Well it doesn't really .. that's what it cost Scotty doing it the way he did. He was making a video to highlight that phones live on after you throw them away. He probably wasn't trying to make a profit, he was trying to make an interesting movie.
If you visit the markets where he's buying you'll find a virtual disassembly line breaking down phones into component parts (to logic boards if they still work, and chips if they don't) followed by an assembly line of people making 'new' phones from those parts. The thing is that there are people in the "dodgy cell phone market" (people call it that) who are making a good living (by local norms) building iPhones, sometimes from scratch with recycled parts
Yep. In the video comments, he says he spent well over $1000. Justifies the $300 price tag by stating that he didn't need the $700+ worth of parts and tools he purchased.
> Strange Parts 4 hours ago
> Thanks for subscribing! I spent well over $1000, but a lot of that was parts and tools I didn't end up needing. I'd say it's probably around $300 worth of parts in the actual phone.
The extra parts cost was from a dead end where he was going to attempt to populate a bare PCB with the various chips etc. Eventually he found someone that told him just how many boards he'd have to make before he'd get a working board trying to do it by hand.
For what it's worth, he did pay for almost all of the assembly. He bought an assembled mainboard, and paid about 70 bucks for the assembly on the screen (in addition to what he already paid for parts).
I am actually surprised it cost this much to make custom.