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Leaked Photo Shows Dozens of iPhone 5C Devices Being Tested at iPhone Manufacturer Pegatron

charlituna said:
About half of them look like it, which is why I don't buy this photo as real

1. The chargers don't all look legit, no way would apple be okay with that
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The chargers in the photo are a mix of standard lightning cables and the diagnostics cable. The diagnostics cable has multiple small LED lights that can light up during diagnostic tests on the device, and the cable can also indicate a successful connection (passed its POST). The cables are especially useful in the factory.


The arrangement of devices here is messy, but Pegatron might not have its full-scale charging rig setup yet.
 
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malexandria said:
Went to a BB to buy the 128 GB iPad and the woman kept trying to talk me out of it telling me that I only "need" 32-GB, how it is more than enough. I always despise when sales people try and tell me what I "need." I know what I want, shut up and give it to me. Turned out they didn't have the 128 or 64 GB.
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Reason to avoid Best Buy#13354547869

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winston1236 said:
Boring. Looks just like the last four models.
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I have to admit all these smart phones look pretty much the same.Glass rectangle.A few buttons.

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smithrh said:
Sure, it can look like that in an operator environment. Seen that too; but that doesn't:

a) make it right

b) apply to a manufacturer

Manufacturers need to be working to a higher standard here.
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Oh the humanity!Loose wires!

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anshuvorty said:
Annnnnd I will say this once more: So much for doubling down on secrecy (overused, but still very much true)...
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I propose banning anyone that posts that.
It's just
stupid
not even SLIGHTLY funny
the very definition of not clever.

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iZac said:
Obviously my opinion is subjective and simply based on what I see around me (and Shanghai is a 1st tier city) but I don't think that the average Chinese consumer will consider the 5C as targeted toward them specifically, or that they're being belittled by being sold what some here will consider and 'inferior' product. It's just competing with the lower end of the market that they're already used to.

For every iPhone I see in people's hands, I see plenty of oversized samsungs on the metro and then a ton of cheapo android phones from local manufacturers. The ironic tendency is that the smallest girls normally carry the biggest phones. Everyone sits on the metro in a trance either watching video or playing random games. So phablets are also popular as a convergence device.

I still see tons of 4/4S's but that may just be historic, it may also be that it's a low priced inroad into the apple brand. I think the 5C will succeed simply because it's new, has a bigger screen than the 4/4S and comes in candy colours. I see a load of people that cover their phones in stickers on the back and home button so customisation is also quite popular. Like I mentioned, these are the kind of consumer who lives at home (most young Chinese seem to live with their parents up until they get married - so few expenses) and many have a low salary so saving 2000rmb on a 5S is a big deal.

I've also noticed that as many have mentioned - you often pay upfront for the phone - say 5000rmb goes into your phone account when you start the contact, then it gets nibbled away with every month of service (plus an additional top up for service) so the upfront fee for the device is quite important. There are of course different setups but this is how a friend of mine does it on China Unicom. 'Credit' for the average consumer seems hard to swing because (rightly or wrongly) corporations don't trust that a consumer won't try to screw them over by vanishing with a phone they haven't paid for.

On the flip side, consumers with disposable income will tend to buy the "best" model they can, simply because it has more prestige. These kind of people like many see the apple brand as more affluent than something made around the pacific rim. For them the gold one will surely sell incredibly well. - also the kind of people who buy macbook pros to run windows on -_-

That was kind of long and rambling - but I hope my humble POV is interesting.
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Thanks for your perspective!Many people comment knowing nothing about the subject.
 
mtneer said:
What kind of QC guy allows metal-on-metal contact for pre-market anodized metal parts? How would they even keep track of production lots in this mess? And having a guy run around, plug in and out of this rats nest of wires would sink throughput times to rock bottom. I would expect all testing to be in-situ; in specially designed handling kits for exactly pre-determined amounts of time.
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Unless these are early preproduction models,not destined for public sale.Which is almost certainly the case.

