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CES, Reporter Breaks "Unbreakable" Mobile Phone
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Reporter Dan Simmons from the BBC's technology show Click managed to break a mobile phone marketed as 'unbreakable' (video), during a demonstration at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas." The phone can survive a 10 story fall, being submerged 20 feet for 30 mins, and you can use it to hammer a nail; but it's no match for a British journalist.
What does the reporters nationality have anything to do with it?
All publicity is good publicity?
--- I'm sure using a computer was fun back in the 80's. *sigh*
You can destroy anything if you apply the right force. Making a bald statement that a phone (or anything else) is unbreakable will just prompt some folks to find the right force, even if it isn't something the phone would normally experience.
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
Uh...
Is this live? We can edit that out right?
Ok, reset. Ready? Take TWO!
Where's the "titanic" tag?
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
RTFA to WTFV can anyone tell us how he breaks it?
Seriously? A story about breaking a phone which surprisingly is not unbreakable? If it's a slow news day at least put it in idle!
Meh.
Anyone have a link to the actual video? The provided link just keeps playing a PBS commercial at me.
-Peter
Seriously, I wouldn't consider it indestructible at least until you can try to nail it to the wall WITH a hammer and nail - and it still works.
Demo dyndrome is alive and well! :)
I am sure nearly all of us knows how he feels.
I remember when Oracle was unbreakable. Surely it is computing taboo to use this description
He just smashes the screen against the corner of the fish tank that he just failed to drown it in. Not being covered in rubber like the rest of the phone, it breaks like any normal screen. You could probably apply the same pressure by accidentally dropping it on a jagged rock.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
but is it unblendable?
The "unbreakable" phone being actually breakable is nothing extraordinary, but the awkward position the reporter puts the guy on is priceless. And I have to tell you the reporter was pretty gentle with the phone.
alias possession='chmod 666 satan && ls
Screens are always the weak point of a phone. I would surprised if any lcd screen can withstand a direct contact with only the screen (generally by corners or pointy objects). Thet have the drop issue solved because they assume the casing will absorb the shock on a flat surface.
Working for a phone manufacturer it took us month of back and forth with the LCD manufacturer and reinforcing plastic to make our phone's LCD not break from a 1.5 meter drop. So 10 stories is impressive!
The key to breakage here being that when they said "You can hammer a nail with it!" they didn't mean, "You can hammer a nail with the screen"
Screens will always be the weak point until we get that transparent aluminum out there to shield it while keeping it visible. And even then, you know, that little display would still be susceptible to heat. I have a hunch a lighter would have had similar success in destroying the screen.
Their may be a grammatical error, misspeling, or evn a typo in this post.
Something very similar is how I broke my phone. it hit really hard on the edge of a desk or something when it was in my pocket. The screen was even protected by a SD to CF converter, just happened to be between the screen and what ever it hit. The SD to CF converter was trashed and so was the screen on my phone. My phone was not unbreakable.
Microsoft, Apple, Google, Amazon what's the difference? All steal money from devs and control with walled gardens.
TFA is from BBC, journalist is British and it is a form of national pride.
"Brits can do the undoable, break the unbreakable."
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Bye; don't let the door hit you in the arse on the way out.
From TFV... the screen still worked - it is just that he apparently cracked it.
Not that you could actually tell from the video.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Can I have your Karma?
You've changed, man. It used to be about the music!
Or, wait...what was Slashdot about waaay back in the 900,000 range of UIDs?
Our Nextel rep tried to sell us on some of their rubber-encased, bulky "ruggedized" phones last year, bragging about how they met U.S. military specifications and so on. We tried out a few, and one of the maintenance guys out in the shop managed to break the "push to talk" button on his the first day he had it. A couple others developed keypad failures in a matter of months.
The fact is, the cellphone makers come up with these claims based on very specific types of "accidents", such as the phone's ability to survive submerging in water to a certain depth, or surviving a drop from X number of feet. In the real world, people find MANY other ways to break these devices that weren't even investigated. (The guys in our shop do a lot of grinding and cutting of steel, for example. Eventually, the little metal filings find their way into the cellphone's speaker, where the magnet in the speaker causes them to collect up - until they make a big enough pile to short things out. When disassembling "dead" phones, we've found that a number of times. But I haven't seen a single cellphone maker take any steps in their design to prevent THAT mode of failure.
The Shrike broke it. Reporter Dan Simmons included that scene in the next Hyperion book.
If you are patient enough the story does follow your PBS commercial.
More specifically, he beats the phone on the corner of the metal frame of the aquarium, where the metal comes to a point. Which cracked the display.
