HTC Droid Incredible teardown reveals around $163 worth of parts
The components that make up HTC’s Droid Incredible Android smartphone cost about $163.35, according to a teardown estimate by market research firm iSuppli.
Most touchscreen smartphones today can usually be broken down into $150-$190 worth of components, so the teardown number isn’t a huge surprise. The Droid Incredible retails for $199 with a two-year contract on Verizon.
The phone shares many components with Google’s Nexus One (also built by HTC), so it’s no surprise that it’s similar to the Nexus One’s $174.15 material cost. Both phones share the same Samsung 3.7-inch AMOLED (Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Display) screen, 1 gigahertz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, and 512MB of RAM.
All three of those components also ended up being among the most expensive in the Incredible: The processor cost $31.40, the display $31.20, and the RAM (together with the phone’s 8GB of flash storage) cost $29.80.
The biggest difference between the two phones is the Incredible’s support for the CDMA cellular standard. The Nexus One was originally released for T-Mobile’s GSM network, while the Incredible runs on Verizon’s CDMA network.
Compared to the iPhone 4, which contains around $188 worth of parts according to iSuppli, HTC ended up spending far more on the Incredible’s processor. The iPhone 4′s A4 chip — which was designed by Apple engineers and produced by Samsung — only cost the company around $10.75. Of course, that doesn’t take into account the extensive research and development costs to design the chip — which is also used in Apple’s iPad.
Check out iSuppli’s full Droid Incredible component breakdown below:
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About the Author, Devindra Hardawar
Devindra Hardawar is VentureBeat's National Editor and lead mobile writer. He has been writing about technology since 2004, worked in IT support for several years, and studied philosophy at Amherst College. He now lives in Brooklyn, New York. You can reach him at devindra@venturebeat.com (all story pitches should also be sent to tips@venturebeat.com), and on Twitter at @Devindra.
