Mobile Devices

HTC Diamond P3700 Mobile Phone Teardown

01 December 2012
The following is an overview of a teardown analysis conducted by IHS Benchmarking.

Overview / Main Features

The HTC Diamond P3700 is the flagship 3G handset introduced June 2008 by the Taiwanese handset manufacturer. The P3700 features the 3rd generation of HTC's UI layer dubbed TouchFlo 3D which provides arguably more eye candy than UI improvement over the base Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system interface. TouchFlo 3D does add some innovations over the previous iterations of touch/swipe TouchFlo UI layer such as the new single touch rotation to zoom in or out. This design innovation, however, appears to be more of a clever work-around the fact that the device lacks a multi-touch touch screen.

HTC Diamond P3700 Mobile Phone - Main PCB TopHTC Diamond P3700 Mobile Phone - Main PCB Top
Overall, the monolithic form Windows-based dual-band UMTS / tri-band GSM smartphone features a 2.8-inch touchscreen with a 3MP camera primary camera and sculpted rear enclosure which resembles an abstract artwork made up of various triangular shapes. Surprisingly, the Diamond comes with a physical stylus and holder despite the obvious touch interface designs. This apparently redundant legacy design is more likely a carry-over from the Windows Mobile operating system. The HTC Diamond does offer many of the high end features one would expect from phones in this category; namely, integrated GPS, secondary video conferencing imager and on-board WLAN connectivity. Surprisingly, the user accessible data is capped with the on-board 4GB memory with no further expandability via microSD or other removable media.

HTC Diamond P3700 Mobile Phone - Main PCB TopHTC Diamond P3700 Mobile Phone - Main PCB Top
Target Market

High-end smartphone consumers

Released

Per press releases, first release in

Pricing and Availability

Pricing - Mobile handset pricing typically has little bearing on the true market value of the device due to the fact that service carrier invariably use subsidies to incentivize consumers to commit to long term service contracts. For example, O2 offers the device free with participating service plans or for a price of about $385 with lower commitment service plans. A cursory review of boutique online handset resellers reveal that an unlocked HTC Diamond lists for as low as $550.

Availability - The HTC Diamond is being offered in select global markets. Currently, the handset has been rebranded "O2 XDA Ignito" and made available through the UK-based service provider.

Volume Estimations

For the purposes of this teardown analysis, we have assumed a lifetime production volume of 900,000 units.

As a reminder, teardown volume production assumptions are primarily used for our cost analysis in terms of amortized NRE and tooling costs, especially for custom components specific to the model being analyzed (mechanical components especially). Unless assumed, volumes increment by an order of magnitude. Minor changes in volume (say 1 million vs. 2) rarely have a large net effect on our final analysis.

iSuppli's Design Forecast Tool (DFT) and Market Shares

As part of iSuppli's Design Forecast Tool (DFT), we forecast handset shipments by major design feature and manufacture, as well as the number of design starts a manufacturer will have by feature set.

iSuppli estimates unit shipments of 105 million HSDPA handsets in 2008 global market. We further estimate 111 million units of 3 megapixel camera phones to ship in the 2008 global market. All estimates are based on a 2 year product life span assumption for HTC.

HTC Diamond P3700 Mobile Phone - Main PCB BottomHTC Diamond P3700 Mobile Phone - Main PCB Bottom
Cost Notes

Top Cost Drivers (Representing ~70% of Direct Materials Costs)

$34.73 - Qualcomm - MSM7201A - Baseband Processor - Single Chip, Quad-Band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, UMTS, HSUPA, w/ Integrated Assisted-GPS

$19.06 - Sharp Microelectronics - LS028V7DX01 - Display Module - 2.8" Diagonal, 65K Color TFT, 640 x 480 Pixels

$14.30 - Samsung Semiconductor - KMXEE0A0CM-S600 - MCP - 4GB moviNAND MLC + 2Gb $11.96 - Primary Camera Module - 3.1MP CMOS, 1/4" Format, Auto Focus Lens

NAND SLC 1.8V + 1Gb Mobile DDR 1.8V

$10.05 - Touchscreen Overlay - 4-Wire Resistive, Black Paint on Edge, w/ Flex PCB

$3.75 - Texas Instruments - WL1251B - WLAN Baseband - Single Chip, 802.11b/g, Wilink 4.0, 90nm

$2.94 - Qualcomm - RTR6285 - RF Transceiver - ZIF, Quad-Band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, Tri-Band UMTS Transceiver, HSDPA, w/ Integrated GPS Receiver & Receive Diversity

$2.77 - Secondary Camera Module - VGA CMOS, 1/11" Format, Fixed Lens

$2.69 - Texas Instruments - BRF6350B - Bluetooth / FM Radio - Single Chip - V2.1+EDR, w/ FM Radio Receiver, 90nm

