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Inside Apple's Anechoic Testing Chambers
As part of Apple's press conference on Friday, they mentioned their state-of-the-art testing facilities and released a brief video showing some of their anechoic chambers. They later invited journalists on a tour of the rooms and explained some of the experimentation process. Quoting:
"There are four stages. The first is a passive test to study the form factor of the device they want to create. The second stage is what Caballero calls the 'junk in the trunk' stage. Apple puts the wireless components inside of the form factor and puts them in these chambers. The third part involves studying the device in one of these chambers but with human or dummy subjects. And the fourth part is a field test, done in vans that drive around various cities monitoring the device's signal the entire time (both with real people and with dummies). ... The most interesting of these rooms was one that Caballero called 'Stargate.' Why? Because, well, it looks like it belongs in the movie/TV series Stargate. Inside this room, there's a giant ring that a human sits on a raised chair in the center of. This chair slowly rotates around as signals are passed around the entire outer circle. This creates a 360 degree test area. I was told this room is completely safe for humans. And people typically spend 40 minutes in there at a time for testing. By comparison, devices can stay in the other anechoic chambers for up to 24 hours at a time. ... We then went into a room that contained fake heads."
And nowhere do I read a description of the simulated conductive hands covering the antenna gap. Might they have failed to consider one key variable to test for?
"The most interesting of these rooms was one that Caballero called 'Stargate.' Why? Because, well, it looks like it belongs in the movie/TV series Stargate."
Stargate? More like Cerebro: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerebro
I'm ready to bed apple rushed everything and barely used those chambers.
They wouldn't have done such basic antenna design mistakes otherwise.
If they actually cared more about the quality of the product than the secrecy around it they would have tested it with more actual humans in real life situations.
You think the other companies don't have something like this? It's also funny to see how they use windows in these facilities. Steve must hate the place.
That doesn't even look like it is real, it looks like the guy in the chair is sitting in the senate from Star Wars. Of course that post had to be written by MG Siegler.
Those fake heads may be for cellphone radiation tests http://nyti.ms/b0vioZ
Inside this room, there's a giant ring that a human sits on a raised chair in the center of.
Is this really something that readers even though it's valid grammar after editing are in need of?
The iPhone 4 doesn't have any bug, it has a symbiote!
This reminds me of the Embedded Journalists traveling with the armed forces in Iraq.
This seems largely for show. Even the few live testers were forced to hide the phones in bumpers and the missed the finger of death.
Further, they contract out all of their FCC certification runs.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
The linked techcrunch article sure does have some pretty pictures, but it just makes it that much more sad that Apple missed something with their million-dollar test chambers that any left-handed person will notice in a day or two.
the iPhone 5
All for spin control. The real question is how good is this facility compared to other manufacturers. I'll bet Motorola has similar if not better facilities.
I hate being bipolar; it's awesome!
If you believe there's an iPhone 6 in that testing chamber under a black cloak, then Gizmodo has a phone they want to sell you.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
A little known feature of iphone 4 is that if you sit in the 'stargate' and have a finger bridging the 'gap' of the antennae, you are able to cross into an alternate dimension that can only be described as 'insanely great'. Take my word for it.
Nearly everything about how Apple has handled this has been wrong. From their disingenuous attempt to rebrand the problem "Antennagate" to stop the media from calling it the "Death Grip", to their feigned surprise that the iPhone signal bar calculation was heavily weighted to make the iPhone look like a strong performer.
Now they're showing off how much testing the phone went through, which seems indicate they knew it was glitchy from the start. Or did they? I mean after all, in one of the first reviews of the iPhone 4 before it was even released, Walt Mossberg said:
So the very first review picked up on it, but they didn't have an explanation? They said they waited to have a press conference because they wanted to do testing to determine the problem, but doesn't that undermine the point that you've done adequate testing? Why after their press conference, is it still so unclear if they knew whether skin connecting the antennas was a problem or not?
