Inside a Cell Phone

On a "complexity per cubic inch" scale, cell phones are some of the most intricate devices people use on a daily basis. Modern cell phones can process millions of calculations per second in order to compress and decompress the voice stream. If you have read How Cell Phones Work, you know that they can transmit and receive on hundreds of FM channels, switching channels in sync with base stations as the phone moves between cells.

If you ever take a cell phone apart you will find that it contains just a few individual parts:

A microscopic ­A speaker An LCD or plasma display A keyboard not unlike the one we saw in a TV remote control An antenna A battery An amazing circuit board containing the guts of the phone The circuit board is the heart of the system.