$2.54 - Qualcomm - PM7540 - Power Management IC - w/ Integrated USB Transceiver

Direct Materials Cost$149.05

Materials and Manufacturing$152.89



What Is Not Included in our Cost Analysis

The total materials and manufacturing costs reported in this analysis reflect ONLY the direct materials cost (from component vendors and assorted EMS providers), AND manufacturing with basic test. Not included in this analysis are costs above and beyond the material manufacture of the core device itself - cost of intellectual property, royalties and licensing fees (those not already included into the per component price), software, software loading and test, shipping, logistics marketing and other channel costs including not only EMS provider and the OEM's margin, but that of other resellers. Our cost analysis is meant to focus on those costs incurred in the manufacture of the core device and exceptionally in some circumstances the packaging and literature as well.

Manufacturing Notes

OEM/ODM/EMS Relationships / Manufacturing

HTC is an important ODM partner offering smartphones and PDAs to a number of international service providers, including Vodafone, AT&T and T-Mobile. We believe that HTC are producing most of their phones in house. In fact, iSuppli globally estimated that about 80% of handsets (all manufacturers mixed) in 2006 were produced "in-house" by handset OEMs or ODMs, with a growing percentage of EMS-produced devices. HTC, as a Taiwanese company is assumed in our teardown analysis to produce, when possible, and where noted on the labels in mainland China, and sometimes in Taiwan.

Country of Origin / Volume Assumptions

Based on markings, the unit was assembled in Taiwan. Furthermore, we have assumed that custom mechanicals (plastics, metals, etc.) were sourced in low cost regions within Asia.

Country of origin assumptions relate directly to the associated cost of manufacturing, where calculated by iSuppli. In the cases of "finished" sub-assemblies (such as display module), we do not calculate internal manufacturing costs, but rather assess the market price of the finished product in which case country of origin assumptions may or may not have a direct effect on pricing.

Remember also that labor rates are applied directly only to hand inserted components and systems in our bill of materials, and although regional assumptions do, these new rates do not have a direct effect on our modeled calculations of placement costs for automated SMD assembly lines. "Auto" inserted components (such as SMT components) placement costs are calculated by an iSuppli algorithm which allocates a cost per component based on the size and pin-count of the device. This calculation is affected by country or region of origin as well.

HTC Diamond P3700 Mobile Phone - Display Exploded ViewHTC Diamond P3700 Mobile Phone - Display Exploded View
Design for Manufacturing / Device Complexity

HTC handsets have traditionally represented some of the most complex phones we have encountered and the Diamond P3700 is no exception. Although it lacks a slide out keyboard (and consequently, fewer mechanical parts), the P3700 still has an overall component count of 1034 (excluding box contents). This component count is very comparable to the 1116 parts found in the Apple iPhone which the Diamond was designed to compete against.

Component counts have a direct bearing on the overall manufacturing cycle times and costs, and also can increase or decrease overall yields and re-work. Our calculations of manufacturing costs factor counts and more qualitative complexities in the design. The cost of manufacturing is also, to some extent, decreased in this case because of assumed labor rate applied for China.

Note that manual labor has a much smaller effect on auto-insertion assembly lines (for the Main PCB, for example), where manufacturing costs are much more capital equipment intensive and driven by these investment costs.

HTC Diamond P3700 Mobile Phone - Primary Camera Exploded ViewHTC Diamond P3700 Mobile Phone - Primary Camera Exploded View
Design Notes

The HTC Diamond is, unsurprisingly, a Qualcomm-heavy design solution. The handset features the more recent MSM7201A (technically identical to the MSM7200A found in the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1) baseband and applications processor chip package with integrated DDR memory. Also, the P3700 features a Qualcomm PM7540 power management IC (also common to the Xperia X1) as well as a Qualcomm RTR6285 RF transceiver solution.

HTC Diamond P3700 Mobile Phone - Primary Image SensorHTC Diamond P3700 Mobile Phone - Primary Image Sensor
Here is a summary of the major components used in the HTC Diamond P3700 design:

Main PCB

Baseband

  • Baseband Processor - Qualcomm - MSM7201A

Memory

  • MCP - Samsung Semiconductor - KMXEE0A0CM-S600

Battery / Power Management

  • Power Management IC - Qualcomm - PM7540

User Interface

  • Bluetooth / FM Radio - Texas Instruments - BRF6350B
  • LCD Controller - Toshiba Semiconductor - TC358720XBG
  • Mixed Signal Array - Cypress Semiconductor - CY8C20434-12LKXI

RF Transceiver

  • RF Transceiver - Qualcomm - RTR6285 ZIF

Display

  • Display Module - Sharp Microelectronics - LS028V7DX01


HTC Diamond P3700 Mobile Phone - Box ContentsHTC Diamond P3700 Mobile Phone - Box Contents



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