An inside look at Huawei's Shenzen, China smartphone production facility

In a large, closed off factory, a smartphone production worker walked through the 120-metre factory line and explained how Huawei articles its smartphones from start to finish.

The smartphone and telecommunications equipment giant said nosotros weren't immune to take pictures, which I estimate is off-white since the People's republic of china-based company doesn't desire its intellectual property to be stolen.

We were allowed to take pictures in 2 designated areas, merely that doesn't really capture the enormity of each product line.

Imagine a long, cream-coloured facility that houses 35 different production lines. Each line produces 2,400 smartphones in ane day; in an 8-hour day, that's 300 phones per hour.

Now multiply that number by 34; that's 81,600 smartphones in 24 hours.

That is a lot of phones.

This specific production facility was focused on the production of Huawei'south P20 smartphone.

Huawei toured three reporters, including me, around one of its product facilities in its Shenzhen, China campus. The woman leading the tour said Huawei has similar production warehouses in other areas of China and effectually the world. That said, she wasn't specific in terms of how many Huawei is currently operating.

What is listen-boggling is that in 2013, each production line had 86 workers fastened to it and now, only 17 are designated to each line.

The tour guide told us that over the years, Huawei learned to be more than efficient. The purpose of cut down people was to produce phones that were quality driven, says the visitor.

Almost everything is notwithstanding double checked by a factory worker, even if automatic machines are now in control of the majority of production, including testing audio, camera quality, and software.

Information technology all starts with the motherboard

The commencement of the line begins with the creation of the phone's motherboard. Huawei's machines create two motherboards at the aforementioned time.

First, the top is printed on, then it rolls over and the bottom is printed. Finally, the motherboard is split in ii so it can exist placed on the backside of the phone.

In one case the motherboard is soldered, laser printed and separate, information technology's transported to where Huawei says, "components" are fitted. These components range from the phone's processor, memory chips, and diverse other parts that allow the device to function.

Huawei said the P20's motherboard features 1,200 components, but that number varies for different phones and what each device is capable of doing.

The bottom half of each telephone is so swiftly processed through conveyor belts and basic testing software is added.

From motherboard to x-hours of reliability testing

At this point in the process, Huawei adds fixtures on the back of the phone such as the photographic camera, the flash, the antenna, the modem, and the bombardment. This also includes the smartphone's brandish and other parts.

Huawei said each phone goes through a machine-controlled reliability-test.

The P20 specifically is put through 10-hours of reliability testing, says Huawei. The reliability test includes diverse tasks like testing the battery, idle time, the menstruum it takes to communicate with the phone and a temperature test.

Other reliability tests include testing the handset in different environments, keypad lifetime, touch screen testing and sound tests.

At this point, Huawei's final EMUI software is added to the device, and factory workers perform the physical testing of each telephone.

A guy who makes telephone calls, a screen protector dude and terminal associates guy

After the telephone goes through hours of reliability tests, information technology gets into the hands of several manufacturing plant workers that have very different jobs.

Ane person is in accuse of turning the phone on and making certain the buttons office. Another individual sits in a soundproof room and tests the audio of each telephone.

Next, another Huawei production line employee is in charge of putting on that plastic screen protector that we all are too afraid to peel off.

The telephone is manually placed in a box that is prefilled with the charger, headphones, charging cables and any else a smartphone typically comes with.

Each box slides through to become secured with plastic and some other factory worker ensures each box is up to par and placed in a shipping container. Ten P20s fit in one box earlier information technology gets sealed off and is sent to a facility to be shipped to buyers.

That telephone then gets delivered to the thousands of stores around the world and finally to a consumer.

Amusingly, by the end of the tour, the one thing that I really wished I had was the power to rent the factory work in charge of perfectly putting on a screen protector whenever I got a new phone.