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charlituna said:
Yeah because Verizon is in charge of manufacture quality testing at a factory in China.

Sorry try again. This might be how Verizon tests phones after they bought them but you are in no position to speak as to how Apple or its partners do things.

If you even work for Verizon. Nature of the game, it's crazy easy to lie.
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Have you even read this thread?
 
Macdude2010 said:
I just want to point out that these could be the android knockoff called the Basic Bear. Considering that they look so alike, and they are black front/white back just like the Basic Bear.

http://techdy.com/shop/basic-bear/
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Wow...very interesting. Looking at the photo again, it's quite 'odd' that you can only see the left side (volume buttons) on one of the phones...and the photo just happens to be blurry enough that you can't see the buttons. Nor can you make out the shape on the home button. Good find!

While I now think the photo may be of Basic Bear phones, I still say the testing method is probably representative of Asian factories.
 
So how's about a touch of reality?

Firstly, for all Apple device testing the manufacturers do not throw them on a metal rack!

Secondly, where actual device testing is taking place it is usual for all the devices to be attached to multiple USB hubs attached to Mac Minis which are collecting the results - NOT power chargers.

Ask yourself why would "tests" be run plugged into a power charger - how do you think the results would be collected?

:apple:

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Also just to clarify Apple owns and imposes what tests are performed by any of their manufacturer. All this information is collected and owned by Apple.

Foxconn and Pegatron have strict contractual requirements to produce a product to a specific design by Apple. ALL FAT is performed using Apple test software linked to Apple systems.
 
Unorganised, chaotic and very unorthodox approach to testing. Somehow this does not add up at all. It's a mess.
 
Whats going on with some of those charges ends, they look like lightning into some other kind of block.
 
Pile of.

Couple of piles of garbage. Yay -- future landfill junk gadgets.
 
smithrh said:
Sure, it can look like that in an operator environment. Seen that too; but that doesn't:

a) make it right

b) apply to a manufacturer

Manufacturers need to be working to a higher standard here.
Click to expand...

Ummm, that's not how things work. Apple will provide a testing standard to their manufacturer. If that standard doesn't include how to line up the devices perfectly on a shelf, then the manufacturer are free to do whatever they want. They just provide a report to Apple.
 
ElTorro said:
I wonder if Xiaomi will sue Apple for blatantly copying their design.
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Unless the Xiaomi came out before the original iPhone, they have no standing to sue anyone. At this point, Apple has become the de facto design branch of the smartphone market. Everyone follows their cues and has been doing so for years.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that because I'm some Apple fanboy. It's just that plagiarism and followers bore me. I'd love to see some really original takes on the smart phone concept, but at this point, it's more or less a market full of Apple clones.
 
Roller said:
Agreed. I don't believe that testing of an Apple product would be done using a bunch of adapters plugged into power strips, with phones and cables in a tangled mess.
Click to expand...

I quoted only one comment but I'm talking to everyone with the same reaction.

Did you ever work in large manufacturing areas ? I've worked in one of our biggest manufacturers here and I have already initiated this kind of "low budget" test. Sometimes you need to work with what you have in front of you and you have a close deadline to honnor. In JIT (just in time), we're not talking in terms of days, weeks and months. We're talking in terms of hours and minutes.

You guys don't even know the reason of this test and how many iPhones they are supposed to put in there. Would you pay a thousand grands for a rack to test 100 iPhones, just so it looks professional on a picture that is not even supposed to be on the Internet ?
 
Big-TDI-Guy said:
There are more than two... :)

You think Apple manufacturers are dumb enough to pay for the OEM cables, too? ;)
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Perhaps Apple makes special cables for testing that aren't designed to rip/tear/break within 6 months like their normal cables.
 
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Macdude2010 said:
I just want to point out that these could be the android knockoff called the Basic Bear. Considering that they look so alike, and they are black front/white back just like the Basic Bear.

http://techdy.com/shop/basic-bear/
Click to expand...

Slight possibility, but probably not.

There's little evidence that techdy.com's Basic Bear pre-production units exist.

