Nick Barber: Ever imagined how your new cell phone will stand up to years of dialing, texting and the occasional fumble? Vendors do. Last week, Nokia, the world’s largest cell phone maker gave a glimpse of how it tests each new model before putting it to the market. The test lab here at Nokia’s R&D Center near San Diego, one of 10 around the world, is a chamber of horrors for cell phones.
The purpose of the lab isn’t just to break phones, though the engineers confess it can be a fun place to work. Their real job is to design devices that can’t be destroyed at least not in normal activities over a few years of use.
There are special machines and chambers for all sorts of scenarios. They open and close phones over and over, flipping or sliding until the hinges or sliders give out. This one takes the sim card in and out. This one presses the keys millions of times to make sure they keep working.
Mike Myers: Over here we give chemical testing for a lot of household chemicals. Actually the better we get on to your phone through your hands and the problems that happen actually. Staining is the one thing can gently happen and also cracking. So we have seen issues on early prototypes with improper plastic selection with use as you can see it. There is some problem here.
Nick Barber: These tests are different for every lab using household products specific to that region of the world. There are also chambers for simulating precise amounts of rain, heat and moisture.
Mike Myers: There is the damn heat tester, so let’s post all the stuff as everything goes in here. See it’s a 55C and 95 percent relative humidity, which is quite hotter, and you know, more humidity that you would want to be around. It’s kind of visible.
Nick Barber: For a long time?
Mike Myers: Yeah, yeah, for a long time.
Nick Barber: The ominous looking box can go from 40 below zero to a 125 degrees Celsius. The engineers bend glass until it snaps. Try to turn and candy bar handsets into flip phones, and flex the devices to find out what happens if you sit on your Nokia or worse. This machine is really a metal polisher but it’s designed to wear off the paint. This one bounces phones around in a pile of dust to make sure none gets inside. And these are like giant pants pockets.
Mike Myers: Chains, coins, keys, anything that you have in your pocket. The phone slipped in here is actually runs back and forth in a cycle and there’s evaluation of the codings, paints and all that thing.
Nick Barber: And then there are the drop tests. When something finally breaks, Nokia engineers do a detailed analysis of what went wrong, isolating components and using x-rays, 3D imaging, high speed cameras and microscopes, even electronic microscopes if necessary.
Sometimes they have to test the same model several times to pin down the real cause of the failure. Exactly how long is the phone supposed to last? Nokia wouldn’t say. Everything learned in these labs goes back to Nokia’s product development teams so that they can use the right materials, parts and designs in the final product.
With reporting by Steven Lawson in San Diego, I’m Nick Barber, IDG News Service.
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