Nokia 7600 Mobile Phone Teardown

Main Features

3G WCDMA/GSM Dual-Mode / Dual-Band 900/1800, MP3 / Media Player, VGA/CMOS Camera phone (no flash) (still and video capability), 65K color TFT screen (2 inch diagonal).

Marketing/Positioning

Nokia is consistent in internal design and design for manufacturing - internally simple, highly integrated phones, with an emphasis, where possible, on component reuse across phone. But you would never know that from looking at Nokias from the outside. Nokias all sport different, sometimes radically different aesthetics and layouts - but those changes are often skin deep.

The 7600 is another "high-concept" phone which attempts to define some new "genre" of phone, based on the unusual look and feel. From the feature perspective the image is backed up in some respects by the features and technology, it is - a 3G phone with a focus on music/media player features, and VGA camera (no longer groundbreaking, of course, and this phone does not feature a camera light or flash unit which is becoming more common among newer phones). Considering the media player / camera focus it is a little odd, that there is no external memory card capability, however the full connectivity contingent makes up for that lack to some extent (IrDA, Bluetooth and USB) - allowing users to get data out of the device.

The screen is fairly common (65K color, TFT - again not the cutting edge - but high-end mainstream) and is on the large end of the spectrum as seen in other phones.

Cost Notes

Despite the 3G standard, and relatively high level of functionality, the Nokia 7600 manages to be a relatively low-cost phone to produce. This can be attributed to fundamental design choices, and beyond this analysis, extends to the purchasing power of Nokia. From a design perspective the choice of non-clamshell form-factor is always a big saver, because clamshells have many more parts than standard "candybar" form-factor phones, not to mention typically 2 displays.

Also - Nokia uses fairly simple cosmetic features, and always tries to use as few discrete components (electronic and mechanical) as possible to save on manufacturing costs. Nokia designs are therefore relatively simple to produce by hand keeping manufacturing costs low.

But economic component choices also keeps the costs to a minimum in the 7600, such as the "standard" CMOS/VGA camera module (the same module appears to be used in most Nokia designs keep the costs to a minimum. The core processing (DBB/ABB chips) is as usual performed by two core ASICs (TI/ST Micro), but aside from those chips and memory there are no discrete tone generator chips, media processors, etc. to add cost.

In a nutshell, at under $120 in materials and manufacturing costs, this is an inexpensive 3G phone to produce.

Main Cost Drivers (representing ~ 58% of total materials cost)

Main Display (2 in diag, 65K color TFT) ~$27

DBB/ABB processors (combined)~$18

Memory (Flash + SRAM)~$14

Camera Module ~$8*

* - This item is experiencing rapid erosion and has dropped soignificantly since this cost analysis was performed.

Design

Nokia designs phones are invariably relatively simple to put together with emphasis on "design for manufacture": minimum discrete components and relatively simple cosmetic features help keep costs and manufacturing times down. Furthermore the Nokia penchant for non-clamshell phones is apparent - and clearly has it's advantages. With 69 discrete mechanical components, this phone is not complex when compared with clamshell designs or even other candybar phones with similar functionality.

However, Nokia clearly seeks to disnguish their phones more through unusual and provocative designs and layouts to establish differet "marketing themes", while keeping internal architecture simple and cost effective.