Inside Nokia’s Hardware Damage Labs

December 3, 2008 by Nick Caiello 11 Comments

[vimeo 2310654]

Like everybody, we sometimes get a little frustrated with our cellphones. Probably one of the most annoying things is when we drop our phones once and they stop working. At Nokia’s hardware damage labs in San Diego, they physically test their phones for extreme uses. They test things like flip tension, water resistance, and even UV resistance. Recently, the folks over at MobileCrunch were given a tour of these labs and were nice enough to post an in-depth article about what they saw. In addition to the impact testing video above, there are many more videos posted that demonstrate the tests they perform.

44% Of Used Phones Contain Sensitive Data

October 1, 2008 by Caleb Kraft 11 Comments

In a recent study, researchers were able to garnish all kinds of sensitive data from second hand mobile devices. Of the units tested, 44% contained information such as salary details, bank account information, business plans, personal medical details, personal insults, and address book data. Next time you get a used device, take a good look around. You never know what you may find.

[via Zero Day]

LED Serial Debugging For Cell Phone Hacking

June 28, 2008 by Will O'Brien 4 Comments

[Barry] needed some way to get serial output to help debug his efforts to port Linux to the HTC TytnII (Windows mobile Pocket PC phone). He wrote some code to send serial output via one of the LEDs on the phone and rigged up an AVR to pic up the output and provide a USB interface to the computer. It runs at about 200bps – perfect for the quick debug session.

Cell Phone Controlled Door Lock

July 17, 2007 by Will O'Brien 31 Comments

Inspired by the knock to open hack, [ashish] put together a fairly simple DTMF decoder to control solenoid door unlocker and connected it to a Nokia 1100 cell phone. Call the phone, input the magic code, and the door unlocks.