N. Korea claims to manufacture iPhone rival entirely within its borders

Images have emerged from North Korea's official news service apparently showing its young leader Kim Jong-un inspecting a new smartphone factory.

The agency, KCNA, claims the factory has manufactured a phone – the Arirang – built around Google's Android OS and says it was produced entirely within North Korea's borders.

But some commentators were immediately sceptical, including the North Korea Tech and Tech in Asia blogs, both of which suggest the same building has been used to stage bogus images of Kim Jong-un and his father inspecting a flat-screen TV factory.

It is likely that the phone's components are produced in China and then assembled in North Korea, according to one commentator.

"One likelihood with this North Korean Arirang phone is that all the parts are actually made in China, and final assembly is done in North Korea. Or, possibly, the whole smartphone is made in China, and only the final boxing is done in the rather sparse plant that Kim Jong-un toured," wrote Steven Millward.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/10238617/Is-North-Korea-to-take-on-Apple-with-its-version-of-the-iPhone.html

Reverse engineering? Who knows with these crazy people. LOL

Psst... North korea...
Might want to move those CRT monitors  

veya_victaous wrote:Psst... North korea...
Might want to move those CRT monitors  

Here's a fun thought -- how many North Koreans even know CRTs look old fashioned these days?  

I'll give them a pass on the CRTs. Take a look at the first picture at this link that has more (and higher resolution) images from that event. It's the same spot, just turned around. Huge flatscreen.

http://www.apollo.lv/galerija/zinas/581260

They're for the machine they're sitting atop, and it's likely a proprietary system that are notorious for being difficult/impossible to upgrade with off-the-shelf stuff, gotta go through the machine's maker and pay through the nose. Some of those even have a touch screen on them.

That thing is a chip shooter, it takes the components off a reel, peels back the tape over the pocket holding the component and sucks it against the end of a nozzle and places it on the circuit board. You can see a white reel mounted in the front. I used to work with machines that would allow you to load both front and back, and use other feeders such as slanted, vibrating trays that will allow a bag of parts (like a connector) to be poured on it and lined up into a row for the pickup nozzle.

The machine to the left should be the stencil printer for applying solder paste to the board first, but I can't really see what they've got going over there. They must not be building anything very sophisticated with that line, because the very next machine with the two big gray pipes going into the big black duct is the reflow oven that heats the board up just right so all the surface-mount components gets soldered.

As with most anything from North Korea, it's a facade for something less impressive. My guess is that they're doing some very minimal assembly with those machines or they're just sitting there for show and were used in the past for something else, because everything I see on the other side of the room is a bunch of guys at PCs with fully assembled boxed phones, which makes me think they're just reprogramming the firmware on Androids from China with their own language pack/OS/shitty browser/etc., putting them back into the box, and selling them to North Koreans.

@caution
fair enough point but I think those in particualr are replaceable CRTs (I have had to replace Proprietry monitors with non-proprierty monitors before and it can be an Epic Hassle)

on the LCDs in other pics maybe my expections are a litle High but I run Dual screen at work and both my monitors are bigger. (at home is 42 inch so I know thats bigger than average)
interesting that they are DELL monitors, I might need to tease the DELL rep next time they come into the office.  

veya_victaous wrote: maybe my expections are a litle High

Yeah, they are. It's North Korea!

veya_victaous wrote: but I run Dual screen at work and both my monitors are bigger. (at home is 42 inch so I know thats bigger than average)

Well sure but as you know those are different applications. I have duals at work too but they are necessary for what I do. For single-action functions on an assembly line, not so much, unless you're doing optical inspection or something that needs a ginormous screen.

Bottom line here is that North Korea is going to have what they've been given by their business partners to get the job done, so if you see a flatscreen in a factory there's a good chance it came from the business partner in China or I suppose South Korea if they're in Kaesong Industrial Complex. If you watch videos of their university(ies?) you'll see a ton of flatscreens but still a lot of CRTs like those VCR combo units. But then again, they're going to parade any tourist or journalist past the latest in display technology. Likely story is there is very little in the way of computers there, with the lion's share of new hardware in hidden hacking/nuclear facilities.

Found this, maybe you big brains will garner more detail from a higher-res image (pop it out in a new tab to see the entire thing):

:D 

Looks to be a shade better than the one at the gallery I posted but not enough to make out any more detail.

I *was* able to figure out that the picker is a Philips CSM series chip shooter, and appears to be a Comet 1. It was made in 1995 so it's probably good for nothing smaller than 0603 size components, unless they upgraded the nozzles. Not very useful for mobile devices since most of the components are 0402 or 0201 footprints.

Good detective work, Eric!

I think those chairs are $19.95 in the US,

@caution
I know NK situation which is why they shouldn't make propaganda about manufacturing new smart phones.

@lurker
LOL  

I was on a circuit board factory tour this week when I noticed they had the same device that looks like a scale of some sort. It's actually filled with isopropyl alcohol. You soak some up in a cleaning rag by pressing it down on the spring-loaded thing on top.