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Smartphone Hardware Insights

This document discusses the hardware architecture of smartphones, using the iPhone as an example. It describes the main components of a smartphone's main printed circuit board (PCB), including the application processor which runs the operating system and apps, and the baseband processor which handles wireless communications. The application processor contains components like CPU cores and multimedia engines. The baseband processor contains radios, analog and digital modems. Major vendors that design these processors for smartphones are mentioned.

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Nhi Trang
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161 views18 pages

Smartphone Hardware Insights

This document discusses the hardware architecture of smartphones, using the iPhone as an example. It describes the main components of a smartphone's main printed circuit board (PCB), including the application processor which runs the operating system and apps, and the baseband processor which handles wireless communications. The application processor contains components like CPU cores and multimedia engines. The baseband processor contains radios, analog and digital modems. Major vendors that design these processors for smartphones are mentioned.

Uploaded by

Nhi Trang
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Mobile Handset

Hardware Architecture
Focused Mobile Handset: Smartphone

 We will take smartphone as an example to


discuss mobile handset hardware architecture
 Smartphone is a new generation high featured
and multifunctional cell phone which has
 The functionalities of a handheld computer
 The communication capabilities of a cell phone
 Multiple sensors

2
Smartphone History
 Major Milestones
 1997 - Term smartphone is coined
 1999 - RIM begins making Blackberries
 2007 - iPhone 1 released
 2008 - Android v1.0 released
 Now – iPhone 6 and Android 5.0

3
A Teardown of iPhone 5S

4
Main PCB
 PCB stands for Printed Circuit Board
 Smartphone main PCB has three main parts
 An application processor which executes users’
application software
 A baseband processor which controls radio
activities
 A number of peripheral devices for interacting
with the user

5
Main PCB Architecture

6
An Example – iPhone 3G Main
PCB Front

7
An Example – iPhone 3G Main
PCB Back

8
Another Example – iPhone 4 Main
PCB Front

GSM/GPRS GSM/W-
3-axis digital Bluetooth
Front End CDMA
gyroscope Receiver
Module Transceiver

GPS
Receiver

Power W-CDMA Power Quad-Band Apple A4


Amplifier Front End Amplifier GSM/GPRS/ Application
Module EDGE Processor

9
Another Example – iPhone 4 Main
PCB Back

Touchscreen Flash Baseband


Controller Memory Processor

Power
Mobile DDR
Audio Codec Management
SDRAM
Unit

10
Application Processor: Overview
 A dedicated processor which enables
smartphone to run mainstream OS such as
Android, iOS and Windows Mobile etc.
 Optimized to run a number of user applications
 Emphasize multimedia processing
(audio/video/still image/2D/3D)
 Do not handle “baseband” (wireless
communications)
11
Application Processor:
Components
 Processor core (e.g. ARM based processor) which is
specifically optimized for minimal power consumption
 Multimedia engine which is hardware implementation
of one or more multimedia standards (e.g. JPEG
module, MPEG module, Audio module)
 Device interfaces which are used to communicate with
peripheral device (e.g. USB, camera, display)

12
Application Processor: Structure

ARM
Multimedia
Processor
Engine
Core

13
Baseband Processor: Overview
 It has a communication protocol stack which
enables different types of wireless
technologies such as LTE, WCDMA, CDMA,
ZigBee, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc.
 It provides radio communication related
functions: signal modulation, RF shifting,
encoding/decoding, etc.

14
Baseband Processor: Components
 RF front end: a component for receiving and
transmitting on different frequencies
 Analog baseband: an interface between the
digital domain and the analog domain
 Digital baseband: a component which handles
higher layers of the protocols by using Digital
Signal Processors

15
Baseband Processor: Structure

16
Processor Vendors

17
References
 http://www.eazytutz.com/android/android-architecture/
 http://www.neowin.net/news/guide-to-smartphone-hardware-17-processors
 http://www.slideshare.net/YongHeuiCho/4smartphone-hw-architecture
 http://ancillotti.hubpages.com/hub/Understanding-the-hardware-
architecture-of-smartphones
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM_architecture
 http://www.bapress.ca/ccc/ccc2013-1/3_13052701_Final%20Draft.pdf
 http://www.rapidrepair.com/guides/iphone3g/

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