TL;DR
- Nothing has posted a video detailing how it would make YouTuber MKBHD’s dream smartphone.
- The theoretical phone would have a Snapdragon 8 Elite chip, a 6,000mAh battery, and the S24 Ultra’s rear cameras.
- The bill of materials totals $500, but there are additional costs associated with developing and producing a smartphone.
What would your dream smartphone look like? This is a question Nothing recently posed to YouTuber Marques ‘MKBHD’ Brownlee. The mobile brand didn’t actually make this phone, but it has detailed the development and cost of such a device.
Nothing posted a video on YouTube revealing this process. It turns out Brownlee’s theoretical phone would have a Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, a 6,000mAh battery, 65W wired and 15W wireless charging, and a 6.1-inch version of the Galaxy S24 Ultra‘s OLED screen (120Hz LTPO, QHD+, anti-glare, 2,600 nits peak brightness). The device would also feature 1TB of storage and 16GB of RAM.
Moving to the cameras, the YouTuber requested the Galaxy S24 Ultra’s camera hardware paired with iPhone 16 Pro software. This phone would also feature the Pixel 9 Pro line’s 50MP selfie camera.
Nothing also enlisted the help of community member Concept Central to create renders of this theoretical phone. Check out the images below. Curiously, we don’t see the Glyph lighting system. The phone also seems pretty thin for a device with a 6,000mAh battery and its quad rear camera system.
What would this phone actually cost?
The smartphone maker also revealed a bill of materials (BOM), breaking down the cost of each component. Nothing cautioned that these were rough figures and that mobile brands can negotiate different prices with suppliers, especially if they’re producing a ton of phones. Check it out below.
| Component | Cost |
|---|---|
|
Snapdragon 8 Elite chip |
$190 |
|
1TB UFS storage/16GB LPDDR5X RAM |
$90 |
|
6,000mAh battery with 65W wired/15W wireless charging |
$13 |
|
6.1-inch QHD+ OLED screen (LTPO, 120Hz) |
$35 |
|
Galaxy S24 Ultra rear cameras/Pixel 9 Pro selfie camera |
$80 |
|
Electronics (motherboard, speaker, etc) |
$15 |
|
Packaging (e.g. cables, manuals) |
$30 |
|
Design materials (glass back panel, decorations) |
$8 |
|
Structural parts (frame, screws, buttons, etc) |
$10 |
|
Patents and licensing |
$29 |
|
Total cost |
$500 |
This results in a total BOM of $500, which sounds really cheap, but smartphones often have other costs associated with them. These include research and development costs and marketing fees. This $500 figure also doesn’t take profits into account. Furthermore, Nothing cited a recent smartphone release and said the R&D process could cost roughly $20 million.
Nothing founder Carl Pei also pointed to other hidden costs that were ultimately left off the list, such as software engineers if Brownlee wanted his own operating system, staff and resources to provide system updates, and a premium on production costs if you’re an upstart brand.
