The $12 Gongkai Phone

How cheap can you make a phone?

Andrew “bunnie” Huang recently paid $12 at Mingtong Digital Mall for a complete phone, featuring quad-band GSM, Bluetooth, MP3 playback, and an OLED display plus keypad for the UI. Simple, but functional; nothing compared to a smartphone, but useful if you’re going out and worried about getting your primary phone wet or stolen.

So basically, at the cost of a large Dominos pizza, you can take home a cellphone which includes a silicon sleeve and a cable. To understand more, Andrew got into some details. Here are a few things that keeps the cost low:

1. There are no screws. The whole case just snaps together.

2. No connectors inside, everything is soldered directly to the board.

3. The electronics consists of just two major ICs: the Mediatek MT6250DA, and a Vanchip VC5276.

On the whole, the device costs less than $10 to manufacture.

Source: Bunnie Studios