Here at Hijinks Inc. we tout ourselves as being ‘a technology blog focusing on reviews and tutorials,’ and I’ve yet to post anything really technology related. Sure, I cover the entertainment stuff, so that’s kind of a built in excuse, but when given the chance, I like to get in with the tech-y stuff as well.
This is making the rounds in the blogosphere today, and I found it interesting. These are some pictures of Apple’s $100 million iPhone testing facility, all for a product that gets released with flaws, you think they would’ve noticed the phone not working. Here’s the statement Apple released with these images:
Apple never releases a product without thoroughly testing it first. To do this, we built our multimillion-dollar antenna design and test labs. These labs feature 17 different antenna characterization chambers (or anechoic chambers) designed to accurately measure antenna and wireless performance.
Our anechoic chambers are connected to sophisticated equipment that simulates cellular base stations, Wi-Fi networks, Bluetooth devices — even GPS satellites. These chambers measure performance in free space, in the presence of materials simulating human tissue (“phantom” heads and hands, for example), and in use by human subjects. Over a one- to two-year development cycle, Apple engineers spend thousands of hours performing antenna and wireless testing in the lab.
Apple engineers tested iPhone 4 in a variety of scenarios, environments, and conditions in order to gauge performance. They spent thousands of hours in cities in the U.S. and throughout the world testing iPhone 4 call quality, dropped-call performance, call origination and termination, and in-service time. They tested iPhone 4 while stationary, at high and low speeds, and in urban, dense urban, and highway environments. In low-coverage areas and good-coverage areas, during peak and off-peak hours — iPhone 4 was field-tested in nearly every possible coverage scenario across different vendor and carrier equipment all over the world.
You can see the rest of the images after the jump. (more…)