The silicon hacker behind the Chumby, [bunnie huang], was browsing through the Mobile Phone Megamarket in Shenzhen, China and stumbled upon an unusual repair book. It turns out the book had the schematics to hundreds of Nokia phones. It’s hard to tell if they are legitimate, but the amount of information makes them seem so. [bunnie] claims that the book is a learning experience because it shows how some sub-circuits are implemented. Also, it can be a good reference for sourcing parts. Since Nokia buys millions of each component, the supply of parts they use are stable. There are also editions for other brands, such as Motorola and Samsung.
I’ve seen similar schematics on the ‘net before. Pretty sure these are legit (or at least real)
You can buy high bandwidth bridge controllers on street corners there…literally. This isn’t too far fetched.
@threepointone
Do you have any tips for good search queries and search engines? Part number, manufacturer, “schematic”. I *always* sift through hundreds of product reviews and blog posts but eventually turn up empty handed. *ALWAYS*.
This is where China’s attitude and disregard for intellectual property seems to help them and hurt us.
I’ve also seen terabytes of ISO ANSI IEEE JIS of stolen standards documents available on Chinese web sites for one tenth their price of their normal distribution channel.
I wouldn’t be surprised if these Nokia schematics as well as others weren’t part of a leaked or copied larger industrial espionage cache of documents that was government run.
How can U.S. and EU companies compete when Chinese companies have access to proprietary designs and don’t respect intellectual property?
I managed to download several Nokia schematics before, it’s not that hard. They were useful for sussing out LCD pin-outs for one of the dead phones in my possession. I just punch in the model number and the word ‘schematic’ in google. Sometimes ‘service manual’ does the trick too. Adding the terms ‘rar OR zip’ can help. And just because nothing comes up in the first 5 search ranking, that doesn’t mean it’s not there.. Don’t be afraid to look through several pages in your google search results.
Example: To find the schematic depicted in this this blog entry’s picture, just search for ‘nokia n95-8g service manual’.
I found a two part rar on rapidshare with TONS of schematics and service manuals.
Anybody got schematics or service manuals for Motorola phones?
guys don’t bring hack-a-day into your trading, go look for yourself others have made it evident it can be found.
@david sutherland – by using a business model that doesn’t rely on secret designs?
*shrug*
wow, what a great hack! :-)
Google and china… so thats Chinese people are not always allowed on the interweb? they can buy it on the street!
(not rly)
wonder if any chinese engineers will commit hari kari over this leak…
interesting,could this be purchased outside of china ,or be sent outside?[or scaned]
@unic0rn can you put links to that rs files?
@smokinjuan
Are you kidding? I just googled “nokia schematics” and the second link was full of schematics. (The first one was this article on hackaday).
Lol, god I love Shenzhen, It’s the only place where you can buy a spicy grilled snake on street corner, and right next to him will be a guy selling idustrial size transformers, and next guy over has every possible “switch” you could want to buy. Right next door to a Jade trader…..mmm Shenzhen … the “Snooker Club” is the best :P
@faelenor
You’re right. After I wrote that I went looking for the schematics to my 6101. Not only did I find the schematics, I found the fix to my “Insert sim card” water damage problem (thanks Archit Raj!). When I first broke it a few years ago I couldn’t find anything. I now have schematics to all my phones.
My most recent project, OTOH, is a Sanyo DP32648 31.5″ flat screen with lightening damage. Can *not* find schematics for this.
Meanwhile over here in the west you have to pay $30+ for pdf’s with international (and government) required safety standards :rolleyes:
so where is our scans
@Agent420: Google fake N95. It does not need to leak. It will be copied. It may look like N95, it may work like N95, but inside it will be nothling like N95.
It is actually good that someone posted schematics of original mobile phones to the public. The factories cant be hurt by this, the customers can only benefit from this.
sounds like this is where they get all the information they need to make these fake piece of shit phones they sell.
I lol so hard at what ebay has because of these chinese scammers.
It’s hilarious.
It looks the type of schematics used in repair.
It’s in Chinese and English the original nokia design schematics should be in Finnish.
Also along side each labeled component there is a description of what failure of this component will cause.
As for helping clone phone manufactures the firmware and PCB layouts are just as important in making a functional product as the schematics.
Unless the fakers can get their hands on some custom chips from Nokia, I doubt they will be able to make clones. As Space mentioned earlier, they could clone phones aesthetically, but not the guts of it.
Tachikoma, I beg to differ.
With the schematics above and a legitimate phone to dump the firmware from, I believe it would only take some quantity of hours to properly reverse engineer and re-create a clone phone.
Wonderful! those manuals should be scanned and put online :)
There was a very interesting TedTalk that touched on this. There are Chinese companies that will reverse engineer the phones and sell the manuals to people who want to repair the phones. There are people on the streets that will repair your phone while you wait. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/jan_chipchase_on_our_mobile_phones.html skip to the 10 minute marker.