The leading companies have become known for their great production and innovation capabilities in the smartphone industry, thanks to the giant factories and their advanced research laboratories, and it is obvious to think about their ability to employ the best components and designs inside any smartphone and reach the perfect smartphone.

Certainly, everyone dreams of owning the perfect and integrated smartphone, even with a very high cost. The question here is “Why can’t any company achieve those dreams and produce the perfect smartphone?”

To answer a question of this magnitude, we must first understand how smartphones are made, what are the stages that must be overcome in order to reach the market in the end, and what are the difficulties and challenges that companies face in that production process.

Smartphone manufacturing stages

As is known to everyone, any product manufactured in laboratories must go through multiple stages in order to finally reach the market, and this is also the case in the smartphone industry.

 

In the past, the phone industry was considered more creative than today, because there are no older versions to rely on as a basis for making the latest version, but this is no longer required after the great development in this industry.

Now companies rely on the last year’s version as a base on which to base and develop it according to the needs of the market and according to the desires of users, where companies modify the design to suit the user’s comfort, and put advanced technologies that attract attention, and this of course goes through different stages to reach the final product, which is about six Stages we will get to know next.

 

Prototype Design

The production of phones begins initially with the research and development team, where the team submits several design models to the board of directors to approve one model that is approved and sent to laboratories, in those laboratories a team of technicians manufactures a first (non-living) product, because the shape and design is the The first step in manufacturing, it is then sent to specialists to provide engineering and aesthetic feedback and returned for some final adjustments.

After the completion of the first design phase, the phone is sent to the technical engineering team working on placing the internal hardware such as the processor, memories and other chips, as well as installing the appropriate screen for this design, and the battery with a pre-determined capacity, in addition to placing the lenses and designing the entire imaging system. A number of performance tests on the phone in order to approve it and move it to the next stage.

 

Operating system installation (software)

Now comes the role of the software engineering team in order to install the required and previously agreed operating system, and it is very important that the work of the hardware technical team is in perfect harmony with the operating system to be placed in the phone, and therefore we notice the great speed in Apple phones and products, and this is the result of the great compatibility between Hardware and software are manufactured in the same laboratories by the same team.

After the final dependence on the internal hardware with the design and operating system, the actual mass production begins.

 

Test stage

Before actually starting the mass manufacturing phase, manufacturers have to perform various process tests on the final product, in order to ensure quality performance and adherence to manufacturers’ standards.

These tests include hardware and software as well, such as drop testing, pressure, water and heat resistance, imaging lenses, charging speed and screen technologies.

 

Mass Production

This stage is called mass manufacturing, meaning that large quantities of the same phone are manufactured according to the needs of the target markets, and this stage takes place either in the factories of the companies themselves or in huge foreign factories, and it is worth noting that most of the information about the phone is leaked to the public before the official launch The product has a specific time, which may be useful in some cases as a pre-sale and preliminary marketing.

The companies usually manufacture their phones with the help of giant overseas factories called OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturers), where the phones are also assembled in these factories.

The most famous of these factories is Foxconn, which manufactures products for huge companies such as Apple, Xiaomi, Nintendo, Amazon and many others.

packaging stage

After the phone passes all the tests, it is sent to the assembly places to be placed with the charger, headphones and any additional accessories, according to the company’s policy, with identification papers and the user manual inside the phone box, then it is closed and wrapped.

charging stage

The final stage in the manufacture of smart phones is the shipping stage, which usually takes place after the completion of packaging, as large quantities of these phones are shipped to agents in each country, to markets and reviewers around the world, and finally to the user’s hand, which is of course the last target in the industry. smart phones.

This was the process of manufacturing smart phones in its full stages, and returning to the basic idea to find out why an integrated phone was not manufactured, it must be known that these manufacturing stages are subject to great conditions, policies and agreements between companies, where deals are made in very large amounts to obtain exclusive technology for a company.

 

Productive difficulties preventing the “perfect smartphone”

The question posed at the beginning of the article was about why the perfect and integrated smartphone was not made and not put on the market, and now that we know the stages of manufacturing a smartphone, we have to delve into those stages and know the sources from which the components of the phones come from, in addition to the difficulties that companies face and deals are high The cost you have to hold and the economic policies they use to provide high long-term profits.

 

Phones Components Sources

The aesthetics of technical products is not limited to the external design or the shape of the screen and its high accuracy, but the aesthetic perspective of any advanced electronic product lies in the internal creativity as well, as this appears through the large amount of chips and technologies inside a device of this size.

Starting with the mastermind of the phone, which is the processor, which in turn includes a graphics processor, communications modem, imaging systems and memories, in addition to several high-resolution imaging lenses, charging and delivery technologies and many more, all the way to the display screen that shows all these technologies to the user, which in turn also depends on very accurate specifications. .

The phone market is very huge, whether in the field of sales or industry, where each company has a market share that changes every year or quarter depending on the sales of its products, but the market share that is almost constant and even continues to rise is in the field of industry, so that each A company that excels in a certain area of ​​smartphone components.

As an example, we note the superiority of the American company Qualcomm significantly in the field of processing chips, which are used by most manufacturers of Android phones, and it has the largest market share in this field with the Snapdragon series, and there are some companies that rely on their internal factories to produce powerful processors such as Samsung in the Exynos series , Apple in A Bionic processors, Huawei in the Kirin series, and MediaTek is ranked second in the world in terms of market share in the field of processing chips, along with the Helio series of processors.

Qualcomm also dominates in the field of graphics processing with the Adreno series found exclusively with Snapdragon processors, and Arm Holdings comes in second place in its Mali series, and almost the only company that relies on its own factories to produce graphics processors is Apple accompanied by the Apple GPU series.

