With 99% of Xiaomi phones being manufactured in the country, India has become a global leader in phone manufacturing.
New Delhi: Smartphones are an indispensable tool in our daily lives, but have you ever wondered about the fascinating processes behind their manufacturing? With 99% of Xiaomi phones being manufactured in the country, India has become a global leader in phone manufacturing. We got a chance to visit the factory and see the assembly phase of things going on at the launch of Xiaomi Redmi A2.
Company’s factory at Bawal, near Gurgaon, National Capital Region. Getting off the bus in the sweltering heat of the industrial city, I remembered how close we are to Rajasthan, a mostly desert state. We were first taken to the SMT (Surface Mount Technology) plant of the factory, where we were asked to wear factory overalls and shoe covers before examining us. Hundreds of laborers come here every day following this.
SMT plants were enormous, with endless rows of machines buzzing and beeping while processing hundreds of PCBs (printed circuit boards) every hour. Surface mount technology is the method used to mount electrical components directly onto a PCB.
Here the roles of the workers looked simple – loading the JIAs into the machine and making sure each unit was in order before passing it on to the next machine. Various components on board handled heavy lifting machines like soldering, optical etc.
Obviously, since the entire factory is more of an assembly plant than a true manufacturing unit, most of the small components are wrapped in transparent packages that are not actually produced here. It was the job of the SMT plant to simply assemble them. The next stop was an assembly plant that puts together finished components like cameras, motherboards, batteries, displays. Unlike the SMT plant, most of the processes were automated due to their complexity and the size of the components, leaving the assembly plant with a large workforce. They did not talk to each other, probably with the goal of maximizing productivity.
Workers wore red armbands indicating their jobs and the components they handled. Occasionally, a ‘team leader’ can be seen patrolling the armband lines, ready to assist junior workers when needed.
The camera assembly procedure attracted me the most. The camera module is one of the complex components of a mobile phone, multiple lenses cooperate to capture the best pictures. To add it, a special settings is required. The inside humidifiers run continuously to prevent dust from entering the lenses. The factory tour guide informed Indian Express.com.
Another particularly curious process to watch was the ‘aging test’. Assembled phones were tested for six hours in a special room to check their hardware performance. The hardware includes speakers, therefore, the speaker unit of all phones works continuously at maximum volume. The person in charge of the aging test was wearing protective gear to maintain his vitals. I could not last 5 minutes in the room, it was a rattling sound.
Finally, we come to the most exciting part of smartphone research. Durability Testing. I was surprised to find an entire room devoted to the process, a suite of equipment designed to rigorously test phone builds before they are given the green light for mass production. Starting at Rs 5,999, the Redmi A2 was launched in India on May 19 with 2 years warranty.
