• When Samsung announced the Galaxy line of smartphones, we decided on that day to make sure the minute the first phone in the series came out, we would get it. When the GT-I9000 was released in Europe, we went to work quickly bringing it to our Ottawa office and dissecting the latest handset from Samsung. What we found inside the GT-I9000 (or the Vibrant, as it’s named in North America) was a telling scene of the current semiconductor landscape in the handset market.  Companies that were scoring big design wins all year were continuing their winning streak with Broadcom, Triquint and Infineon all surfacing on the main board.

    The teardown also revealed what we think is a brilliant sales strategy by Samsung.  Samsung is the current leader in the applications processor market, recently taking the title away from Texas Instruments.  What better way to keep the lead than to create a new line of smart phones utilizing your application processors?  The Samsung Vibrant features the S5PC110A01 processor that was also used in the Samsung Wave.

    The Samsung Vibrant is called so for its use of a Super AMOLED screen that provides vivid colors even in sunlight conditions. The selection of this expensive screen shows that Samsung means business with the Samsung Galaxy S line of phones and is ready to compete with Apple and HTC for a share of the marketplace. 

    Take a look inside for all of the major components. To take a look at all the components on both sides of the board, click on the board images on the sidebar.

  • The Samsung S5PC110A01 Application Processor

    Samsung S5PC110A01 Application Processor

    Samsung's 1GHz ARM CORTEX-A8 based application processor finds itself in use in the Samsung Vibrant and was first seen in the Samsung Wave. The S5PC110 was chosen not only to aid in Samsung’s goal to be the leader in apps processors but also because it optimizes the battery life for smartphone. Manufactured using a 45-nanometer (nm) Low Power fabrication process , each of these application processors comes with 32KB data and 32KB instruction caches, and is equipped with a 512KB L2 cache.

    Within this Galaxy S phone, the S5PC110A01 was found on a package-on-package that partnered it with Samsung’s OneNAND and other Samsung memory technologies. Find out more about the S5PC110 here.

  • The Infineon PMB 5703 SMARTi UE Transceiver

    Infineon PMB 5703 SMARTi UE Transceiver

    This unique die image shows the lighter side of semiconductor design as engineers will often put their own stamp of originality into their designs (in this case, a man rocking out on a set of drums). Found on the die of the Infineon PMB 5703, this IC serves as the transceiver for the Vibrant, providing the EDGE/UMTS support for the device.

    More information on the PMB 5703 can be found here.

  • NEC MC-10170 Camera Processor

    NEC MC-10170 Camera Processor 

    Also found within the Samsung Wave, this IC serves as the ‘brains’ of the image sensor as the camera processor. This particular device was pared with Elpida memory.


  • Samsung Galaxy S Front

    Samsung Galaxy S Back