I just clicked that link and noticed they have HTC One look-alikes too with even the same model number etching:
http://techdy.com/shop/bear-pro/#prettyPhoto[product-gallery]/9/
http://media.gizmodo.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/HTC-One-review-speakers.jpg

So I'm inclined to believe techdy.com is either crazy good at copying, or they're only Photoshop experts.
 
charlituna said:
1. The chargers don't all look legit, no way would apple be okay with that
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I'm not sure -and neither can anyone that is not involved- know what kind of chargers Apple or their producers use. They might be simpler and less polished (so generic) looking than the end-consumer version. They might be ceritified in-production or R&D Apple chargers and lightning cables.

charlituna said:
2. Tossed about units, nope, not Apple standard. They are totally anal, they would demand nice tidy rows
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Nothing in R&D and pre-production is polished, anal and tidy. I don't know what you have seen of it, but it just isn't like that. This seems like a perfectly normal setup to test phones. Not production ones (I agree that these need to be tested differently due to scuffs etc.). This could be a pre-production setup or a production setup where different batches are tested agains each other.

charlituna said:
3. Seem to have them in different levels of testing, doesn't seem very Apple. Even if it's just that they were started in batches they would require it to be grouped in those tidy rows. Not a big mess
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In a test that might take several hours (not saying that this is) it doesn't really matter if the phones are somewhere else in the test cycle. In addition there is no way to see whether that is the case in this image. I agree that regardless of the testing it would be better to group the phones for easy identification and to have no influencing between them. But as someone else said, these guys are not paid a lot and probably do not get a lot of time to do this.

charlituna said:
4. Blog profiles can be faked
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That's true, but the amount of effort required to make this image fake, is far too much to benefit from. This is not a photoshop job and would require a lot of hardware preparation. Who would do that?

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mKizzo said:
Ummm, that's not how things work. Apple will provide a testing standard to their manufacturer. If that standard doesn't include how to line up the devices perfectly on a shelf, then the manufacturer are free to do whatever they want. They just provide a report to Apple.
Click to expand...

What people need to get out of their heads is that this is an in-production test setup that all phones that are sold would run through. IT IS NOT.

If this is a real image than it is a setup for R&D purposes, pre-production setup to test different configurations (e.g. thickness of shell or whatever) or a setup to test production-run batches. This is not the setup that the phone you bought would run through.

You can't blame anyone but there are a lot of people here that draw conclusions but have obviously never seen a real manufacturing process and the R&D and scale-up process that runs before it.
 
charlituna said:
What another company does isn't the same as knowing what Apple does. Even if this is Apple's style you really think with all their talk of quality etc they wouldn't have serious security in place to prevent this kind of photography so their sloppy looking methods are exposed.
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Sorry, don't mean to attack you personally but that is just nonsense. It's not Apple that produces these phones but subcontractors. These guys build Acer, HP and other hardware also.

I agree about the security, but with the kind of scales that Apple's iPhone has increased to, there is bound to be some leakage somewhere. There are tens of thousands of people involved, and the people that do the security checking are probably just as badly paid as the production-workers themselves.
 
So it probably exists!

Now to see if it is cheap enough to tempt me away from symbian.
 
powerstrokin said:
For example (different company) let's take the US Air Force. Many I'm sure would like to believe that because the way them present themselves to the public is professional and clean/neat, everything must be that way because it's the military, right?

NO!

You'd probably crap bricks if you knew how far from the truth that line of thinking is. I will not go into detail, but I'm telling you based on first hand knowledge that it isn't as squeeky clean as you're led to believe LOL...
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No kiddin huh, and human organization is more flawed than the image it projects whodda thunk it..

:rolleyes:
 
smithrh said:
Wow - this is terrible.

I've seen real mobile phone testing racks. Either this is fake, or these people have no idea of what they're doing.
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really, :rolleyes:
In real world scenario, this rack is closer to the environment an average person would use iPhone.
It's the worst case scenario testing.
 
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