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 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.”