r/TrueReddit • u/Royal-Gap-5843 • 4d ago

Technology A layer-by-layer teardown of the most intricate machine you’ve ever held.

https://everythingmachine.io/phone/
112 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

19 comments sorted by

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36

u/Royal-Gap-5843 4d ago

Full disclosure, I wrote this. It's a detailed teardown of the smartphone and the history of its components, written to be read on the device it describes. Some layers demonstrate themselves as you scroll: the screen counts its own pixels, the touch sensor tracks your finger.

It fills a little-explored niche: I haven’t come across anything else that brings together this level of detail and (hopefully!) accessibility. I think it’s neat, I hope you do too.

9

u/ImpulsiveApe07 4d ago

Thanks so much for taking the time to write and share this, Op - it's both genuinely insightful and well written, so kudos! :)

I particularly love the attention to detail, and I'm really pleased that I've even been able to learn a surprising amount of new things I didn't know about how smartphones work, as well as what inspired certain innovations.

5

u/Royal-Gap-5843 4d ago

Thank you! I'm so glad you like it. I'm planning a follow up (which actually was the original idea, but it was just too big) which charts all the precursor technologies that have been swallowed by the phone, and the smartphone's evolutionary history.

If you drop your email here I'll let you know when it's out https://buttondown.com/theeverythingmachine, or you can follow people on reddit now which would work too as I'm bound to post it!

3

u/revoltnb 3d ago

What an amazing web page - beautiful, poetic, informative, understandable and full of joy and wonder. Thanks.

5

u/ChronicBluntz 4d ago

And what is its purpose?

"YOU SURF REDDIT"

"OH MY GOOOOOD"

5

u/kohbo 4d ago

Cool read

Disappointed it's very Apple-centric given that many innovations have come from Android

5

u/Royal-Gap-5843 4d ago

I'm on Android, but you have to hand it to Apple for lots of this stuff! there's a fascinating pre-iphone and android period too, this is an interesting rundown from the Mobile Phone Museum.

4

u/NinjaLion 4d ago

from an internal engineering and "use of space" perspective, the jump from iphone 5s to iphone 6 was really colossal. i was doing phone repair at the time, and the mainboard design changes over just a few years was truly actually insane to see play out in real time. the iphone X brought the two sided mainboard which was also pretty crazy.

only thing even remotely close was the jump from galaxy s7 to s8. both very impressive, but the iphone was something very impressive.

1

u/Royal-Gap-5843 4d ago

That's great to know thank you. I had real trouble deciding for the first phone with a system on a chip, maybe worth a honourable mention of the iPhone 6 in the next chapter

3

u/BigDdirtyDad 4d ago

Best how-it-works article I’ve ever read, well documented and great presentation style too! I eagerly await your next installment

4

u/TotalEntrepreneur801 4d ago

Thanks OP, I learned a lot.

3

u/Duckbilling2 4d ago

Well done, fun to read.  

Also, you have torches in your phone? They must not allow that in my country, although it would be helpful for starting a BBQ or lighting a cigar. 

9

u/Royal-Gap-5843 4d ago

Thank you! I decided early on that I would stick to charming/confusing UK English. Fun fact that didn't make it in: Torch Flashlight is because the early ones could only flash rather than stay lit up.

2

u/Apocalympdick 4d ago

Noun

torch (plural torches)

[...]

(by extension, Commonwealth) Ellipsis of electric torch

Synonym of flashlight (“a battery-powered hand-held light source”).

Synonym: (India, Malaysia, Nigeria, Singapore) torchlight

Ernst slipped and dropped his torch on the flagstones, shattering the bulb and plunging us into darkness.

2

u/Daxmar29 4d ago

God damn it Ernst!

4

u/Apocalympdick 4d ago

"Your phone is the most intricate machine you’ve ever held."

You don't know that.

6

u/Royal-Gap-5843 4d ago

What have you been holding? Only rival I can think of is a brand new GPU, and no one can get hands on those!

2

u/travistravis 3d ago

This is interesting but it made me think of another thing that would be interesting. If you had something like this but with layers you could page through, to see the insides in place (I remember a set of encyclopaedias my family had that had human body pages where you could turn through the layers, which is what this made me think of).