K-State ECE 526 Course Cell Phone Teardown

An early "slider" touchscreen phone taken apart and put under the microscope (Literally)

The pictures below show some of the guts of modern cell phone electronics miniaturization. Most of the electronics takes place within the integrated circuits (small black squares on the printed circuit boards). However, there is also considerable engineering in the PC board assemblies, connectors, RF shielding, and packaging in general. Some of the "Thin-Film Transistor" technology used in the display is also shown in the photos taken with the microscope. Although the transistors seen in the photos are much larger than those used in integrated circuits, they employ the same types of devices (FETs) and processes (multi-layer metals and vias/contacts). The last photo shows the liquid crystal materal that is mated to the TFT pixel array. Here's a site that explains a little of how the screen magic works: http://www.ercservice.com/learning/what-is-tft-lcd.html *.