Samsung SGH-F480 Mobile Phone Teardown

Overview / Main Features

The Samsung F480 is essentially a compact version of the full-featured Samsung OMNIA (SGH-i900) smartphone. Compared to its more capable handset sibling, the F480 sports a smaller 2.8 inch touchscreen display but offers up a similar "Touchwiz user interface running on top of a Samsung proprietary operating system. Although technically a feature phone, the Samsung F480 appears on paper to be a very capable handset with a class-leading 5MP camera and expandable user memory (up to 8GB via microSD). Undoubtedly, the F480 aims to provide consumers an ""iPhone alternative" and targets the demographic that the Apple device had over-shot.

Overall, the F480 is a single-band UMTS / tri-band GSM handset which indicates that it was designed specifically for select markets such as Europe and Asia that runs the 2100MHz 3G network. The handset is powered by a Qualcomm MSM6280 which is fairly common design we have encountered in the past and shares commonality with LG KF700 handset included in this comparative analysis.

Samsung SGH-F480 Mobile Phone Main Image

High-end consumers

Released

Per press releases, first release in select global markets on July of 2008.

Samsung SGH-F480 Mobile Phone - Main PCB Top

Availability

- At the time of writing (Nov. 2008), the Samsung SGH-F480 is available in select global markets such Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

Volume Estimations

For the purposes of this teardown analysis, we have assumed a lifetime production volume of 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 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 SGH-F480 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 105 million HSDPA handsets in 2008 global market. We further estimate 33 million units of 5 megapixel camera phones to ship in the 2008 global market. All estimates are based on a 2 year product life span assumption with an overall global market share of 14% for Samsung.

Top Cost Drivers (Representing ~69% of Direct Materials Costs)

Qualcomm - MSM6280 - Baseband Processor - Single Chip, Quad-Band GSM/EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA up to 7.2Mbps & Bluetooth, 65nm

Primary Camera Module - 5.0MP, CMOS, 1/3.2' Format, Auto Focus Lens

Samsung Semiconductor - KBN00700AM-D443 - MCP - 3Gb OneNAND + 1Gb Mobile SDRAM

Display Module - 2.8' Diagonal, 262K Color TFT, 320 x 240 Pixels

Touchscreen Overlay - Clear Polycarbonate Sheet, 5-Wire Capacitive, w/ Integral Flex PCB & COF Driver IC

NEC - Applications Processor - ARM Core

Qualcomm - RTR6280 - RF Transceiver - ZIF, Quad-Band GSM/GPRS Transceiver and Tri-Band UMTS Transmitter

Battery - Li-Ion, 3.7V, 1000mAh (Estimated)

Samsung Semiconductor - BTEM48B2SB - Bluetooth / FM Module - Bluetooth V2.1+EDR & FM+RDS Receiver, Contains Broadcom BCM2048

Skyworks - SKY77519 - Transmit Module - PAM - Quad Band GSM/GPRS, w/ Integrated Antenna Switch Supporting 4 GSM Band & 1 WCDMA Band

Samsung SGH-F480 Mobile Phone Cost Analysis
Samsung SGH-F480 Mobile Phone 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 SGH-F480 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 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.

Design for Manufacturing / Device Complexity

The Samsung SGH-F480 has an overall component count of 729 (excluding box contents), of which, 146 are mechanical in nature. Compared to the other smartphones within this competitive analysis set, the F480 is markedly less complex, and hence, carries fewer components. Overall, the complexity of the Samsung F480 is what we would expect from a handset which is not quite to the level of an Apple iPhone (1116 components) but definitely more than that of a run-of-the-mill feature phone.

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

The Samsung F480 utilizes a Qualcomm MSM6280 chipset which we have seen before in other high-end LG handsets. Like the Samsung OMNIA, the F480 demonstrates a similar discrete electronic design with respect to the baseband and applications processing. In addition to the available processing capabilities within the MSM6280, the Samsung implements a dedicated NEC applications processor within the F480 to presumable run the proprietary Touchwiz user interface and associated software. The rest of the F480 design is, again, a Qualcomm solution with a PM6658 power management IC and RTR6280 RF transceivers.

The F480 features a 5-wire capacitive touch panel integrated within its 2.8 inch primary display. This is the only capacitive touch panel featured within this competitive set of handsets which are dominated by 4-wire resistive technology. Overall, the 5-wire capacitive design is one of the simplest capacitive designs we seen so far and likely on par in terms of build quality and functionalities to the newer generation of 4-wire resistive screens.

Here is a summary of the major components used in the Samsung SGH-F480 design:

Main PCB

Baseband

• Baseband Processor - Qualcomm - MSM6280

User Interface

• Applications Processor - NEC
• USB 2.0 Host / Device Controller - Epson - S1R72V17B05Q
• Bluetooth Module - Samsung Semiconductor - BTEM48B2SB

Memory

• MCP - Samsung Semiconductor - KBN00700AM-D443

Battery / Power Management

• Power Management IC - Qualcomm - PM6658

RF Transceiver

• RF Transceiver - Qualcomm - RTR6280

Display

• Display Module - 2.8' Diagonal, 262K Color TFT, 320 x 240 Pixels

"

Samsung SGH-F480 Mobile Phone - Box Contents