BASIC COMPONENTS OF A SMARTPHONE
- Central Processing Unit CPU
- Graphics Processing Unit GPU
- Display
- Camera
- Body Frame
- Motherboard PCB
- Battery
- Other Components
Top Display Manufacturers
Those based on LCDs (IPS technology and its variations). Those based on LEDs (AMOLED or Super AMOLED and its variations)
LCD displays work by shining a light (called the backlight) through some polarizing filters, a crystal matrix and some colour filters. The crystals can be twisted to varying degrees depending on the voltage applied to it, which adjusts the angle of the polarized light. All combined, this allows a LCD display to control the amount of RGB light reaching the surface by culling light from the backlight.
AMOLED displays work differently, here each of the pixels are made up from groups of Light Emitting Diodes, which makes them the source of the light. The advantage of AMOLED over IPS is that OLED type displays can switch off individual pixels and so giving deep blacks and a high contrast ratio. Also, being able to dim and turn off individual pixels saves on power.
- Samsung
- LG
- Tianma
- Japan Display Inc.
- AU Optronics
- Sharp
Top Processor Manufacturers
While you might see phones touting different SoCs from Qualcomm, MediaTek, Samsung, Huawei’s own Kirin and Apple’s own developed chipsets, they are using the same system architecture from ARM. ARM functions by not only producing their own processors and GPUs but by also licensing their design and system architecture to other companies, so they are able to use their technology to make powerful and efficient SoCs. The SoC is perhaps the most important component present in a smartphone, and some users might confuse it as being the processor of the device. However, it is far more than that; the SoC not only comprises up of the smartphone’s CPU, but GPU, LTE modem, display processor, video processor, and other bits of silicon that turn it into a functional ‘system’ in a phone.
CPU:
The vast majority of smartphones (including Android, iOS and Windows Phones) use a CPU architecture designed by ARM. The ARM architecture is different to the Intel architecture that we find in our desktops and laptops. It was designed for power-efficiency and became the de-facto CPU architecture for mobile phones even before smartphones, back in the feature phone era.
There are two types of ARM architecture CPUs: those designed by ARM and those designed by other companies. ARM has a whole range of CPU core designs which it licenses under the Cortex-A branding. This includes cores like the Cortex-A53, the Cortex-A57 and the Cortex-A73. Companies like Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek and Huawei take the core designs from ARM and incorporate them into their SoCs. For example the Huawei Kirin 960 uses four Cortex-A53 cores and four Cortex-A73 cores in an arrangement known as Heterogeneous Multi-Processing (HMP).
ARM also grants a license, known as an architectural license, to other companies to design ARM architecture compatible cores. Qualcomm, Samsung and Apple are all architectural license holders. This means that cores like the Mongoose (M1) core found in the Samsung Exynos 8890 are fully ARM compatible, but are not designed by ARM. The M1 was designed by Samsung.
GPU:
The Graphics Processing Unit is a dedicated graphics engine designed primarily for 3D graphics, although it can be used for 2D graphics as well. In a nutshell the GPU is fed with triangle information along with some program code for the shader cores so it can produce 3D environments on a 2D display.
- Taiwan Semiconductor.
- SK Hynix.
- Micron Technology.
- Texas Instruments.
MMU
Although this is technically part of the CPU, it is worth mentioning the Memory Management Unit (MMU) as it plays such an important role and enables the use of Virtual Memory. For Virtual Memory to work there has to be a mapping between virtual addresses and physical addresses.
This mapping is done in the MMU, with a lot of help from the kernel, in Android’s case that means Linux. The kernel tells the MMU what mappings to use and then when the CPU tries to access a virtual address the MMU automatically maps it to a real physical address.
The advantages of virtual memory are that:
An app doesn’t care where it is in physical RAM.
An app only has access to its own address space and can’t interfere with other apps.
An app doesn’t need to be stored in contiguous blocks of memory and allows the use of paged memory.
L1 and L2 caches
Although we think of RAM as being fast, certainly much faster than internal storage, compared to the internal speed of a CPU it is slow! To get around this bottleneck a SoC needs to include some local memory which runs as the same speed as the CPU. Local copies of data from RAM can be stored here and if managed right the use of this cache memory can significantly improve the performance of the SoC.
Audio
Sound is a big part of the smartphone experience. Whether it is for calls, for playing games, for watching movies or for listening to music, the sound output from our devices is important.
DSP & DAC
DSP stands for Digital Signal Processor and it is a dedicated piece of hardware designed to manipulate audio signals. For example any equalization processing that is needed will be performed by the DSP. Qualcomm DSP is known as Hexagon and although it is called a DSP, it has expanded beyond audio processing and can be used for image enhancement, augmented reality, video processing and sensors.
Cache memory that runs at the same speed as the CPU is known as Level 1 (L1) cache. It is the fastest and closest cache to the CPU. Normally each core has its own small amount of L1 cache. L2 is a much larger cache, in the Megabyte range (say 4MB, but it can be more), however it is slower (meaning it cheaper to make) and it services all the CPU cores together, making it a unified cache for the whole SoC.
Speakers
Speakers come in all shapes and sizes on smartphones. Some are on the back, others on the side or on the bottom edge, however front facing speakers are generally considered the best. One thing to note is that many phones actually only have one speaker, not two, and that some devices have two speaker grills, but actually only one speaker!
Top Camera Sensor Manufacturers
Camera technology has always been an important feature in smartphones but this generation of flagships have been putting particular emphasis on the quality of their camera modules. So it seems worthwhile to dive on into the world of camera sensors and take a look at who is building the best and most popular products.
- SONY
- SAMSUNG
- TOSHIBA
- OMNIVISION
- SK Hynix
- HTC
- LG
Top Battery Manufacturers
- LG
- SAMSUNG
- Panasonic
- Toshiba
- DNK
- Guangzhou Vigoo Electronic Technology Co., Ltd.
- BYD
- ATL
- FOXCONN
- Blue Wide Electronic Co., Ltd.
Top Memory and storage Manufacturers
No smartphone can function without the use of RAM and memory (system storage). List of flash memory controller manufacturers.
- SK Hynix
- Greenliant Systems
- Sandisk
- Intel
- Samsung
- Toshiba
- Seagate
- Realtek
- Dell
- Huawei
- Micron Technology
Modems
Since smartphones are just phones at the end of the day, they need communication components to receive and send text messages and calls. That’s where modems come in, and every SoC manufacturer has their own brand of modems, and this includes Qualcomm, Samsung, Huawei and several others.
Sensors
There are five main sensors in a smartphone that allow it to give you that functionality of a ‘touch-enabled smart device’. The names of all these sensors and their importance have been detailed below:
Accelerometer: Used by apps to detect the orientation of the device and its movements, as well as allow features like shaking the phone to change music.
Gyroscope: Works with the Accelerometer to detect the rotation of your phone, for features like tilting phone to play racing games or to watch a movie.
Digital Compass: Helps the phone to find the North direction, for map/navigation purposes.
Ambient Light Sensor: This sensor is automatically able to set the screen brightness based on the surrounding light, and helps conserve battery life. This would also explain why your smartphone’s brightness is reduced in low-light environments, so it helps to reduce the strain on your eyes.
Proximity Sensor: During a call, if the device is brought near your ears, it automatically locks the screen to prevent unwanted touch commands.
