Before you were galavanting around town like King Muck with your Nokia 8800 Arte draped oh so casually from your bejewelled hand, the Nokia phone had a very different life. Here for the first time, is the untold story of how a microchip became the little phone that could.

Picture 1. The electronic components of the phones are sourced from external mass suppliers and brought to one of nine factories that produce the phones. These components are delivered and attached to tape reels in protective circular plastic cases. The circuit board is inserted into a “paste printing machine” which apples a layer of solder paste. The tape reels and accompanying electronic components are fed into “pick-and-place machines” which separate the components from their protective tape and paste them in to their assigned places in the printed circuit board. The printed circuit boards which contain the newly added components then travel through a series of pick-and-place machines before being inserted into an oven which ‘melts’ the components to the circuit board.

Picture 2. Following this the circuit boards are loaded on to tracks before undergoing their first quality test which confirms that basic software is installed into programmable components. A robotic arm removes the circuit board from the tracks and places the circuit boards in a bay where low-level settings are configured in electronic components. A series of tests that follows confirms the circuit board is perfect, in working order and correctly installed.

Picture 3. From here on in operations are mainly performed manually. Delicate components such as LCD screens and digital camera components are added, assembled and tested, and completed circuit boards are sandwiched between structural frames and the outer shell applied.

Picture 4. From menu installation to start-up screens to the addition of IMEI numbers, the final stages convert what is essentially a mess of electronic components into a usable communications product. A last diagnostic test is performed on both the software and the battery and a final visual inspection is performed. Once all the assembly and testing is completed phones are de-ionized to remove electrical charge and dust before being hand boxed, placed in the retail box with appropriate accessories and logged into a tracking system using a barcode reader.

Picture 5. The phones are bexed and placed in containers to be distributed globally - from Finland to your door.