The really bizarre thing is I've had an iPhone 4 since day 1, I've seen the glitch and until I got a case it had been affecting my data connections, but I still really like this phone! Is Apple turning us all into battered wives?
Except it doesn't.
... no-one can hear you scream
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
many people do this!
I use my right hand for dialing, etc
but honestly, even right-handers hold the damn phone in their left hand most of the time...
I met Ina Fried in a club down in North Soho
Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like Cherry Cola
C-O-L-A Cola
She walked up to me and she asked me to dance
I asked her name and in a dark brown voice she said, "Lola"
L-O-L-A Lola, lo lo lo Lola
Well, I'm not the world's most physical guy,
But when she squeesed me tight she nearly broke my spine
Oh my Lola, lo lo lo Lola
Well, I'm not dumb but I can't understand
Why she walks like a woman and talks like a man
Oh my Lola, lo lo lo Lola, lo lo lo Lola
Well, we drank champagne and danced all night,
Under electric candlelight,
She picked me up and sat me on her knee,
She said, "Little boy won't you come home with me?"
Well, I'm not the world's most passionate guy,
But when I looked in her eyes,
I almost fell for my Lola,
Lo lo lo Lola, lo lo lo Lola
I pushed her away I walked to the door
I fell to the floor I got down on my knees
I looked at her, and she at me
Well that's the way that I want it to stay
I always want it to be that way for my Lola
Lo lo lo Lola
Girls will be boys, and boys will be girls
It's a mixed up, muddled up, shook up world,
except for Lola Lo lo lo Lola Lo lo lo Lola
Well I left home just a week before,
and I never ever kissed a woman before,
Lola smiled and took me by the hand,
she said, "Little boy, gonna make you a man"
Well I'm not the world's most masculine man,
but I know what I am and that I'm a man,
so is Lola
Lo lo lo Lola Lo lo lo Lola
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ina_Fried
Personal
Prior to June 2003, Fried transitioned from male to female and began using the byline "Ina Fried." Fried had previously signed articles "Ian Fried." [4][13][14]
In the anechoic chamber there is going to be one source of RF and there will be no reflections or other paths, only line of sight from antenna to antenna.
In the real world you are exposed to far more RF. From your cell phone, from the cell phone of everyone else in the neighborhood, from the microwave oven, from every monitor, cpu and everything else.
The real danger in an anechoic chamber is sanity. The non-reflective cones also absorb acoustics, which make the space a very strange aural experience, which can do funny things to your brain. For one you feel really, really alone, you can't even hear the echo of your own voice.
I'd be ironic if it did. But it doesn't.
'junk in the trunk'
I think they have just coined a new porn phrase.
the fourth part is a field test, done in vans...
... down by the river.
Now, as much as Apple annoys me, and they do enough that I stopped using my iPhone and got an HTC desire, I do feel compelled to point something out to you folks, most of whom are not in the wireless industry.
Apple, and to that extent, all wireless manufactures must perform TRP and TIS testing as laid out in the CTIA Test Plan for Mobile Station Over the Air Performance, which I think are currently at 2.2.2.
The thing is, OTA testing takes a long time and is actually a lot of money.
Please note, that for certification, a company can NOT perform this testing on their own. They must use a PTCRB test house, which is independent for what should be obvious reasons.
As I mentioned, the CTIA test plan looks at both TRP (Total radiated power) and TIS (total isotropic sensitivity) under a few conditions, which are head adjacent(left and right cheek) and free space. This is done in all bands and all modes. That's to say you test the 850 band in GSM. GPRS, EGPRS and UMTS(3g). Each band is tested in full on three channels, the low, mid and highest of the band. Then a single point offset method is applied to all intermediate channels relative to the 3 primary channels in both position and power level to save time.
This still takes a LONG time.
A GSM 850 L/M/H TRP in free space takes about 1 hour in a non stargate system (note almost no labs use this system since it uses power meters which have trouble to properly trigger a EGPRS pulse)
about the same for the same conditions in TIS.
