Watch: A maker shows us how he made his own iPhone from parts

[Carla_Sinclair]

Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/04/12/watch-a-maker-shows-us-how-he.html

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[anon47741163]

Huh. Just a phone?

[sexycyborg]

One of very few videos about Shenzhen that is 100% accurate. He really nails it.

[RickMycroft]

When he booted it, did it say Error 53?

[1vw2go]

I get that the making was the point, but no mention of how much it cost?

[sockdoll]

That video pushed all the right buttons for me. It was really cool, and reminded me a bit of the years my wife and I spent in Taipei in the late '80s.

@Carla_Sinclair

make an iPhone 6S practically from scratch

Kinds sorta. I was really hoping to see him populate the logic board using a soldering iron, but it was cool watching the pros assemble the screen components for him.

I worked for a defense contractor in the Midwest in the '90s, mostly building ruggedized communications equipment for aircraft.

One project I worked on was building the on-board components of a missile guidance system - the parts that went into the missile itself. That work consisted of using a microscope and a hand-held soldering iron all day to attach teeny tiny surface mount chips to a PCB half the size of a playing card.

It was crazy-making work.

[kpkpkp]

@sockdoll

One project I worked on was building the on-board components of a missile guidance system - the parts that went into the missile itself. That work consisted of using a microscope and a hand-held soldering iron all day to attach teeny tiny surface mount chips to a PCB half the size of a playing card.

It was crazy-making work.

then again, could have been this:

[Jorpho]

I can’t watch the video at the moment, but I really want to know: were there people just sitting around with replacement BIOS chips, or did he have to burn them himself somehow? (I reckon Apple might take objection to the wholesale distribution of those chips, but that’s China.)

[Taniwha]

On of the main points of his video is that there’s a whole infrastructure in China for recycling phones, either as subassemblies like mother boards, screens, etc or right down to the chips. They don’t burn new ones, just use existing ones (so erase all your data off of your phone when you’re done with it)

[renke]

(wiring in the early Cray super computers. organized madness)

[sockdoll]

I actually did build complex wiring harnesses for other projects, but I don’t know how involved the finished guidance system was since the military only had our facility doing one or two finished circuit boards for it.