Strange Parts - How I Made an Android Phone

[JINSBEK]

https://youtu.be/MjwtTSoIYYs?si=e-yFRkLMd7atptZB

This guy went to the big electronics Huaqiangbei streetmarket in Shenzhen, China, bought a bunch of parts, and constructed his own working Samsung Galaxy S9 Plus. The video shows his shopping trips in China’s Silicon Valley, his brief research on the phone’s FCC-submitted teardown document, then him actually constructing, and turning on the phone.

As a note, at the time of its posting, the video maker was unsure why Samsung parts were much rather than iPhone parts in the market. That’s because Samsung parts can be purchased directly and easily from Samsung itself. Apple doesn’t sell parts to anybody, hence there’s more of a need for a greymarket.

[Mark]

Scotty (Strange Parts) is great. It's a shame that he had is head injury and also took a bit of a hit from covid's impact on his travel. His vids are great, and he's a great advocate of repair, tinkering, and DIY.

[2Square]

I stumbled on this video this morning and then see it's posted here as well. I wish I knew how to design and build a fully custom phone. Obviously this not something someone does on their own typically but the dream of "the perfect mostly-dumb phone" is seared into my brain

[JINSBEK]

The fact that there are multiple cell phone construction and repair schools (not covered in the video) astounds me. You have students learning trade skills like that—and there are basic two-day soldering courses too—that sounds really cool, and I wish we had the manufacturing base to do things like that in the US.

The more serious hardware start-up guys go straight to Shenzhen to start working with consultants and building their prototypes—as long as you know Chinese, or have a competent technical translator, it’s a lot more cost-effective than trying to build your prototype in the West. And you can iterate really quickly.

I wish I knew how to design and build a fully custom phone. Obviously this not something someone does on their own typically but the dream of "the perfect mostly-dumb phone" is seared into my brain

Honestly, I have half a mind to start learning Chinese specifically for this reason. I actually don’t think raising enough capital to get this off the ground would be difficult, so long as you do your advertising and campaigning correctly, apply for small business loans and grants, maybe if you’re lucky, get approved and featured on StartEngine if Kickstarter/Indiegogo isn’t your thing. (Personally I think getting VC money would be harder, but I suppose it’s not impossible.) The hard part is assembling a competent founding team. I don’t just mean hardware engineers. A Project Manager who cares about this sort of thing, a Marketer who cares about this sort of thing, a CFO who cares about this sort of thing, a webdev who cares about this sort of thing, and so-on and so-forth.

As long as it looks cool and you make people feel happy with how it feels and works, you can convince them to buy anything, especially if it’s at an accessible price range. The Aventon e-bike is a great example of this. Their first-generation designs were actually pretty impractical and inconvenient (no head or tail lights, no bottle holder), and the quality of the actual biking parts is mediocre (riding one feels like crap compared to a high-quality mountain bike at the same price), but they looked cool like motorcycles, the step-through and low seat meant you could get on them easily (went for the general person crowd rather than the sporty super lean MTB fanatic), and it had a throttle. So even though you had to build the bike yourself, and it was shipped from China, you had crazy fun riding it, and it didn’t cost even a third as much as other e-bikes at the time. Now those bikes are even sold at Best Buy, and I always see them in my city.

We just need a few people willing to put in their savings into building the first plant (lol), and we’re golden.

[CitricScion]

I'm waiting for Fairphone to get to the point where they have better hardware that's still repairable, and a better processor that still has a long support life cycle. But it's neat to see how with more know-how than the average bear you can get far.

[Mark]

I'm still bummed Project Ara went nowhere.

[JINSBEK]

I'm waiting for Fairphone to get to the point where they have better hardware that's still repairable, and a better processor that still has a long support life cycle. But it's neat to see how with more know-how than the average bear you can get far.

Mmhmm. But in a lot of cases, that know-how isn’t even accessible, let alone actionable, without the bare minimum exposure to the necessary hardware and manufacturing. For example, I have a modded e-bike that allows custom lights to draw from the battery power, but the step-down transformer (converting the voltage) that is small enough to fit within the battery case I could only get imported from China. Same with the light set-up I have in my apartment—not a single domestic vendor sold the part I needed, and I couldn’t even find it on eBay, but I found it immediately on TEMU. If you don’t expand your network of distributors, then the best theoretical know-how, goes no-where.

Honestly, you could assemble and build a professional-grade camera if you have the parts. (Yes, you can buy them, and I bought them for my apartment lighting set-up.) But the average consumer isn’t interested in assembling their own hardware, and hasn’t even been exposed to the individual, surprisingly modular components. All they’re familiar with is the finished product.

[CitricScion]

@JINSBEK how did someone so cool end up here! You know a lot about supply chain stuff that I think even techy people would be envious of!

I agree that the average person won't be interested in doing that work themselves for repair. I guess I'm just communicating a general interest in affordable and reasonable repair options that are not tied to the original manufacturer.

[JINSBEK]

@CitricScion Ahh, thank you very much for the compliment. Yeah, being able to source, replace, and repair parts either by yourself or by one’s trust third-party is ideal. It’s one of the reasons that I personally don’t recommend Aventon e-bikes to people looking into getting an e-bike, for example. The construction is proprietary and idiosyncratic (even typically universal parts can’t be used—Aventon only), and any mechanic/shop has to be “Aventon-certified”—and frankly there doesn’t seem to be any actual competency tested for that. So maintenance is terrible.

…I miss the old days of tricked out phones. Making and swapping out parts to style them the way you wanted. Man, phones used to be cool and fun.

trickedout.jpg (187.46 KiB) Viewed 25 times

[rejectconvenience]

this is so cool wtf