UMTS though takes about 4 hours for the TIS.
Now, you take a phone like the iPhone and account for charge times and the like and you are looking at about 3 - 4 weeks of lab time since you can only use 1 phone!
I also assume that would be lots of cash in lab time. Granted, that's crackers to Apple.
The point is, all phones on a PTCRB network, to witch ATT is, MUST pass these requirements. This means that Apple had to have passes ALL requirements.
They did was they were required to do. It just goes to show what you can't catch everything with this testing, but given that it's a rare problem..you can catch most.
Keeps getting beat cmon
“This lab used to be secret. Most people don’t know it exists,” Caballero told us. Dubbed the “Black Labs,” when I asked about the black cloaks, Caballero said that “we have a lot of other projects going on.”
Other secret projects? Alien research!!! That's how they stay ahead of the curve. I knew it!
It sounds like a newer version of the testing facilities we were using at HP 15 years ago.
good job on the photography but these are pretty standard anechoic RF testing chambers. The only news worthy thing is that Apple is main-steam enough that people actually looked at these photos.
Any company doing serious RF development will either have their own and rent time in a dedicated testing facility.
Search google for "anechoic chamber" and you'll find hundreds of photos of such facilities.
The US Air Force has one big enough to park a C-130 in :)
"We then went into a room that contained fake heads."
Or the heads of manager drones that dared defy the will of Jobs? They talk to him at night.
iPhone 4 is out. Some people have signal issues due to a design decision. Many people think it's the best phone they've had. Many people think it's the spawn of Satan. Apple held a press conference to give away a fix to the problem. Some people think the fix is ugly and doesn't do anything about the Satan problem. The End.
This flamewar has been pounding Slashdot for a long time, but since the lost/recovered prototype iPhone 4, it's been ridiculous. Every . Single . Day on Slashdot there has to be an Apple flamewar, and the Anti-Apple jokes now begin to bleed into other stories. Too much coverage, Slashdot. More physics, less phones. Leave the intensive, by-the-minute coverage of mobile phones to Gizmodo and Engadget.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
It sounds like a newer version of the testing facilities we were using at HP 15 years ago.
Right. Those are common in the RF community. I used to work in a facility that made military RF gear, and they had some, including one big enough to hold a satellite.
The other alternative, incidentally, is to test outdoors in an RF-quiet area. Testing for FCC Part 15 RF noise output compliance is often done in a flat, open field, with the device sitting on a wooden turntable. The test gear is stationary, and the device is rotated to check if it's emitting something it shouldn't. For cell phone gear you have to test somewhere that doesn't have anything emitting on cell phnone frequencies, so you either have to test in an anechoic chamber or somewhere remote with no cell phone coverage.
I saw what you did here
iPhone 4 is out. Some people have signal issues due to a design decision. Many people think it's the best phone they've had. Many people think it's the spawn of Satan. Apple held a press conference to give away a fix to the problem. Some people think the fix is ugly and doesn't do anything about the Satan problem. The End.
This flamewar has been pounding Slashdot for a long time, but since the lost/recovered prototype iPhone 4, it's been ridiculous. Every . Single . Day on Slashdot there has to be an Apple flamewar, and the Anti-Apple jokes now begin to bleed into other stories. Too much coverage, Slashdot. More physics, less phones. Leave the intensive, by-the-minute coverage of mobile phones to Gizmodo and Engadget.
Sorry, but your post really doesn't make it clear whether you are for or against the iPhone... How the hell are the Slashdot crowd supposed to mod that?
Just pick a side and start whining - you'll get the hang of it soon enough. They'll be another iPhone 4 submission tomorrow, so you can try again then.
Great! Let me add that to my "possible alternatives to waterboarding" list: place in anechoic chamber.
