How smartphones are made

Many people rely on their smartphones for… phone calls, messages, pictures, social media, shopping lists, directions, reminders, alarms… Smartphones have become essential for many in their everyday life, and we see them everywhere! But have you ever wondered how they are made? Smartphones look different, depending on the model or brand. But most smartphones are actually built in a very similar way. Every smartphone has a body and a screen, a battery that powers it, and plenty of electronics that make it work.

All these parts are made of different materials, and are manufactured separately, before being put together in a final assembly plant. Let’s start with the body, also known as a casing. The material the casing is made of needs to be durable, heat resistant. It is also important that it doesn’t interfere with the phone or internet signal. So, the casing is usually made of plastic or metal, which is moulded into shape.

The screen consists of several layers. The top layer serves mostly as protection and is made of glass. Underneath this is the touch panel. This layer contains two elements that make the screen touch sensitive — indium and tin. Below the touch panel, there is a liquid crystal display or LCD.

LCD is made of two pieces of special glass that have a liquid crystal material between them. LCDs can produce different colours thanks to some rare elements they contain. What about the battery? The majority of smartphones have a rechargeable lithium-ion battery. One end of the battery — the positive electrode — is usually made of lithium and cobalt.

The other end — the negative electrode, is made using graphite, which is a form of carbon. These three elements are often sourced from different continents: lithium from South America and Australia, cobalt from Africa, and graphite from Asia. The electronic parts of the smartphone are manufactured all over the world, by a number of different companies. As many as 70 different minerals and metals are used in their production! Copper, which conducts electricity very well, is one of the most essential.

It’s used in many of the smartphone’s components as well as the wiring. Some components also use silicon, aluminium, gold, silver, and a few other metals known as rare earth elements. Rare earth elements are necessary in the production of many electronic parts, but they are costly and difficult to extract. All the components are shipped from the factories where they are manufactured to the assembly plant, where they are put together to make the smartphone. Most assembly plants are located in Asia.

Inside the plant, parts move continuously from one station to another along an assembly line. In one of the first steps, the electronic parts are placed and connected, on a circuit board. One of those electronic parts is the chipset that contains the operating system. It allows your smartphone to process instructions. Next, the speaker, camera units, LCD screen and finished circuit board are fitted onto the phone’s casing.

A few of the assembly processes are automated, but most of them are done by people. The smartphone is now ready for quality control. Every smartphone is checked to ensure that all features function properly — from the network reception, wifi and software, to the display, microphone, and battery. If the phone passes all tests, it is packed for shipping. The phone, the battery, and all additional accessories are placed in a box, sealed and marked.

Now, the smartphone is shipped to a distributor, shop, or online retailer, who sells the smartphones to people all over the world.