Inside a nondescript constructing on Samsung’s campus in Suwon, South Korea, employees sit in cubicles typing away at their desks. Leaf-shaped awnings cling overhead to supply some shade from the brilliant workplace lights. However as soon as you permit the principle workplace space and switch a nook, the office begins to look lots completely different.
Tucked away in hallways all through the ground are Samsung’s reliability testing labs. It is the place Samsung tortures its telephones earlier than delivery them out to the thousands and thousands of individuals shopping for them all over the world. Robots drop telephones on metallic surfaces, water jets pummel cell gadgets from all instructions, and chambers immerse devices in excessive temperatures.
It is all a part of Samsung’s course of to make sure its telephones can face up to drops, dunks, excessive climates and different hardships. Any such testing is crucial as a result of telephones are costly and important to each day life, so that they should be constructed to final.
Samsung is not any stranger to reliability points. It infamously recalled the Galaxy Word 7 in 2016 due to overheating points and delayed its first foldable cellphone launch in 2019 after some reviewers skilled damaged screens. Final 12 months, studies of batteries swelling inside Samsung telephones surfaced on YouTube.Â
CNET and different journalists received a uncommon glimpse inside Samsung’s lab to see the way it stress assessments gadgets. The tour supplied a way of how Samsung thinks about sturdiness in terms of telephones — not simply the assessments themselves but additionally the forms of situations Samsung accounts for. That is necessary as a result of Samsung ships extra smartphones than every other firm worldwide, in line with the newest figures from market analysis agency Worldwide Information Company.
When desirous about whether or not your cellphone is sturdy, the primary thought that seemingly involves thoughts is whether or not it could actually survive drops. In response to a 2020 research from AllState Safety Plans, 140 million Individuals have broken their telephones in some unspecified time in the future of their lives.Â
And Samsung’s facility has loads of machines at work to account for all of the other ways you would possibly throw, crack or shatter your cellphone. It is not so simple as simply dropping the gadget time and again. The assessments in Samsung’s lab are designed to guage how telephones react when falling at completely different angles and heights, whereas additionally zeroing in on particular components of the cellphone, just like the display and canopy glass.Â
One such evaluation referred to as the tumble check entails placing gadgets in a large rotating rectangular chamber, the place they’re tossed round time and again. This check is supposed to look at how telephones maintain up after being hit from completely different angles.
In one other nook of Samsung’s services, I nearly cringed as a metal ball dropped instantly onto the display of a Galaxy Z Fold. For this check, Samsung is measuring how sturdy the show, again glass and inner components of a tool are after enduring influence.Â
For much less dramatic tumbles, Samsung has a low drop check. A machine suctions up a tool and drops it from a decrease peak, which is supposed to simulate what the cumulative results of flicking your cellphone throughout the desk might be. Though this check does not look as brutal because the others, it reveals that Samsung is considering how minor slip-ups might influence a cellphone’s situation over the long run.Â
Foldable telephones require their very own particular testing. I watched as robotic arms opened and closed Galaxy Z Flips and Folds time and again nearly in rhythm. When requested what number of open-and-close cycles these gadgets should undergo to move the check, the member of Samsung’s reliability crew giving the tour merely stated “plenty of instances.”Â
The aim is to know what number of instances the typical particular person would fold and unfold their gadget in a given interval throughout common use, the Samsung worker stated by means of a translator. Such sturdiness assessments are significantly necessary for foldable telephones. A fast Google search turns up dozens of tales of damaged screens on the Z Flip throughout Reddit, YouTube and Samsung’s group boards. Samsung says the Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip are examined to outlast 200,000 folds, or roughly 5 years of use if unfolded 100 instances per day.Â
After a decade of reviewing tech merchandise, I’ve turn out to be accustomed to deciphering ingress safety scores, or the scores that let you know whether or not your cellphone is water or mud resistant. What I have not seen, nonetheless, is precisely what the testing behind these scores seems to be like in actual life.
Samsung’s reliability lab has varied machines to check for various ranges of water resistance. I watched as water jets soaked a Samsung cellphone as a part of the corporate’s testing for the IPX4 score, which ensures that telephones can endure being sprayed with water. In the identical room, a cellphone sat on the backside of a towering water tank to check for extra demanding scores like IPX8.Â
Resistance to drops and dips within the pool often is the first situations that come to thoughts when you think about whether or not a smartphone is sturdy. However Samsung has dozens of different assessments meant to evaluate extra granular elements of your gadget as nicely. Robots plug in chargers and press the aspect key repeatedly to check a cellphone’s USB port and buttons. Machines drag the S Pen throughout the Z Fold’s show time and again to ensure strain from the stylus does not influence sturdiness.Â
However Samsung’s testing lab is not simply an automatic torture chamber for telephones. The corporate additionally has devoted areas for testing how telephones maintain up in real-world situations. One such space, for instance, is supposed to imitate cafes, park benches and eating places to see how a tool’s cameras carry out in these environments.Â
What stood out to me essentially the most is the way in which Samsung assessments whether or not gadgets can face up to excessive temperatures. The corporate has devoted chambers for immersing gadgets in excessive chilly and extremely humid circumstances to make sure telephones will operate correctly in climates all over the world. The environmental check chamber seems to be unassuming metallic and glass field from the skin, however the stark temperature shift is instantly jarring when you attain inside. One chamber I noticed was set to minus 20 levels Celsius (minus 4 levels Fahrenheit), though Samsung conducts assessments at different decrease temperatures too.
Touring Samsung’s reliability lab supplies a glimpse into the corporate’s growth course of and sheds some gentle on why new ideas could take so lengthy to graduate to actual merchandise. Each time Samsung provides a brand new element or function — like folding screens, rounded shows or new S Pen slots — the corporate seemingly has to check how these new components maintain up below dire circumstances. Maybe finally the wilder ideas Samsung has proven off at CES like versatile sliding shows will make their solution to these labs too.