The 35 minute virtual tour of Nokia Test Labs

Published by Steve Litchfield at 8:05 UTC, November 21st 2008

A couple of days ago, I was invited to spend the day at Nokia's Testing Labs at Farnborough, UK, being given a tour of the facilities and numerous demonstrations along the way. The aim was to spread the word about how rigorously Nokia test their handsets' hardware and on that front I was extremely impressed. AAS video podcast 37 is a fairly full 35 minutes of footage from the tour (taken on the N93 and N82, for those that are interested) and will let you see and hear what I saw. Enjoy.

(If the embedding below doesn't work for you then here's the direct (and slightly higher resolution) web-watch URL: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1683931603521695595&hl=en)

Did you know:

• Kevin Smith, Rob Johnson and their team 'break' around 2000 production handsets PER MODEL tested. Staggering.
   
• Each model has to pass over 200 different mechanical tests.
   
• Temperature testing takes place from -40 Centigrade to +85 Centigrade, a 135 degree range!
   
• The slow-motion camera used to film the drop tests runs at 100,000 frames per second, 2000 times faster than TV...
   
• Nokia test phone keys, d-pads and other moving parts up to a million times. Each, i.e. per physical phone.
  

Seeing what all Nokia's handsets have to go through in order to be approved for production gave me a new respect for the reliability and reputation of its hardware. Watch the video if you think I'm easily swayed.....

Special thanks again to Ray Haddow of Nokia for putting the tour together. Look out for more information from the test labs tour on AAS soon.

Steve Litchfield

Categories: Hardware, Miscellaneous, Events
Platforms: General, S60 3rd Edition

Quote:

Originally Posted by Unregistered Can you ask them to break just 1999 phones and give me the last one?:-D

LOL - dont we all want that? :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tzer2 Actually just came to mind what that would be: someone in Finland stepping in from the cold and then going into a sauna. ;-)

So... do they also beat the test units with birch brances? ;-)

Anyway, thanks for putting that up, Steve, it's extremely interesting. I've done a bit of life testing myself in previous lives. Very perceptive questions too, if I may make so bold.

I see their Kevin Smith is a similar size to Kevin Smith the film director, but not as funny. Sorry, Kevin: I hear the American one is rubbish at engineering.

Steve, what became of your flooded E71?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tzer2 Actually just came to mind what that would be: someone in Finland stepping in from the cold and then going into a sauna. ;-)

I seem to remember reading a Nokia (I think!) blog post about this, where they were saying how the operational temperature range for the iPhone wasn't suitable for use in Finland.

I suppose that the capacitive screen is also a bit tricky to use outside with gloves on (not that buttons are much easier).

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