Extra, extra! HUGE NEWS!! Child opens child proof bottle!
Whale
That is the most blatant false advertising since my lawsuit against the movie, The Neverending Story.
This was worthy of a front page post? I saw that video earlier, thought "heh" and moved on with my day. Is there really anything more to discuss here?
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Will it blend?
... but will it blend?
Will it blend? - iPhone
Not mine. The PBS commercial stops, and I just get a black video window. Ubuntu 9.10 / Firefox
Like you said... the guy broke the "push to talk button." The rubberized casing would prevent the keys from getting pushed on a fall to a flat surface, but I'm sure pretty much ANY of these phones will break simply by pushing buttons too hard.
And if that fails, smash the screen against the corner of a fish tank.
Stupid, sexy Flanders.
Eh? Whats wrong with videos?
Because Brits have a Stiff Upper Lip. Great for breaking phones, summers where it never gets above 50, and attempting to conquer places like Afghanistan and India.
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
About half as many stories per day.
Breaking other peoples stuff since 1583!
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
BBC just got famous... in limelight... NASDAQ skyrocketing... amazing work!!!
--ssk
Instead of being shocked or dismayed, he actually laughs at it. That is, to me, the best possible way he could react. The only thing that could have made it better, would have been if he had said something like "well, you've just earned yourself a new phone".
Obviously rather than dipping the phone in water, it was put into a solution of sodium pentothal, and the phone barked "Enough of this torture, I'll give you the contacts list". And thus the phone was "broken."
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Just say that it is tough not unbreakable
What's what I got as well. On the third reload I got a different commercial (Toyota) and then the video played. Chrome on Snow Leopard.
-Peter
Give it to a 6 year old boy.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Epic fail... though I have to say the rep did do a good job showing humility. Good PR in the end.
... does it run Linux?
And can you break it merely by installing Linux?
Here at work, we've gotten free devices with kevlar-coated screens on occasion for software development. One of our developers accidentally split the device's case in half from a 3 foot drop when they're supposed to have a 6 foot drop spec. :)
Buckle your ROFL belt, we're in for some LOLs.
so... did the reporter get a free one?
This reporter (an alien no less) is interfering with a cell phone company's ability to profit from its invention.
Call Homeland Security!
I was covering Comdex around 2001 for sysopt.com and earthweb.com, and we came across a handheld rugged MID running Win CE. The sales guy talked about how you could do anything you wanted to it, and I pointed at the 5" LCD, and said something like, "There's no way that would stand up to a rock, though."
He claimed it would and proceeded to punch the screen hard... and it completely shattered. We later inferred that his wedding ring made direct contact, adding to the force.
Lesson learned: It's not truly rugged until the front of the LCD can take the brunt of whatever force you want.
"...row row, fight the power"?
That is the question...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
An acquaintance of mine who suspected that he was being BSed by a sales person asked if his project had passed the Bal Conies test.
"Yes, it certainly has," he replied.
"Really!" he said. "Let's see." He then took the device in question and dropped it off the Bal Cony.
Sadly, the device in question did *not* pass the Bal Conies test.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Don't wait until the product is on display at an international convention to validate claims of ultimate reliability.
Which is why I'm always careful to say "mailman or femailman"
See you later!
It's standard practice to list the affiliation of reporter/media personality when they aren't being shown/published on their own network/paper/whatever.
So to break it down for you, "Reporter Dan Simmons from the BBC's technology show Click..." means:
Dan Simmons - that's his name, duh
Click - what he's from
technology show - describes the focus of click, so nobody mistakes it for a photography show or other things.
BBC's - indicating Click is on BBC, so you again don't mistake it for Southern Swaziland's Castanet music show, Click (among others)
Are there really that many people who go actually take the term "unbreakable" literally and need to be protected from "blatant false advertising"? Personally, I just mentally translate it to "really tough to break accidentally".
Volume on the BBC Video player still "goes to eleven."
Free Advertising. They only use "indestructible" to attract people to try and destroy it.
Hehe, my friend has one of these phones and broke it in the first week by using a compressed air line to blow dust and crap off it. The external speaker thing broke, so now it has no ring tone and he has to use vibrate. The earphone and the mic survived so it is ok to make calls. Don't knowif it is no longer waterproof.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
If they think it's unbreakable, all we have to do is find a four year old boy who will be happy to prove them wrong.
If you watch the first 15(+) seconds again you will notice that the CEO does offer the reporter a new phone if the reporter can break the test phone :D
This is Slashdot. News for nerds. For people, most of which have some basic understanding of the concepts of Newtonian physics.
