Since its launch, Bphone seems to be in the heart of public opinion with a lot of praise and criticism, of which the most remarkable is that Bkav itself cannot design electronic circuits for Bphone because it is extremely difficult and expensive, out of the ability of Vietnamese engineers, Bkav might have bought the available reference designs.
Typically, semiconductor manufacturers such as Qualcomm, MediaTek, etc. will provide reference designs for smartphone manufacturers to help them reduce research costs on product design as well as shorten the time to bring products to the market. Bphone uses Qualcomm chipset, so this smartphone is suspected of using Qualcomm's reference design.
Facing this question, VnReview contacted Qualcomm and Qualcomm representative confirmed this was not true. In the reply email, Qualcomm confirmed: "Bkav designed Bphone using Qualcomm's high-end Snapdragon S800 (MSM8974AC-Snapdragon 801) chipset. Because of using S800, Bkav did not use the Qualcomm Reference Design (QRD). QRD currently only supports S200, S400, S600 chipsets".
According to VnReview’s research in an article in 2013 about Vietnam-labelled smartphones or Vietnam-branded smartphones, the use of reference design was a common practice in smartphone manufacturing industry. Chip makers like Mediatek and Qualcomm would provide the reference design of a high level finish, meaning it was possible to keep the board and mechanical structure intact, just change a little about the design to have a commercial product. Besides, there is also a machine that does not need any reference design, just use the available product and label the brand.
In the process of learning about smartphone production technology to write the above article, VnReview also noticed the fact that: reference designs were usually only available with low-configuration products, while in the high-end segment, there were no such designs. This could be seen in Qualcomm's chipset: S800 of Qualcomm was high-end chipset, so there was no QRD.
The reason that flagship smartphones cannot use reference design is because when using the reference design it is impossible to master the technology and optimize product features. For example, after choosing a sample design, the manufacturer wants to reduce the thinness of the product a bit, or wants to change the board lines to optimize the space, test a new feature, etc., then it is impossible due to depending on reference design.
In response to VnReview, Mr. Vu Thanh Thang, Bkav's vice president of hardware, affirmed: "Bkav does not use the reference design of Qualcomm, we design ourselves from the circuit diagram, printed circuit board PCB. It is true that the electronic circuit design for smartphone is very difficult, not to mention other issues such as mechanical design, template, etc. These difficulties are real, but Bkav has overcome it and that's why it took us for nearly 5 years to launch our first product".
Regarding how to build a supply chain of components while Bkav was a new manufacturer in the market, Mr. Thang affirmed: "Bkav has 10 years of manufacturing SmartHome so we have experience in working with the supply chain. As you can see, Bkav convinced the top partners, becoming the first company in Southeast Asia to have an agreement to integrate the newest and strongest mobile processors of Qualcomm, in addition to Sharp screen, Toshiba RAM, Corning's Gorilla Glass glass and more than 80 other partners across the globe, all partners are providing components for companies like Sony, Apple, Samsung, etc.".
Earlier, in response to the press around the agreement signed with Bkav, Mr. Thieu Phuong Nam, General Director of Indochina region of Qualcomm, said that Bkav had the right to use all Qualcomm's technology patents for their smartphones, similar to major brands in the world such as Samsung, HTC, etc.
Source: VnReview.vn