I do understand the ins and outs of the antenne problem. Thing is, I still want an Iphone 4 as badly as I wanted it before. Signal coverage in my area is insane, there is no chance I'll ever get less than five bars no matter how you define them. The only reason I don't have one already is that I can't afford it. Oh, and it isn't available yet in my country (not really a problem as I understand how to order it from half way around the planet).
The Iphone 4 has flaws. So be it. It is still the best smartphone on the market. I will never, ever, buy another HTC after they burned me with a semi-defective firmware on the S-100. Nokia? Ha! Don't make me enumerate the ways I got shanked with those 'phones.
So, to summarize, what are we talking about here? :-)
The new improved smoke and mirrors: Anechoic testing chambers.
... industrial designers that did the iPhone case design and overruled the antenna/RF engineers, put them in the test chamber and turn the microwaves up to 'bake'.
It really doesn't matter how many fancy anechoic chambers you've got. If the art majors who spec the kewl stainless steel antenna have the last word, its a culture problem, not a technology problem.
Have gnu, will travel.
Steve Jobs said explicitly in his press conference that Apple's decision to use an external antenna was part of a design tradeoff to house the phone in a slim case while offering extended battery life. He even acknowledged that there are designs that would provide substantially improved reception, such as an antenna protruding from the case. So Apple tested the reception of the design, and found that no matter how you hold it, performance was similar or better to that of their previous phone, as independent testers have since found, and concluded that Apple's customers would be happy with the design. So far, the phone is selling quite well, and returns are lower than previous models in the line, suggesting that Apple's estimation of its customers' priorities is pretty accurate.
I'm not sure how that translates into not giving a shit.
Most right-handed people hold their phone in their left hand, because they use their right hand to dial. That requires more precision. After that you don't take it over to tour left hand because holding it to to your ear is easy, even with your left hand.
Too true. If you stand in the middle of one of these chambers the silences almost hurts your ears.
i work with rf testing on much smaller scale, it doesnt matter how much money you pur into it, you are still likely to miss some real life scenarios eg left handed people or for example many video face recognition softwares fail to find black people on the picture
for the simple reason that all testers and programmers were white.
for signal strenght to vary that much im guessing the antennae is somehow shorted to the phone surface and when hand grips it(about few kohms?) reception goes to hell
other option is that antennae is very near the phone surface and when covered by hand instead of air the reception peak on frequency axis shifts due to impedance change and again reception goes to hell
The real danger in an anechoic chamber is sanity. The non-reflective cones also absorb acoustics, which make the space a very strange aural experience, which can do funny things to your brain. For one you feel really, really alone, you can't even hear the echo of your own voice.
Could this be the for-real Reality Distortion Field? I knew Microsoft was trying to get in on the process, but this just takes it all to new heights.
So $100M test chamber and they still could not figure out that holding it will break it. Maybe they should employ some normal people to test phones.
what's up with the rubber band holding the phone in the testing facility?
I can't watch the video because it's in quicktime and I'm on a linux machine...
Perhaps a case of PEBKAC? Install gecko-mediaplayer.
Cheers.
Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
These things have been sold for over 10 years by the French company Satimo for the type of rapid antenna measurements that are needed when you're measuring in the presence of a human. Look at the website
http://www.satimo.com/content/products/sg-64
This is hardly a sign that Apple is modern, but rather they are following behind the antenna measurement industry,
D.
Antenna design for hand-held devices at these frequencies and power levels is not exactly trivial, and minimizing the effect of the human body (hand) on the antenna characteristics is the subject of much research in the industry.