There are some companies that control various aspects of smart phone components, such as Corning Gorilla in glass manufacturing materials in phones, and in the audio field, there are companies such as Dolby with Apple products, AKG with Samsung, and recently a cooperation between Xiaomi and Harman Kardon.

As for the imaging lens sensors, it is a field almost confined between Sony with its famous IMX series, and Samsung with its multiple versions, most notably GN and HM.

And in the end, we have displays, in which Samsung is far superior to its closest competitors with technologies such as OLED, AMOLED and Super Amoled, which are widely known globally in this field, and companies such as LG and BOE come in second, and of course the market is not limited to high-priced OLED screens, But there are also LCD and IPS LCD technologies, but they are inferior in many respects.

All this information about how smartphones are manufactured and the different suppliers of parts and superior technologies, leads us to some answers to the main question in this article, as we conclude that there are great difficulties in employing the best specifications in a phone made by only one company, and the reason is that no company in the world owns It has enough factories and laboratories to provide the best of each component.

On the other hand, the least costly and time-consuming solution is to import these components from competitors, as we have noticed that each company excels in a particular field, and of course all of these companies are involved in a very fierce competition for the global market share, and therefore no one will give up his best technologies to a direct competitor except at high prices It leads to a significant increase in the cost of the product, but huge deals are made between them due to mutual interests, as we will see next.

 

The concluded deals and their negative impact on the production of the perfect smartphone

As we talked previously, most smart phone manufacturers are unable to provide all parts and technologies independently, due to the large number of components involved in the composition of this electronic piece, and this requires a lot of factories, laboratories and research and development teams, and thus each company excels in a particular field as it was previously explained.

This, of course, confirms the necessity of concluding deals between manufacturers to try to provide the best technologies to produce a powerful phone that raises the market share of the producing company.

An example of this is Qualcomm, which provides the best processors in the world, and smartphone manufacturers are racing to obtain SnapDragon chips from them and put them inside their phones, and this leads to deals between the chip manufacturer and the phone company.

Another example in the field of screens, where Apple recently concluded a huge deal with Samsung to supply OLED screens in order to put them in the iPhone 12 series, and thus this forces Apple to always be in second place in the world for the quality of screens, because Samsung maintains the best and latest technologies For itself, of course, this is a major reason why no single company can make the perfect smartphone.

 

The profitability policies of huge companies do not allow for the “perfect smartphone”

There is not much talk about a topic similar to this context, and the reason behind this is simple, of course. No company reveals its profitability methods or the way it continues to excel or even continues its sales permanently. This topic is not considered sufficiently relevant, as you will not find search results to talk about. Even in the English language, and if it is found, it is very rare, but this information is not considered alien to specialized technicians or even economists or even close followers, and it is the product of personal knowledge and continuous research.

Most of the giant factories and large companies have highly qualified research and development teams, and the technical development they have reached allows employing the best and latest technologies inside any smart electronic product such as the phone, for example.

An example of this is the American company Qualcomm, the manufacturer of processing chips, which depends on a certain architecture in the manufacture of these chips, and the architecture that has reached is 5 nanometers, where the lower the number, the greater the energy savings, and this is done gradually as that number decreases more quickly at the present time.

The Qualcomm Snapdragon 810 processor was working on a 20-nanometer architecture, and this number began to decrease gradually with almost every copy, until now in the Snapdragon 888 processor it reached 5 nm, but it took more than six years to reach this number.

Qualcomm is the most prominent target in talking about profit policies, as the company limits the speed of phone processors at 2.84 GHz, but only changes the name of the processor or the name of the chip from Kryo 585 to Kryo 680, for example.

The same applies to phones that have the new SnapDragon 888 chip, as they are able to shoot 4K video at 120 frames per second, and are able to employ a 144Hz refresh rate in OLED screens with QHD resolution, but the manufacturers of those phones are unable to employ these technologies due to consumption The large energy generated from it, and thus the need for a large battery (more than 6000 mAh), which in turn requires obtaining a very fast charging technology at least (65 watts), and all this leads to a very high cost, but from a technical point of view The companies are providing all of these technologies for the coming years.

These matters lead to building a theory about the profitability policy of most companies, which is based on relatively slow progress and the failure to employ the latest technologies in phones quickly, in order to maintain the continuity of profits and sales in the long term, and this is one of the important reasons for not making the perfect smartphone.

 

 Personal opinion about not producing the “perfect smartphone”

There are a few very good phones in the market that are close to the perfect smartphone, but with high prices that do not suit most users, and do not represent a large percentage of sales compared to the cheapest phones, so it is difficult for any company to allocate a new product line that includes a phone with superior and revolutionary specifications.

An example of this is the slow progress in the technology of the new Fold phones, and the reason is its high price and lack of widespread, and also the lack of financial returns that serve its production line, so if an “ideal” phone is manufactured, its price will be excessively high, and it will not be offered Sufficient financial returns to support that company, and this constitutes a productive obstacle to any factory, no matter how large.

• Note: The production line of any phone has an independent budget, so companies are forced to rely on the sales success of the phone in order to develop it and produce a newer version.

a summary

After understanding the way phones are made in its many stages, which are punctuated by great production difficulties these days, and after knowing that each company controls a specific field in the components of smart phones, and also because of the companies’ policies calling for not to employ all technical capabilities in one product, we can now say that it is It is almost impossible for one company to produce an integrated and perfect phone because of the high cost, even if the profits are large, but it is short-term and leads to early technical bankruptcy.