By ian

Huaqiangbei is probably the largest electronics component market in the world. It’s why we’re here for Hacker Camp Shenzhen, it’s why most people are visiting. On day one we broke into four groups and toured the market. Everyone was introduced to guides’ favorite distributors, and we bought a few goodies along the way. Check the day one tour below.

After discussions and before the tour we hit the local Cantonese place for WAY too much food. Joe @ Arcbotics and Ian plan the tour route in the lower left.

The tour wound through the used cell phone markets and past the cell phone components market. Along the way we stopped at the ‘Hokkien Brothers’ shop for a few pre-arranged gifts: screw drivers and solvent dispenser bottles. This is where we buy all our tools, and many people on the tour found their way back here later for tools.

A group checks out the Qinsi pick and place machine on ‘fourth floor’ tool building. It’s very similar to the TM220.

You’ll buy a lot in Huaqiangbei, and it probably won’t fit in your luggage. Suzie shipper provides inexpensive air freight to most of the world, and she’s a must-meet stop on the tour.

Our final stop on the tour is the ‘dodgy cell phone market’. Here you find all sorts of oddities. From $10 credit card sized phones with OLED displays, to 3G replicas of giant 1980’s phones, to this surprise on we encountered accidently on the very last stand of the tour.

This little guy is clearly a MiPhoneK with a cute Android Robot logo.

Though a bit of alcohol reveals the Apple logo and something resembling an iPhone color running Android 4.x. For $40 it’s worth it for the show alone, but there’s some surprises inside we’ll reveal in a future tear down.

After the tour everyone headed back to their favorite stands to forage for treasure. We all exchanged part pr0n via WeChat, a message program that’s super popular in Asia.

Via Hacker Camp Shenzhen mini-site: Hacker Camp Shenzhen Day 1: Huaqiangbei market tour