This is what you see and use. Use it to make phone calls on cellular network, take pictures, listen to music, watch HD videos, scroll and troll maybe. Record voices of loved ones. Maybe, make payments at the store by tapping your phone, use it as GPS to navigate your way through unknown places.

Isn’t it amazing, a small device can perform all these functions. These all require different hardware components and are not only software features. It is almost magical that a phone can perform all these functions.

Did you know that the iPhone enclosure is made up of mostly glass! Even the backside! The enclosure also uses titanium or aluminium depending upon the model. This is the metal and glass in your hand right now. The part you touch most and think about least.

Titanium is sourced from China, Japan, Russia, or Kazakhstan. Glass from Corning (US). The enclosure is manufactured mostly by Foxconn or Pegatron.

Less exposed than most of this list, but still worth knowing. Even the metal and glass you are holding has its own supply chain behind it!

This is the brain. The logic processor that controls everything, all hardware, sensors and software. Every time a new version of iPhone comes out, apart from the physical features, the core processor undergoes a change. The A16 pictured here was used in iPhone 14 Pro and base iPhone 15 models.

This chip is what makes your phone feel fast. Every tap, every photo edit, every app you open runs through here.

The chip is designed in the US, fabricated in Taiwan, by the world’s biggest contract chip manufacturer TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company).

Remember the first touchscreen phones? How you had to press the screen a bit hard for it to work? The new screens are way more responsive. A bit annoying at times.

Behind the glass enclosure is a complex layer of microscopic wire grid that tells the coordinates of the touch to the processor. The screen is brightly lit by LEDs (similar to OLED TVs).

These screens are mostly manufactured by Samsung (which is competition!) and LG (another competition!) in South Korea.

The demand for memory chips has been so high that has driven the memory costs over the roof. In the last 12 months, the memory costs have increased 5-6 times.

The higher the storage capacity of the iPhone, higher the costs. This is the 256GB chip that stores all your photos, documents, videos or reels that you save!

When the first few generations of mobile phones were launched, telephony was the core purpose and functionality. I remember many earlier discussions about how mobile voice quality will always be inferior to carrier grade wired telephony!

The evolution is interesting too, first came voice, then data over voice and then the flip – voice over data. More and more mobile communication has become about data than voice.

There was time when a phone’s battery would last days. It hardly lasts a day for a moderate user these days.  The chemistry inside depends on materials mined and refined thousands of kilometres apart from each other.

Cobalt is sourced from DR Congo, lithium from Chile, Argentina, Bolivia, and graphite processed in China.

China and South Korea OEM battery manufacturing companies are the major suppliers of these batteries.

Now with a smartphone camera, everyone with a phone is a photographer. Multiple lenses, better picture quality is a huge selling point for new models.

Digital cameras depend upon light falling through the optical lens on a sensor. These sensors capture light and then convert them to pixels by an image processor.

Largan Precision in Taiwan is the largest smartphone optical lens supplier in the world. Sony in Japan, manufactures the image sensor.

The gyroscope has been a key component of the iPhone (and other smartphones) from the first-generation phones. They are needed for tilt, screen rotation and are also used in crash detection features.

Early iPhones had sensors provided by ST Microelectronics based out of Switzerland and manufactured in Italy. The new combined gyro-accelerometer chips are manufactured by Bosch Sensortec in Germany.

While originally used for Apple Pay, these chips are now used for transit apps, secure access and even car keys. They use a very short-range radio signal to communicate.

NXP Semiconductors, a Dutch company is the main manufacturer, with global manufacturing supply chain.

The main character. This is where the journey of every electronic component starts. Fun fact: silicon Valley has no silicon; it is called so because that is where the early semiconductor companies started making the ICs (Integrated Circuit).

Quartzite (Quartz Sandstone) from North Carolina, US, China or Brazil is converted to Metallurgical Grade Silicon (98% silicon). 70% of this process takes place in China. The conversion to electronics grade silicon takes place by a specialised chemical process in Germany, Japan or US.

If you have followed so far, you may be wondering, how is silicon wafer converted to an electronic circuit. A key process in that is lithography. The wafer is coated in photoresist and loaded into a multi-hundred-million-dollar lithography machine made by ASML (Netherlands). The ASML machine uses Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) light to project the master circuit designs from the photomasks onto the wafer, printing lines that are only a few nanometers wide.

ASML has no serious competition. Other companies and countries are looking at alternative technologies to imprint the circuit on the wafer.

Yes, iPhone manufacturing involves gases! A key part of lithography is etching using the fluorinated gases, such as Nitrogen Trifluoride (NF₃).

Neon was primarily made semiconductor grade by Ukraine before the conflict. Interestingly the neon to Ukraine was supplied by Russia as a by-product of old steel mills.

There are some minerals that are directly used in the iPhone. Let’s talk about two. gallium and tungsten.

Gallium is used as gallium arsenide inside 5G chips as it can handle the high frequency radio waves much better than its silicon counterpart. It is also used by surface emitting laser used by the FaceID chip.

Tungsten is used for the vibration function of iPhone. This is what generates the snappy thuds when the phone vibrates.

Both gallium and tungsten are mostly sourced from China (80-90%).