http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&fileOId=1152137
http://www.rfm.com/corp/appdata/antenna.pdf
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/120848913/articletext?DOI=10.1002%2Fmop.23715
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/11208/36089/01710996.pdf
http://e-citations.ethbib.ethz.ch/view/pub:18638
http://www.waset.org/journals/waset/v49/v49-156.pdf
http://www.amazon.com/Hands-effect-Shahla-Moradi-Shahrbabak/dp/3639175425
http://www.google.com/search?q=effect+of+hand+on+antenna&hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&ei=GbZBTOP-NIP-8Aaw_aUZ&start=10&sa=N
http://rfdesign.com/mag/505RFDF1.pdf
http://www.hindawi.com/journals/ijap/2009/491262.html
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/Xplore/login.jsp?url=http%3A%2F%2Fieeexplore.ieee.org%2Fiel5%2F4913660%2F4957855%2F04958011.pdf%3Farnumber%3D4958011&authDecision=-203
http://wireless.per.nl/wireless/articles/08_WIC_correlated_coupled_MIMO.pdf
http://www.impinj.com/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&ItemID=2563>
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.66.2119&rep=rep1&type=pdf
http://202.194.20.8/proc/VTC09Spring/DATA/02-07-08.PDF
AND THAT'S IN JUST THE FIRST THREE PAGES OF MY GOOGLE SEARCH!!!!!!!!!!
Note that this "antennaphile" site called the iPhone 4's antenna design "cool", and said to expect to see other manufacturers adopting similar designs.
Note that the forum thread linked below says that your hand can affect a GHz-band antenna from as far way as 3cm. So where on a phone that is FAR less than 1cm. thick are you going to place that antenna that WON'T have "hand-effects" to some degree? Now, factor in the fact that the FCC MANDATES that the antenna be on the LOWER half of the phone (where your hand naturally grips!), and you can readily see that, as Jobs stated (and demonstrated), EVERY cellphone suffers from the presence of the user. Keep that in mind when you hear people proclaim "NO other phone has these issues." WRONG! EVERY cellphone struggles mightily with this limitation (the presence of the user), during EVERY SINGLE CALL and with EVERY SINGLE USER.
You are clearly making up a story that you'd really like to believe.
I'm glad you noticed the part where he said "I believe." His story is the most believable, considering what we know about Apple and their attitude toward design; not many companies have an executive design position. The alternative to his story is that no one at Apple, through all the design, engineering, and testing never encountered or fathomed the idea that touching an antenna would fuck with the signal. I personally find that hard to believe, but if it's true maybe I should send in my resume.
This whole thing is a storm in a teacup as far as I see. Apparently in some situations iphone4 is marginally worse than 3 GS and in other situations it is better than 3 GS. And nobody has proven that overall it is any worse or better than Nokia or Blackberry or whoever at actually holding a call. Until someone shows that, there is no story here. None at all.
I tried mine with a piece of packing tape, and the phone still showed a 2-3 bar drop when cradled properly (or improperly). I'm going to re-try it with some (known non-conductive) kapton tape as soon as I figure out where I left it, but I'm not confident it will work any better.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
their bias monkeys.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
The "executive design position" has brought Apple from near bankruptcy to being the tech company with the largest market capitalisation in the world over the last 13 years. They design by far the best electronic consumer products on the market, the ones that ever competitor tries to emulate. That's because the top leadership believes good design is a top priority.
The hard core slashdot readership hates Apple because they see them as both successful and non-open - a combination they hate to see. The better Apple are the more it invalidates their open is best philosophy.
would agree. I'm one of them. I have absolutely no issues; in the naked "death grip" I lose a bar and still hold calls, even in the middle of my house where my iPhone 3GS and my wife's Centro show no signal. Not a single dropped call yet. Nearly 2GB of data use already for the month on 3G. Live in NYC, where AT&T is supposedly horrible. And what's more, after playing with the "death grip" for about 5 minutes on the first day and finding it to be unimportant to my usage patterns, I immediately put the phone in a case (as most smartphone owners do) to protect my investment and keep it like new for eventual resale.
What's more, the battery life on the iPhone 4 is mind-blowing for smartpones/supersmartphones, I don't think I've seen another that comes close. I get 2-3 days of heavy use out of it between charges.
Yes, I grant that if you touch the bare frame in one spot, you'll lose some amount of signal. But for me at least, it's the best smartphone (or phone) I've owned, and even with that spot touched generally outperforms them signal-wise.
