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A Look Inside Apple's Wireless Testing Facilities

claus1225 said:
the best testing facility is real world
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Not always true. The real world might tell you there is a problem. A good lab will let you isolate each variable making it much easier to find what the problem is and quantify it.

You need in vitro and in vivo testing.
 
Perhaps Apple should have spent the money building a walled ghetto so they could test the phone in a real world setting. I mean, I don't know anyone who makes calls from a room with blue bits sticking out the walls.
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i'm really not all that impressed. even Consumer Reports had a nicer testing room than that for their tests!!!

oh wait, NO THEY DIDN'T 🙄
 
claus1225 said:
the best testing facility is real world
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What do you call a van that drives around town? Kinda real world, right? Well, steve mentioned that they do indeed have a testing van, which I assume does exactly that. So, people, at least watch the video, because if you say that they didn't test it in the real world, then you are ignorant, because they did. Also, i'm sure that the iPhone that was lost in a bar was a part of a fleet of iPhones in 3gs disguises out for testing, which is as real world as it gets imo.
 
res1233 said:
What do you call a van that drives around town? Kinda real world, right? Well, steve mentioned that they do indeed have a testing van, which I assume does exactly that.
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i dunno, if the van is based out of GA, it may be parked out back and up on bricks 😀

(i live in GA, so i can say that)
 
After seeing this, consumer reports must be ashamed to even talk - did you see their testing equipment, I think I used to do physics experiments in high-school using those 11 years ago. Anyone who believe in CS conclusion should feel pretty dumb as well
 
nkawtg72 said:
i dunno, if the van is based out of GA, it may be parked out back and up on bricks 😀

(i live in GA, so i can say that)
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I've seen that... But i always wondered why they didn't just leave it on its wheels, i mean, wouldn't that be easier that propping it up on bricks?
 
iphonetester said:
After seeing this, consumer reports must be ashamed to even talk - did you see their testing equipment, I think I used to do physics experiments in high-school using those 11 years ago. Anyone who believe in CS conclusion should feel pretty dumb as well
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As long as their equipment is consistent across the phones they test there really isn't a problem with their conclusions. If you think that the Apple testing facility was designed to test the same things that CS was testing then you've fallen hook line and sinker for the steve jobs reality distortion field. It's exactly why this media event was called today.
 
I wish there was a way to tally how many of the folks complaining about the issue actually own an iphone 4. I only know one person who is actually dissatisfied with the phone, and in my line of work, i get to know a lot of people who own them.
 
iObject said:
my question is where did they build the rooms...on the current campus?

and rubberbands? really?
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You should go invest in a facility like this, pay salaries, then see if maybe you will find that using simple items like rubber-bands will save you thousands of dollars and precious time before a deadline.
 
knewsom said:
Whoah, Steve Jobs really IS Willie Wonka!!!!!! 😱
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Steve is the closest to Willie Wonka there is since Ron Popeil passed away.

I have worked in EM test facilities before but this is damn impressive. I haven't seen anything like this outside an independent test lab.

I'm very curious to see if they lease time in this lab to anyone else. I know a few companies that would gladly spend a few thousand a day for a facility like that.
 
gibbz said:
Again, read here and they describe every way in which it is tested.
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and just WHERE in all the crap does it say they tried it in a car.. does their $100mill room drive through tunnels like cars do.. go up and down elevators..did they drop the phone a few times to see just how well it still works after that..(although it would land on blue foam)

umm..NO!

so just how testing in the blue room does it come to EVERY DAY user use?

Apples own internal memo to apple care staff on the situation had a paragraph stating "DO NOT GIVE BUMPERS WAY" and what are they doing now?.. all this was just some distraction because if there wasn't a problem why give away bumpers.. and if there is a problem is that why they are giving them away.. they have not answered the question truly
 
Full of Win said:
I'm a bit surprised that Apple would make a phone that cannot be used in the left hand by many w/o a case....but here we are.
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Looks like for every 1% who cannot use it, there are maybe 10% who find that the i4 works better for them (I can get a connection with my i4 where my 3GS couldn't.) Sounds like a great engineering trade-off to me.

What Apple didn't realize was that that first 1% were all fanatical blog commentators. 😱

BTW - Historical note: According to an Apple (very) old-timer, Apple's first RF test facility was a couple antennas and a card table sitting on a concrete pad in an open pasture out by Half Moon Bay.

They've come a very long way.
 
$100 million for foam?

So exactly how does a bunch of foam lined chambers cost $100 million. No wonder the Droid X is $100.00 less. And how exactly does it not make the antenna loose decibels when holding the phone with the death grip? Sounds a bit like what people are calling the Willie Wonka syndrome is actually real in this case. Cheer up Charlie, Mr. Slugworth actually works for Apple. But since you touched the fizzy lifting drink antenna, you get nothing! You lose! Good day, sir!
 
...even Apple's PR representatives on the tour had never visited it before...
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And why would a PR representative have any reason to visit such an engineering lab, anyway?

I worked as engineering-level tech support at Intel, and while I did technically have access to some serious hardware testing labs (the shock/vibe test lab, for example,) I never had a reason to go, even though it was in the same building. While yes, the rooms may be "required access only", a PR person wouldn't really have any reason to be there, anyway.

For example, I know that the PR person who accompanied a Tom's Hardware reporter through Intel's RF lab (along with the rest of the facility,) had never seen the inside of the lab before. And that's not even that secure a lab.
 
CFreymarc said:
I'm very curious to see if they lease time in this lab to anyone else. I know a few companies that would gladly spend a few thousand a day for a facility like that.
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Probably not. Apple is too careful with their secrets.

But it's Silicon Valley. There are other large RF test chambers owned by other aerospace and tech companies just a few miles away. I've been in at least one (many many years ago), high ceiling, copper door, foam coned walls, and all.
 
Yea i liked Steve's jab at consumer reports "we have all of our equipment outside of the room." CS needs to take a look at these pictures and step their game up. That being said come on Apple $100M+ investment for antenna research and still release a phone that can easily 'antennagate' (that just sounds stupid). Yes i know Steve all phones do this. But this iPhone does alot more and easier. Why not put the connecting gap for the two antennas on the top, there even is a gap. most of the time people aren't not holding their phone in landscape (well at least making a phone call). Oh well as long as the pros out wait the cons.
BTW they should have just waited on this update and fixed the proximity sensor. the only reason the release it was because they said they'd release an update 'in a couple of weeks'. And the new bar display looks stupid. I preferred the nice +1 slope of the bars.
 
I kind of want to make an iPhone game out of this. You play as Jason Chen running around from shady test chamber to shady test chamber, avoiding falling into spike pits while also trying to reproduce the signal issue. You only have a limited amount of time to reproduce the signal problem, as a killer Robo Steve Jobs with laser beam eyes is chasing after you. Avoid the falls, reproduce the issue, upload it to YouTube and escape the facilities before it's too late!

Who wants to buy me a dev license? Lol. Also I only kind of know Qbasic, Pascal, VB, HTML and Javascript. So Objective C? Hmmm. But I do know Lightwave and Photoshop. Any takers? Haha! 😀
 
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