Mobile Devices

HTC Aria Mobile Handset Teardown

07 February 2011
The following is an overview of a teardown analysis conducted by IHS Benchmarking.

Overview / Main Features

The HTC Aria is essentially a US market version of the affordable Android smartphone that HTC pioneered with the Wildfire. The 3.2 inch touchscreen handset does pack a higher resolution screen that the one found in the Wildfire, but aside from that improvement, the Aria essentially sticks to the low cost component design script of using Qualcomm MSM72xx baseband processor, capacitive touch, a near identical 5MP camera module, GPS, BT/WLAN, accelerometer and even HTC's much lauded Sense UI overlay.

Overall, the dual-band UMTS / quad-band GSM handset is HSDPA capable on 900 and 2100 MHz frequencies making the device a European and Asian centric 3G handset. Just like the Wildfire, the Aria has approximately 4Gb of onboard NAND which is partitioned and shared with the OS image. Also, a 2GB microSD card is made available to off load additional storage needs.

HTC Aria Mobile Handset Main ImageHTC Aria Mobile Handset Main Image

Target Market

Affordable smartphone segment

Released

June 2010

HTC Aria Mobile Handset - Main PCB TopHTC Aria Mobile Handset - Main PCB Top

Pricing and Availability

Pricing - A "no-commitment price for the Aira (according to AT&T's website) is $379. Otherwise, the Aria is offered for free with 2 year contract.

Availability - US (AT&T Wireless)

Volume Estimations

For the purposes of this teardown analysis, we have applied a lifetime production volume of approximately 1.5M 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 are different by an order of magnitude, minor changes in volume (say 1 million vs. 2) rarely have a large net effect on our final analysis because of this.

HTC Aria Mobile Handset - Main PCB BottomHTC Aria Mobile Handset - Main PCB Bottom

Cost Notes

Main Cost Drivers ~90% of Total Materials Cost

Qualcomm - MSM7227 - Baseband Processor - Quad-Band GSM/EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA 7.2Mbps, HSUPA 5.76Mbps, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS, 600MHz ARM Core CPU w/ 320MHz Application DSP, 400MHz Modem Processor & Hardware-Accelerated 3D Graphics, 65nm

Display Module Value Line Item - 3.2' Diagonal, 262K Color TFT, 320x480 Pixels

Display Window / Touchscreen Assembly - 3.2' Diagonal, Capacitive, ITO Film Over Glass Faceplate, Painted, Printed, Contains Synaptics T1021A Touchscreen Controller, w/ Integral Flex PCB, & Board to Board Connector

Samsung Semiconductor - KA1000012M-BJTT - MCP - 4Gb NAND Flash + 3Gb Mobile DDR (Estimated)

Camera Module Value Line Item - 5.1MP, CMOS, 1/4' Format, Auto Focus Lens

Broadcom - BCM4329EKUBG - Bluetooth/FM/WLAN - Single Chip, WLAN IEEE802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth V2.1+EDR, FM Radio Receiver & Transmitter, 65nm

Panasonic - 10-Layer - FR4/RCF, Stacked Via (ALIVH), Lead-Free

SanDisk - MicroSD Memory Card - 2GB

TWS - BB92100 - Battery - Li-Ion, 3.7V, 1200mAh

Unitech - 7-Layer - Rigid/Flex Hybrid, FR4/Kapton, 2+3+2, Lead-Free, Halogen-Free

Emerson Network Power - TC U250 - Charger - AC to USB, 5V, 1A

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

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

Enclosure, Main, Top - Die-Cast Magnesium, in Injection Molded Plastic Frame, w/ 2 Threaded Brass Inserts, Painted

Handsfree Accessory - Stereo, w/ 3 Handsfree Control Buttons, Spring Loaded Plastic Clip

Skyworks - SKY77336-21 - PAM - Quad-Band GSM / GPRS / EDGE, w/ Integrated Power Control

Direct Materials + Manufacturing $124.26

HTC Aria Mobile Handset Cost AnalysisHTC Aria Mobile Handset Cost Analysis


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

Country of Origin / Volume Assumptions

Based on the level of sophistication and function of the device, we made the assumption that the unit was assembled in Taiwan. Furthermore, we have assumed that custom mechanicals (plastics, metals, etc.) were also sourced in Taiwan.

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), 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 pincount of the device. This calculation is affected by country or region of origin as well.

HTC Aria Mobile Handset - Disassembly View 1HTC Aria Mobile Handset - Disassembly View 1

Design for Manufacturing / Device Complexity

The HTC Aria under analysis here has an overall component count of 970 (excluding box contents), of which, 667 reside on the main PCB. HTC typically occupy the extreme ends of our complexity chart. Even for a purported low-end smartphone, the Aria comes in at higher than most other OEMs like Nokia and Samsung for the same level of functionality.

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 Taiwan.

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.

Design Notes

The Aria features a MSM7227 baseband processor which we have seen in previous HTC Android handsets such as the Legend as well as other purported low cost smartphones such as the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini and Samsung GT-I5500. As with most other Qualcomm based handsets from HTC, the Aria draws heavily from other Qualcomm design solutions such as the PM7540 power management IC and RTR6285 RF Transceiver.

Just as in the Wildfire, the Aria uses the same Broadcom BCM4329 Bluetooth / FM / WLAN solution. On the user interface front, HTC maintains the manufacturer slots for acceleromenter (Bosch), e-compass (AKM) and capacitive touch controller (Atmel).

Here is a summary of the major components used in the HTC Aria design:

Display

  • Display Module Value Line Item - 3.2' Diagonal, 262K Color TFT, 320x480 Pixels

Camera

  • Camera Module Value Line Item - 5.1MP, CMOS, 1/4' Format, Auto Focus Lens

Main PCB

Apps Processing / Baseband

  • Baseband Processor - Qualcomm - MSM7227

BT / FM / GPS / WLAN

  • Bluetooth/FM/WLAN - Broadcom - BCM4329EKUBG, Single Chip, WLAN IEEE802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth V2.1+EDR, FM Radio Receiver & Transmitter, 65nm

Memory

MCP - Samsung Semiconductor - KA1000012M-BJTT, 4Gb NAND Flash + 3Gb Mobile DDR (Estimated)

RF / PA

  • Transceiver - Qualcomm - RTR6285, RF ZIF, Quad-Band GSM/EDGE, Tri-Band UMTS Transceiver, HSDPA, w/ Integrated GPS Receiver & Receive Diversity
  • PAM - Skyworks - SKY77336-21, Quad-Band GSM / GPRS / EDGE, w/ Integrated Power Control
  • PAM - Avago Technologies - ACPM-5405, WCDMA/HSDPA 850, 836.5MHz
  • PAM - Skyworks - SKY77187, WCDMA/HSDPA 1900, 1880MHz

User Interface

Microcontroller - Atmel - ATmega88PA-MMH, 8-bit AVR, 20MHz, w/ 8K Bytes In-System Programmable Flash & 1K Bytes SRAM & 512 Bytes EEPROM

Accelerometer - Bosch Sensortec - BMA150, MEMS 3-Axis, +-2g/4g/8g, Digital Output

HTC Aria Mobile Handset - Box ContentsHTC Aria Mobile Handset - Box Contents



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