Cell Phone Endurance Tests


Gone are the days when a phone would last you a lifetime and enter the days of glass covered mobile phones built to be sexy and sophisticated. With these new phones come new testing methods. Companies like Nokia are still dedicated to making the best phones possible and making them durable through vigorous testing. The example shown in the article, is simulating a phone dropping from a shirt pocket onto the floor. Nokia claims to use 200 endurance tests encompassing temperature, extreme usage (use this button pusher for you own test), physical drops, and exposure to humidity on each new model in their product line. Makes one wonder what other companies are using for their endurance tests. There’s video of the Nokia N8 Drop Test is after the break, and don’t forget to leave a comment if you know about other interesting test methods.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KcfvRfJeLPQ&w=470]

31 thoughts on “Cell Phone Endurance Tests

  1. I’ve always felt that Nokia phones were particularly durable. My previous handset was thrown out of a moving vehicle, dropped numerous times, submerged in water and baked or frozen when forgotten outside. I only had to replace the battery after 3 years, other than that it still worked fine!

  2. Well HaD, I found this post interesting. Feel free to continue posts that aren’t specifically hacks, as this kind of thing still intrigues those like myself.

    For gods sake pedants, are you really going to complain about every single post that isn’t 100% hack?!?

  3. This is in stark contrast to a company like Motorola, that doesn’t seem to do any testing on their phones and seem to pride themselves on their 80’s era button-press-lag and inability to withstand drops, humidity or regular use

    Note that I’m deliberately excluding the Droid, which, as far as I can tell is just built to the specs Google/Verizon demanded and not what the morons at Motorola thought was fit to release to the public (which is why HTC built one too)

  4. I wish Nokia would’ve put so much time into their software development as their hardware QA. Their softwares are river of fail especially ovi sute, ovi maps. Everyone crying about it but they don’t do a thing to make them better but the worst of the worst still that you need internet connection to use the maps…

  5. Proof that they think we have very tiny fingers to operate that despicable intendo “button”, where 5 are crammed into one. Intendo because you intend to do one thing, but it don’t work that way. Sleek strip “buttons” with hairline cracks to separate functions and titertoter buttons, yech! I played a Nintendo once for less than a minute, and put it down. Give me a fixed joystick or no joy. Iphone, a flat square peg in a ear shaped hole, designed to be dropped. Ergonomics gone, lets see em use a art design toilet seat!

  6. I was talking to a businessman from Dell at a job fair, and he told me about how when they were developing the streak he devised a test where different people would put the phone in their butt pocket and sit down and see if it did anything bad such as break or click buttons. The engineers too his idea and made a robotic butt with swappable butts in different shapes and sizes, and would also put different types of pants on it and adjust the pressure.

    I was inspired.

  7. totally hogwash, i thought a drop test would be someone actually dropping a phone on the ground, not spinning it around in a padded box, ‘cos its obviously a padded enclosure…try dropping the phone on hard pavement concrete and see what happens… so much for shelling out $$$ on something that will break on first impact.

  8. I am totally disappointed in my nokia e51. It does have wifi and other good stuff but the engineering part is a piece of *rap. Rubber buttons (on/off, volume/..) are totally gone, I use a match to turn the phone on and off.I have to use electric tape to keep it all in one piece since the case is broken after a fall from 1.5 meters. I’ve had the phone for over 2 years now and I dont see a reason why I should replace it since apart from missing buttons and broken case it IS working fine.

  9. Nokia and Samsung are the 2 most unreliable when it comes to failing most often, Motorola are by far the most robust, but the phones are junk. Sony Ericsson are good solid phones, but almost all have software issues(can stop working randomly due to bad flash). Bonus is you cant kill them with a bad flash, you just start again.

  10. @bunkofon I totally agree, my N97 is absolute shit when it comes to software and any MicroSD card I try to use in the device will work once, and one only, before it claims that the card is corrupt.

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