Torture chamber for iPhone 6
A few blocks from Apple's posh office in Cupertino, California, is an unremarkable building. Inside is the last place on earth you would want to be if you had an iPhone. This is where Apple exposes new phone models to various real-world factors: drops, pressure, and so on. In general, this is a real torture chamber for the iPhone. Access to "mere mortals" in this building is ordered, but since the hype has begun about the fact that the new iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+ bend, Apple has made an exception.
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1. Apple has tested 30,000 iPhone 6 phones and is confident that this model is very durable. The chassis is made from steel/titanium inserts designed to reinforce potential stress points, a special blend of Apple-created aluminum, and ion-strengthened glass.
2. But most importantly, Apple claims that the iPhone 6 has been tested in hundreds of tests, as well as in the pockets of thousands of Apple employees.
3. A total of 15,000 iPhone 6s and 15,000 iPhone 6+ were tested. The company notes that this is their most tested product to date.
4. Apple Senior Vice President Dan Riccio: "As we add more and more new features, we need to find a way to break them before users do it themselves."
5. The iPhone 6 is tested for a variety of stresses, including those it experiences when it's in your pocket and flexes. The idea is to give phones a lifetime experience that doesn't require a lifetime.
6. To do this, numerous devices with unflappable calmness press on various parts and places of the phone again and again.
7. In a similar way, Microsoft tested parts in their Xbox One. About what voltage the new iPhone can withstand, Apple is silent. This is a company secret.
8. However, the company shared that during the “flexion” test, the iPhone withstood a weight of up to 25 kg on the screen.
9. There is a set of weights next to the testing machine, but Rikkio claims that this is not the full weight that the iPhone can support. Rather, it is the weight that the phone can "bounce back". But even he has limitations.
10. “The bottom line is that if you apply enough force to bend an iPhone — or any other phone — it will deform,” Rikchio says. In addition to the "three-point" weight, iPhones are subjected to a so-called "sitting test" - a test of the stress and pressure that the iPhone experiences when it is carried in a pocket.
11. Moreover, a variety of tests are being carried out. For example, the iPhone is tested in conditions where people sit on a soft surface. It also considers the “worst-case scenario” where a person puts the iPhone in the back pocket of skinny jeans and sits on a hard surface at an angle.
12. There is also a test for "twisting". The iPhone 6 and iPhone 6+, as well as the MacBook Air, are twisted from one end to the other.
13. And so - thousands of times. Again and again.
14. This is just one factory used by Apple. Most of all inspection and testing takes place at factories in China, where the company's products go through the final stages before entering mass production.
15. The last time Apple allowed “mere mortals” to look into the torture chamber was in 2010 for the iPhone 4. Shortly after its release, users discovered that if you squeeze the phone too hard, the signal strength is weakened.
16. After holding a press conference, Apple let a small number of journalists into the “black laboratory”, where these phones were tested in jamming chambers.
17. This time - no conferences. Apple representatives simply asked people with bent phones to bring them to one of the stores for inspection.
18. “As we expected, these are very rare occurrences during normal use of the device,” says Phil Schiller, senior vice president of global marketing.
19. “In this case, we advise customers to contact technical support. If you used the phone correctly, but it still bent, then you will have it replaced or repaired under warranty.
Keywords: Apple iPhone