionality. This means they all cost the same to make but they can give you
specific features at specific prices. Hard disk makers do it too where you
bought a "120GB" drive that uses same eg 1TB platter as the rest but firmware
restricts user to 120GB.

You can't be sure whats in it unless a company such as Chipworks tears it down
piece by piece and wire by wire. Sneaky is the norm in hardware.

~~~
ikeboy
>Hard disk makers do it too where you bought a "120GB" drive that uses same eg
1TB platter as the rest but firmware restricts user to 120GB.

Why isn't some smart hacker buying these in bulk, reverse engineering the
firmware to enable the full 1TB, and reselling at a 1tb price point? Would
that be a good business?

~~~
eropple
It would be a business that requires people to trust their data to voided-
warranty drives. I don't think that'd be popular.

~~~
ikeboy
I'd buy a new 1tb HD that comes from a known manufacturer if it was much
cheaper than any others I could get.

~~~
eropple
It wouldn't be much cheaper, though. A WD Blue 250GB on Newegg is $47. A WD
Blue 1TB is $55.

------
DanBC
I'm often keen to buy these super cheap phones, but then I see the outright
deception involved and it's off putting.

I hope Mozilla can encourage interesting but honest budget engineering.

~~~
vidarh
Yeah, the listed specs are more in line with $200 phones. Then too you need to
be careful.

E.g the first one I had in that range was a (physically) near perfect Samsung
SIII replica, complete with the dandelion screen saver, and the place I bought
it for hinted strongly that you could get it with the Samsung logo if I asked.
I knew what I was buying (a much slower MTK based phone), but I saw plenty of
places try to pass it off as a genuine SIII too, which at the time was
substantially more expensive.

This is often the best way of finding (reasonably) honest sellers: Look for
other sellers offering the same phone and assume the worst listed specs are
most accurate.

The interesting thing is how they've gotten to the point of faking MTK cheap-
ish based phones too, rather than just faking more expensive devices.

------
mschuster91
Bit unrelated, but I hope someone here can help me out - couple friends and I
want to develop a 3g-connected IoT appliance and we're looking for a chipset
with reference design - if possible, a chipset that could power a today's
high-end smartphone. Does anyone have an idea? Mediatek didn't reply to us in
two weeks :/

~~~
userbinator
If you want to use Chinese you're going to have to learn their customs and
possibly the language - MTK will just ignore you if you try asking them unless
you're already a huge established company.

Here's some good background reading on the culture of these ecosystems:

[http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3107](http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=3107)

[http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297](http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=4297)

~~~
mschuster91
Actually I don't care much about the exact CPU vendor, all I need is an
Android-compatible CPU with 3G support, a datasheet and if possible a basic
hardware reference design... too bad none in the team are Chinese :/

~~~
judk
Sounds like a opportunity for someone to launch a Chinese consulting company.

------
vinceyuan
> This Huami H3 smartphone cost me $34US (210RMB) in January. It’s sold with a
> 5 inch screen, Bluetooth, WiFi, 4G cell connectivity, Android 4.4 and an 8
> core processor. It's very cheap but good. And actually the processor has 2
> cores.

------
bbrazil
While the phone doesn't meet it's stated spec, it's still pretty amazing that
tech that'd have been top of the line a few years back now costs less than a
night out.

~~~
zokier
Actually it is bit uncanny how you can basically apply a variation of Moores
law. The specs of Huami H3 seem to be somewhat comparable to Nexus One, which
was released almost five and half years ago. That puts 3.5 18 month cycles
between the two devices. $34*(2^3.5) = $400, which sounds about right for
"high-end" no-name Chinese phone.

~~~
vidarh
$400 on Aliexpress gets you into the range of branded phones from brands like
Sony, Xiaomi, Lenovo, Huawei, ZTE, Oppo, Jiayu these days.

Almost none of the phones in that range are truly "no-name" (though beware the
fakes) - even Oppo and Jiayu are fairly established brands by now, though
obviously nowhere near as well known.

~~~
userbinator
I didn't think of Jiayu as being in that range of the market, but apparently
their reputation has been good enough that others have been faking their
phones.

They have some... interesting models like this one, which is far cheaper than
$400:

[http://www.gizchina.com/2014/06/28/octacore-
jiayu-g5s-review...](http://www.gizchina.com/2014/06/28/octacore-
jiayu-g5s-review/)

I have the quadcore (MT6589) version and have gotten quite a few "is that an
iPhone running Android?" questions, which somewhat adds to the experience of
owning one. It's slightly bigger than an iPhone though.

------
acqq
Wow, only 200 MB RAM built in while Android still mostly working.

~~~
jschwartzi
The Galaxy S shipped with only 256 megs and a single core. It was a capable
device at the time, although it can barely run any modern apps. I know this
because I replaced mine only a month ago. As recently as 6 months ago it would
run Spotify and Runkeeper simultaneously, though with recent versions of
Spotify I lost the ability to multitask while not on Wifi. On Uber the only
things preventing me using it were the custom text fields, which wouldn't
allow me to key data in properly. The biggest memory hogs were recent versions
of Google Play at 40 megabytes of ram, so I would keep the Google services
downgraded unless I needed to install an app.

The base Android system will run with surprisingly little RAM.

------
digi_owl
On a side note, i find myself reminded of a TED talk.

Mostly because it held a story about the lady out buying a handbag, and using
her detailed knowledge of brands to get the seller to bring out ever better
copies of a certain brand from storage.

I wonder how much this falls within a culture of haggling.

(Now lets see if i can find the right one...)

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bruceb
We already have $10 smartphones here (US) though they have 3.5 inch screens
are run 4.0 not 4.4.

You can get higher spec better screen phones for $75 or less if you send in
rebates. In the US we have hit smart phones that are affordable to everyone
and can do "most stuff" already.

~~~
acqq
The phone from the article fakes 4.4, it's actually 4.0.

~~~
bruceb
I meant that 4.4 is latest version that most higher end phones use (most
people have not upgraded to 5.0)

I did read the article and saw the phone in question fakes most of the specs.

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digi_owl
Heh, i recall using compressed ram as swap during the waning days of my N800
usage.

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JosephRedfern
Regarding 'rootability', it'll almost certainly be vulnerable to towelroot:
[https://towelroot.com/](https://towelroot.com/)

~~~
milankragujevic
Unfortunately, my tablet can't be rooted by any method I've tried, including
towelroot. DAMN YOU HUAWEI!

~~~
JosephRedfern
What model is it? (and what kernel?)

