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The Undercover Report on How the New iPhone 5 Is Made Inside a Foxconn Factory

MIC gadget: A Shanghai Evening Post reporter went undercover inside the Tai Yuan Foxconn factory that is manufacturing the iPhone 5. Due to the terrible working conditions, he stayed only ten days, keeping a diary along the way. MIC gadget posted a translation of the original Chinese article, along with its photos. The article is […]

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DS

Datamation Staff

Sep 12, 2012

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MIC gadget: A Shanghai Evening Post reporter went undercover inside the Tai Yuan Foxconn factory that is manufacturing the iPhone 5. Due to the terrible working conditions, he stayed only ten days, keeping a diary along the way. MIC gadget posted a translation of the original Chinese article, along with its photos. The article is lengthy, but highlights include the following:

Day One: “The first night sleeping at Foxconn dormitory is a nightmare. The whole dormitory smells like garbage when I walked in. It’s a mixed of overnight garbage smell plus dirty sweat and foam smell. Outside every room was fully piled up with uncleared trash. When I opened my wardrobe, lots of cockroaches crawl out from inside and the bedsheets that are being distributed to every new workers are full of dirts and ashes.”
Days Three to Six: “We are being distributed with a checklist with only 13 rewards policies but over 70 penalties policies. The instructor said: ‘You might feel uncomfortable of how we treat you, but this is all for your own good.'”
Days Eight to Ten: “By my own calculations, I have to mark five iPhone plates every minute, at least. For every 10 hours, I have to accomplish 3,000 iPhone 5 back plates. There are total 4 production lines in charge of this process, 12 workers in every line. Each line can produce 36,000 iPhone 5 back plates in half a day.”