LG VX5500 Flip Phone

     Well friends, its time for a bit of nostalgia. Today I took apart the trusty rusty flip phone I used for at least 2 years, back in high school. Apparently, even in the age of smart phone domination, the ol' 5500 continues to be used a fair amount. My coworker even continues to use one - they're built to last I guess. But they're also rather interesting inside. 

View with the back panel and battery removed

As with many electronics, little rubber feet were added over the screws to make it look nicer

Another great example of what buttons actually look like on the circuit board. Those little raised bumps are what click up and down, giving a little audio feedback as well - the key pad with printed numbers just transfers the motion.

The circuit board removed from its lower housing.

Bet you thought the housing was boring, huh? WRONG. Lots of little pieces that were pressure fit in. Some were buttons along the side, others were for transferring power from the battery.

Back side of the circuit board, with a protective metal piece that separated it from the battery.

Metal piece gone, this is what we see. A nice Qualcomm chip in the center there, headphone jack in the upper corner of the board in the picture, and the power cable jack on the same side down towards the right.

 

Before moving to the top section I thought I'd point out the little rubber bumper which was inserted in the plastic shell which allows the phone to flip open "just right"

More hidden screws

Now we get into the cool parts. the housing on the left has a clear plastic window which protects the smaller screen you see when the phone is hinged closed

Check it out - that tiny thing there is the camera. According to this site, that is a 0.3 megapixel camera. Are you fucking kidding me?! My current phone has a 8 megapixel camera - 26 times better. My, how times have changed.

Here's detail of the main screen you'd see when the phone was open. you'll notice the housing on this side also has a clear plastic protective window for the delicate glass screen

I liked that the designers of this phone didn't resort to adhesives and loads of screws to hold things together. They molded in little snap features wherever possible in the housing itself

The innards of the upper flip section. You see the side with the smaller screen (the larger one is against the table). The ribbon that connected this to the bottom section is hanging off in the upper right. The little piece hanging off which connected to the camera is at bottom right. The speaker you held to your ear is connected by wires in the middle of the three left pieces. The top component is a mystery (maybe the vibrator?). The bottom component on the left is a larger speaker, I assume so you can hear it ringing. 

I was a bit surprised with the hinge mechanism as well. One section clamped onto the blue end of the pill shaped thing, the other section to the main metal body of the pill. The pill itself spun where the blue end connects to the main body.

 So there we are. Definitely some cool stuff in there... I'm learning more and more little tricks of the trade engineers use to make these tiny electronics work. Its gotta be infuriatingly tedious to test fit everything though, hah.