Then you come and say "Interesting to see that force applied on small area is more efficient than same force applied on a larger area" (as if that wasn't blindingly obvious. That is why he intentionally hit the corner, after all...) and get modded +3, interesting?
Nothing personal, but WTF? Have people here never heard of a knife? Or a spear? Or a nail? You DO realize that those simple things - invented by cavemen - use this very same technology?
Please tell me that I'm just missing something here. If that is the case, I apologize for being so blunt (pun intended), but your comment and the moderation really puzzle me.
maybe he was an ex Squaddie they can break anything
We can rebuild it, we have the technology". Of course, they probably junk them instead of repairing, but it's a valid comment.
I am not a nerd, I just play one in real life. My avatar thinks I'm a total loser.
~Beowulf cluster of nested robots?
Im surprised no one posted this... But the phone guy promised the guy a free phone if he could break it... pay up?
Just because it works, Doesn't make it right. - JTM
But Will it Blend... with a Blendtek Blender?
Too bad for the phone maker it was a simple act of smacking the thing like a child would or an angry person.
Spot on
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
and they'll just build a better class of idiot.
Not that the journalist is an idiot but its the same principle. Make something indestructible and they'll just come up with a new way of destroying it.
--- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
About twice as many relevant stories per day.
There, FTFY
That is not metal; it's a pair of plastic strips glued to the aquarium to make it look better and to support the lamphouse. If you look closely you can see the glass of the aquarium crack in the corner where he hits it. It would have been cool if he broke the aquarium too :)
-- Cheers!
Our Nextel rep tried to sell us on some of their rubber-encased, bulky "ruggedized" phones last year, bragging about how they met U.S. military specifications and so on. We tried out a few, and one of the maintenance guys out in the shop managed to break the "push to talk" button on his the first day he had it. A couple others developed keypad failures in a matter of months.
The fact is, the cellphone makers come up with these claims based on very specific types of "accidents", such as the phone's ability to survive submerging in water to a certain depth, or surviving a drop from X number of feet. In the real world, people find MANY other ways to break these devices that weren't even investigated. (The guys in our shop do a lot of grinding and cutting of steel, for example. Eventually, the little metal filings find their way into the cellphone's speaker, where the magnet in the speaker causes them to collect up - until they make a big enough pile to short things out. When disassembling "dead" phones, we've found that a number of times. But I haven't seen a single cellphone maker take any steps in their design to prevent THAT mode of failure.
Casio's Gz'One is supposedly dust proof. I work in a metal fabrication shop myself, and aside from a few scratches and dings on the casing, it still works great after 2 years.
god dommed limy used his shiyttey teath
There's no such thing as unbreakable.
He wasn't the first to break the phone, but this Dutch reviewer did need more time (and more tools).
The absorbent rubber will also reduce the tactile sensation of pushing the button, so a person will use more pressure to push the button though it will feel the same to them.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
If this phone was truely unbreakable, we should use it as armour plating on tanks.
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I found it interesting that groups of conventioneers had to head over to the Las Vegas Apple store to see something interesting this year. The company that wasn't there was a bigger story than just about any of the companies that were. So I'm not at all surprised that a cell phone breaking is big news from the weekend. The smart ones skipped the convention center altogether and spent their time in the Venetian listening to high end audio systems and pretending to care what the cables were made of....
The phone was designed to be unbreakable provided you're doing anything with the phone besides using it as a phone. I mean, seriously, how often are people near 10th story balconies? And supposing you did drop it in 20 meters (65ish feet) of water, unless you were just getting ready to go SCUBA diving you're not getting back at all, let alone within the 1/2 hour time limit that's certainly specified in the warranty. And I can't tell you the number of times I was doing a little carpentry, and they only tool that was available to me was my cell phone. For me, from personal experience, an "unbreakable" phone would be able to survive all of the following:
-Repeated trips through the washer and dryer
-Left outside, in all weather, for 2 days
-Abruptly sat on, on a hard bench or concrete ledge
-Stepped on, screen side up or down, on various surfaces from carpet to gravel
-Thrown across the room in anger/frustration
-Left on the dash of my car when when it's 110 outside and 195 in the car
-For flip phones: landing open, hinge side up, then being stepped on
That's the environment it needs to be designed for.
We just need to start removing safety barriers, seat belts, warning labels etc.
Safety should be optional.
Then you can up the publish rate for Darwins. Publish it in newspapers; "With great thanks from the human race, Darwin of the week goes to ..."
Deleted
I take unbreakable as a personal challenge
Attention... all grammer nazi"s! Is they're anything; wrong with: my post,