61–70 of 143 posts
A fun hobby and project, but I'm guessing nearly all those parts are knock offs and of very cheap quality.
Really interesting documentary from Wired that tangentially touches on this mentality.
Interesting topic, well filmed given the market circumstances, clear audio, and well edited.. and it definitely didn't hurt that I'm currently learning how to design and build electronics from scratch as a hobby ;)
Great experiment, and it looks like a lot of fun. But to be practical, the amount of time + effort + risk required to pull this of would offset any amount of money saved.
What's the risk?
You can buy refurbished iPhones from AliExpress that more or less are the same: made from parts from several iPhones put together.
Sure, but where is the adventure or challenge in that?
Makes me wish you could buy a kit and assemble your own phone. We need someone like Arduino to come along for this kind of tech. Would be awesome to just pick up my old and faithful Hakko and solder some sensor to a phone.
Here's an example using a Raspberry Pi, touchscreen, and custom-written UI: https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/tytelli-a-diy-smartphone/
Really well edited video. Shenzen seems like a crazy awesome place. One thing I noticed was how he would never haggle on the price. He would always accept straight up say yep ok. Either the prices were really good...or being an American he's not so used to the idea of having to haggle the price (or maybe he felt order size was too small to warrant a haggle). However when in Asia always and negotiate, otherwise you're…
Really well edited video. Shenzen seems like a crazy awesome place. One thing I noticed was how he would never haggle on the price. He would always accept straight up say yep ok. Either the prices were really good...or being an American he's not so used to the idea of having to haggle the price (or maybe he felt order size was too small to warrant a haggle). However when in Asia always and negotiate, otherwise you're…
He has commented on that saying that it isn't very common in the electronics markets, particularly for one-offs or low volume. Apparently you can only really start haggling once you're buying 100+ of something.
Moral of the story is not how cheap YOU can build YOUR phone by $300, but how cheap Chinese electronic parts could mean to the competition and innovation in the whole electronic industry. My personal opinion (not necessarily correct): it means that electronic industry could no longer only compete on low prices but newer designs and newer technologies, for better or worse, because Shenzhen, China can always catch up w…
There are already plenty of cheap Chinese phones you can buy. Even their flagship phones with top of the line specs are half price. They just don't support all overseas bands yet.
Really well edited video. Shenzen seems like a crazy awesome place. One thing I noticed was how he would never haggle on the price. He would always accept straight up say yep ok. Either the prices were really good...or being an American he's not so used to the idea of having to haggle the price (or maybe he felt order size was too small to warrant a haggle). However when in Asia always and negotiate, otherwise you're…