Develop Your Own Android Smartphone?

[AppsRUs]

How much (estimate) would it cost one to develop their own Android smartphone device?

 

[valorian]

You could be looking at possibly hundreds of thousands. If you are not able to do all the designing yourself you would need to pay someone. Then there are tooling costs.

Without having your own Electronics company I don't see how this is possible.

For starters, you would need someone to design the circuit boards needed. IF you were able to get this done you would need to find a company to built the circuit boards. Circuit board companies will not build just one circuit board.

Then there is the software side. If you cannot write the software yourself you will need to hire someone.

 

[Sarrith]

You could be looking at possibly hundreds of thousands.

best just stick with the verizon, att, sprint, tmobile....or even walmart then

 

[rui-no-onna]

best just stick with the verizon, att, sprint, tmobile....or even walmart then

Separate things. Verizon, AT&T, Sprint & T-Mobile offer service. They don't make phones and there are plenty of phones not offered by these carriers that can be bought unlocked.

As for the cost, I'd estimate in the thousands or tens of thousands on the low-end to develop. No idea what's the minimum or how much it would cost to manufacture.

 

[AppsRUs]

Oh okay. Cool.

Was just wondering. Thank you!

 

[mikedt]

Draw up the exact specs of what you require, go to a Shenzhen tech company with a lot of money($100,000s USD), and they'll make it for you.

 

[someone3974]

Yeah, thanks. I am also wondering about this question.

 

[Demache]

Let's put it this way, you're better off working on a well documented device you can buy off the shelf. If you wanted to do it yourself, it would be a literal DIY project. You would need to layout, buy, and assemble the hardware (usually engineer grade stuff), you would need to design the firmware (so it can actually turn on and boot), and actually build the OS. Then you would need to get approval from the FCC and other agencies to ensure the device is legal to use. That would be all the man hours, forgetting about the cost.

Yeah, this would be no small project you could do on the weekends. There is a good reason that we stick to commodity hardware. It takes months for entire teams of people working full time to design a smartphone.