On Hackaday, Alasdair Allan documents the ingenious techniques employed in the creation of the Beat the Boss Phone, a tiny, lozenge-shaped phone (with a voice-changer) that is designed to be smuggled past the BOSS metal detectors used in UK prisons in the rectums of prisoners.
Allan finds that the clever little suppository bears a striking resemblance to the $12 Gongkai phone that Bunnie Huang bought in a Shenzhen market stall in 2013 and then tore down. But the Beat the Boss is a lot smaller: "showing perhaps how the technology stack has matured over the last couple of years."
The front shell contains the rubberized keycaps as a separate insert, and another small speaker located above the screen that can be pried out with a craft knife—it’s glued into the shell, but the glue isn’t particularly sturdy.The main board is mostly covered by an RF shield, with the micro-SIM card slot just below it. Flipping it over we can see the small TFT screen, the keyboard, and some LEDs that light the keycaps up when the phone is in use. If you want to you can pry the white keyboard overlay up with a fingernail to reveal the circuit board underneath.
The screen itself is glued (tacked might be more accurate) down to the main board and can be gently pried up with a fingernail to reveal the connector ribbon cable which is soldered to the board. There are pretty much no connectors on the board, everything is soldered — or glued—directly to the PCB.
TEARING DOWN THE BOSS PHONE
[Alasdair Allan/Hackaday]
