Samsung Rugby A837 Mobile Phone Teardown

Overview / Main Features

The Samsung SGH-a837 is a 3G, dual-screen flip phone with a 1.3MP camera, push-to-talk, enterprise paging, and aGPS. It seems to be designed for enterprise 'outdoor' use, and claims extra ruggedized design, as well as a dubious compliance to military specs (MIL-STD-810F).

It is important as a preface to our analysis that although some accommodations have been made in our cost analysis for this mil-spec 810F, we have largely assumed, that this is a claim, that while possibly factually true, is misleading. In fact, upon further research it seems that others would agree that this claim of compliance is misleading as the MIL-STD-810F specifies only testing methods, but not 'the amount of performance degradation permissible during or after being subjected to the (highly variable) test conditions' (per one website reference).

As a result, we have made most standard, commoditized, commercial off-the-shelf component pricing assumptions and manufacturing assumptions in our analysis, and have largely ignored what appears to be the near irrelevance of the MIL-STD claim.

Samsung Rugby A837 Mobile Phone Main Image

Primarily for mobile phone users in the architecture, engineering, construction, maintenance industries requiring outdoor, and job site application needs.

Released

Per press releases, first release by AT&T on September 16th 2008.

Pricing and Availability

Pricing - At the time of writing (Oct 2008), the Samsung Rugby is offered by AT&T for $129.99 with 2 year service contract after a $50 mail in rebate.

Availability - Exclusively from AT&T (US).

Volume Estimations

For the purposes of this teardown analysis, we have assumed a lifetime production volume of 1M 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.

Samsung Rugby A837 Mobile Phone - Main PCB Bottom

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 105M HSDPA handsets in 2008 global market. We further estimate 295M units of 1MP camera phone shipment in 2008 global market. For the Samsung device specifically, iSuppli applied volume estimates based on a 2 year product life span assumption along with the corresponding global market share percentage for the manufacturer.

Samsung Rugby A837 Mobile Phone Cost Analysis

Main Cost Drivers Representing ~60% of Direct Materials Costs

MSM6260 - Qualcomm - Baseband Processor - Single Chip, Quad-Band GSM/GPRS, UMTS, HSDPA, 3.6Mbps, GPS & Bluetooth

TYA000B800D0GG - Toshiba Semiconductor - MCP - 2Gb NAND Flash + 1Gb Mobile SDRAM

Primary Display Module Value Line Item - 2.0' Diagonal, 262K Color TFT, 176 x 220 Pixels

Camera Module Assembly Line Item - 1.3MP, 1/5' Format, Fixed Lens

AB553446BA - Samsung - Battery - Li-Ion, 3.7V, 1000mAh

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

DaeDuck Electronics - 10-Layer - FR4/RCF HDI, 2+6+2, Lead-Free, Halogen-Free

Secondary Display Module Value Line Item - 1.1' Diagonal, 65K Color TFT, 96 x 96 Pixels

PM6658 - Qualcomm - Power Management IC w/ Integrated USB Transceiver

BCM2046 - Broadcom - Bluetooth - Single-Chip, V2.1+EDR, HCI Solution

Materials and Manufacturing $87.88

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.

Samsung Rugby A837 Mobile Phone - Enclosure Disassembly

Manufacturing Notes

OEM/ODM/EMS Relationships / Manufacturing

According to iSuppli's "Global OEM Manufacturing and Design Analysis - Mobile Handsets Q1 2008, Samsung is traditionally an all in-house manufacturing operation. Only recently has Samsung begun to partner with Foxconn as an EMS partner which registers barely 0.2% of their overall manufacturing capacity. Within the scope of Samsung's internal manufacturing capability, about 70% of their products are made in Korea and 30% are made in lower cost countries such as China and India.

Country of Origin / Volume Assumptions

Based on markings, the unit was assembled in Korea. Furthermore, we have assumed that custom mechanicals (plastics, metals, etc.) were also sourced in Korea.

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 modules), 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.

Design for Manufacturing / Device Complexity

The Samsung SGH-a837 features an 'normal' component count of 712 total components (excluding box contents). This component count puts this phone well within the norms of average component counts for similarly featured phones. We even analyzed a Sanyo SCP-7050 ruggedized flip-phone (though CDMA), also featuring a Qualcomm-based, and 'ruggedized' design, which also had a very similar component count and relative complexity.

One side note - the PCB on this phone features an unusually high layer count (10-layer). This is pretty rare these days in phones, with most featuring 6 and 8 layer boards which are typically less expensive, but more spread out. Because of size constraints, the PCB here had to 'go vertical' in the design, hence the high layer count, but small footprint of the board. High layer count boards can be quite expensive as yields tend to drop significantly, driving costs up.

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 Korea.

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

Aside from the MIL-STD-801F claim which we addressed in the overview section of this executive summary, this 'mil-spec' claim is reflected in the design in limited amounts which appear to be restricted to a handful of choices related to enclosures and extra seals, gaskets, etc. Otherwise, this is a strictly commercial design from a component selection and qualification process, and there appears to be nothing exceptional about it.

The Samsung SGH-a837 is based on a Qualcomm MSM6260 core, which, as is almost inevitably the case with any Qualcomm core design, is supported exclusively by other Qualcomm chipset components including the PM6658 ABB / Power management IC, and the RTR6285 RF Transceiver from Qualcomm.

Here is a summary of the major components used in the Samsung Rugby A837 design:

Main PCB

Baseband

• Baseband Processor - Qualcomm - MSM6260

Memory

• MCP - 2Gb NAND Flash + 1Gb Mobile SDRAM - Toshiba Semiconductor - TYA000B800D0GG

Battery / Power Management

• Power Management IC - Qualcomm - PM6658

RF Transceiver

• RF Transceiver - Qualcomm - RTR6285 - ZIF, Quad-Band GSM/EDGE & Tri-Band UMTS Transceiver, w/ GPS Receiver

User Interface

• Bluetooth - Broadcom - BCM2046 - Single-Chip, V2.1+EDR, HCI Solution

PA

• PAM - RF Micro Devices - RF3161 - Quad-Band, GSM/GPRS/EDGE
• PAM - Avago Technologies - ACPM-7311-OR1 - WCDMA, 836.5MHz
• PAM - Avago Technologies - ACPM-7331-TR1 - WCDMA, 1880MHz

Display

• Primary Display Module - 2.0' Diagonal, 262K Color TFT, 176 x 220 Pixels

"

Samsung Rugby A837 Mobile Phone - Box Contents