I made my own iPhone from a block of aluminum, which took me over a year. As far as I know, this is the first time anyone has done anything like this and shared their process. I made a video about my journey.
This is the start of a revolution. Owning our phones shouldn’t just mean being able to hold them in our hands. Not only should we be able to repair them, we should be able to modify them to look however we want, just like our cars and our PCs. This project is a small but important step towards that dream.
I am available for interviews and happy to jump on a video call or answer questions via email anytime. Email me at scotty@strangeparts.com. I can also deliver high quality recorded 4k video of interviews on a tight deadlines. I am available for in-person interviews in Denver and open to discussing travel to other locations for in-person interviews.
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I made my own iPhone from a block of aluminum, which took me over a year. As far as I know, this is the first time anyone has done anything like this and shared their process.
In January 2023, I started trying to machine my own iPhone from a block of aluminum. The goal was for this to be a stepping stone for other more ambitious projects. One of the biggest hurdles I’ve had with projects like adding the headphone jack back to the iPhone was trying to fit everything inside the Apple made housing. If only I could make my own, then I could easily modify it to give me room where I needed it.
But I realized not only that, I could start a movement of people modifying their own phones, similar to how we modify our cars and build custom PCs. Owning something doesn’t just mean being able to hold it in your hand. As the right to repair movement has advocated for a long time now, it also means being able to repair it yourself, or take it to a third-party repair shop. So why shouldn’t it also mean being able to modify it, to look however you want?
So with a small desktop CNC mill, I decided to dive in and try – after all, how hard could it be?
It turns out, really really hard. But definitely possible.
FAQ
Q: Who are you?
A: I’m Scotty Allen. I’m an American engineer, entrepreneur, hacker, and video creator. I’ve worked at Google and several other prominent Silicon Valley startups. Prior to COVID, I traveled the world full time for five years, eventually spending the majority of my time in Shenzhen, China. I explored the electronics manufacturing scene there – the industrial markets, factories, and back alleys where the world’s electronics are made.
I started Strange Parts to tell stories about my adventures. It’s been my full time job since the first video I made back in 2017.
Since the start of COVID, I’ve relocated back to the US, settling in the mountains outside of Denver, Colorado. I still take trips back to China and other countries regularly for adventures and to make videos.
Q: What else have you done?
A: Previous projects of mine include:
- Building my own iPhone from parts purchased in the electronics markets in Shenzhen, China (video, press page)
- Adding the headphone jack back to the iPhone (video, press page)
- Building my own Android phone from parts purchased in the electronics markets in Shenzhen, China (video)
- Upgrading the storage on an iPhone by swapping out the from 16GB to 128GB (video)
- Showing the process of making aftermarket iPhone batteries inside a giant Chinese factory (video)
Q: How long did this project take you?
A: About a year
Q: How long does it take to mill a single iphone?
A: About 20 hours of machine time, with a few more hours for switching out fixtures and bits. It takes an additional couple of hours to fully assemble the rest of the phone.
Q: How much have you spent on this?
A: I haven’t kept close track, but the Carvera CNC mill I’m using is around $5k, and I’ve spent probably $5-10k in materials. But the cost for materials for someone to replicate what I’ve done would be under $1000, as I’ve had to go through a lot of trial and error.
Q: Why do this?
A: A few different reasons:
Right to repair -> Right to modify
For the past 10 years, there has been a huge push by a broad coalition to ensure that consumers and independent repair technicians and repair shops have the information, parts, tools, and legal rights necessary to repair various devices, including smartphones. There have been huge strides in the right to repair movement within the past year. The right to modify our devices is simply a natural extension of the right to repair.
To customize our phones the way we do cars and desktop computers
America has a long history of customizing cars – one that is broadly celebrated and protected by the legal system. Customizing your smartphone should be no different. However, up until now, customizing your smartphone in all but the most basic of ways has been out of reach for pretty much everyone. There is a significant lack of aftermarket parts, and a serious lack of information on how to do it. I think it’s important to change that. If we truly own the devices that we carry in our pockets every day, we should not only be able to repair them ourselves, but we should be able to customize them and truly make them our own.
There is also a huge culture around building and modifying custom PC computers. This was largely born out of the early days of desktop computers, where parts were made by a number of different manufacturers, which required agreed upon standards for interoperability. It was also likely due to operating systems and software being sold separately, rather than being bundled with a prebuilt device that wasn’t made to be user upgradable. This has continued to this day, particularly in desktop pc gaming communities, who often spend large amounts of money and time to make their computers truly unique. This is supported by a number of manufacturers that make a wide variety of interoperable parts.
The same has not happened in the smartphone industry (yet).
To enable much more interesting modifications
Modifying the enclosure has always been a big barrier to modifications I want to make like adding the headphone jack or usb-c to an iPhone. I wanted to invest in a real solution to this. Not just for me, but for everyone else.
Here are a few examples of modifications this would enable:
- Phones made out of other materials
- Removable batteries
- Larger batteries
Q: Why an iPhone?
A: Because there are more iPhones per model than any other type of phone out there. Which means there are lots more parts available and a lot more old phones of a given model sitting discarded in desk drawers.
Q: Isn’t this taking money from Apple?
A: No – You still can’t make an iPhone from scratch. Every modified iPhone has to start with at least a genuine logic board that came out of a genuine iPhone purchased from Apple.
While there are aftermarket batteries and screens and enclosures, to my knowledge there are no aftermarket logic boards, the equivalent of a motherboard for smartphones. Based on years of immersing myself in the iphone and smartphone repair and refurbishing ecosystem in Shenzhen, China, there is no one producing aftermarket logic boards.
Not to mention, modern iPhones are based on processors that are custom manufactured by Apple, and it is not possible to purchase them new on the open market.
At best, I’m giving new life to parts from used or broken phones. We should celebrate this type of reuse. It is far more environmentally efficient than the chip-and-shred recycling that Apple requires from its certified recycling partners. (1)(2)
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