But if you say any of this anywhere or to anyone right now, people ridicule you as being mindless. The anti-Apple storm has created the impression that the device doesn't work at all. People say things like "what good is a phone if you can't make a call" and suggest that iPhone 4 users are so stupid they've actually paid for a device that simply doesn't work so that they can be seen holding it. It's mind-numbingly silly. And yet that's the level of discourse going on here and elsewhere.
And it's a shame because it's a damn good phone. I think most people (even Android enthusiasts) that actually used one for an hour would come away thinking it was right up there at the top of the heap, competitive with the best from any manufacturer and probably ahead of the game in general.
But again, say that and you're immediately a mindless fanboi whose mind has been vaporized by Steve's reality distortion field.
Too bad because there will be people that won't seriously consider it that it would serve very well, and that would enjoy it very much, and they may select alternate and less-well-suited products as a result simply because they didn't even consider the 4 after the national press about this design choice/supposed issue.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
The linked techcrunch article sure does have some pretty pictures
Exactly, which is rather ironic given that the article states:
Basically, they’re rooms where no waves (sound or electromagnetic) can reflect off of anything
Clearly EM waves with a wavelength ~475nm seem to have no trouble being reflected.
...to their feigned surprise [apple.com] that the iPhone signal bar calculation was heavily weighted to make the iPhone look like a strong performer.
Why would they do this deliberately - it makes no sense. The iPhone has been getting grief as a phone because it kept having reception issues. Far better to calculate the bars properly and then have customers blame the mobile provider instead of the phone manufacturer....at least if you are that phone manufacturer!
Strange that no press has been given to the updating to iOS4 resulting in many 3g, 3gs and touch owners losing functionality of the apple supplied head set and it's controls. It's happened on my 3gs and a friends, not to mention 2 others I know with iPod touches.
Confimed my arse. A blackberry perhaps can maybe sometimes drop signal when you wrap your entire hand around it. The iphone 4 will consistently drop signal when you place a fingertip on it. If you can't see the difference you should get some RDF neutralizer spray.
Nice way to draw a conclusion that doesn't follow from the facts as you present them. Just because they are successful doesn't mean they are good (which happens to be quite ill defined as far as technology goes).
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
So the iPhone antenna is goa'uld technology, but the dissappearing signal would be the Nox.
In you long winded and utterly useless rant you seemed to have missed something an apprentice electrician could spot.
The problem is Electrical Length. Electrical length dictates what frequencies an antenna can receive and transmit. When you touch a naked antenna you become part of that antenna and change the electrical length. This causes the antenna to pick up the correct frequency as noise or at least very noisy. This is the Iphones problem. As for dealing with noise and EM interference, that is so far beyond electrical length it's not funny. Apple failed basic electrical engineering and you are trying to convince us that other manufactures are having the same problem as Apple, Apple is nowhere near the likes of RIM, Nokia and HTC in dealing with EM interference because they couldn't even manage to grasp that the human hand changes the electrical length of the aerial.
This is very simple science, please stop trying obfuscate it. The problem is with the antenna being external, not with the human hand. Most phones deal with the human hand and lose less then 10% of the signal strength but due to the fact that the hand is not in contact with the aerial (I.E. the aerial is insulated) it does not change the frequencies the aerial receives and transmits. Further more if you even bothered to read some of the links you posted, you'll notice that the closer you get to a tower, the less a hand interferes with a signal (% wise), this is not true with an Iphone.
So please as you so eloquently put it, stop the bullshit.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Nice way to draw a conclusion that doesn't follow from the facts as you present them. Just because they are successful doesn't mean they are good (which happens to be quite ill defined as far as technology goes).
Nice way to derail his frantic fanboi wank with a logic lesson, you cock-blocking hater you. ;)
You aren't kidding about that. I used to have to test WiFi gear in a chamber like this for hours at a time. I wouldn't say that being in there was anything that would drive you nuts unless you were in there for weeks or months, but it was creepy.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.