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."

Comments

Re:Mind the gap

[HermMunster]

http://gizmodo.com/5589962/htc-disputes-apple-cellphone-demo-with-deathgrip-video-of-its-own

Stop the BULLSHIT!

[macs4all]

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.

Re:Suddenly, an anechoic chamber appears

[macs4all]

Agreed, and its not the first time they royally fucked up.

Remember the Apple III?

WOW! I'd say if you have to go back THIRTY YEARS to find another example, then they OBVIOUSLY are doing pretty damn good!

BTW, the problems with the /// were NOT engineering-related. The problem was the state-of-the-art of PC board manufacturing, which couldn't deal with the density of the Apple ///'s PCB. Today it would be laughably trivial, but not in 1979...

BTW, by the time the version 2 PCBs were released, the Apple /// was as stable as the Apple //.

But by then, even Apple wasn't interested in the Apple /// anymore.

Re:And yet the missed it.

[macs4all]

Mods? Parent is INSIGHTFUL??? Just WHERE does that "Insight" come from?

The tour was for show because it sidestepped the key points. That is,

How with all that testing did they miss the obvious test of just touching the antenna?

When did Jobs say they did? I would imagine that they found that it wasn't that much of a problem. And it wouldn't have been, but for the media (and to some extent, Apple) telling everyone EXACTLY where to touch, and then EVERYONE immediately trying it.

Why did they ignore their internal memos that flagged the issue early on?

Oh, so you're actually SEEN a copy of said "internal memos"? Because I haven't seen them ANYWHERE, and they would have been copied to the ENTIRE internets by now. STFU, fucktard.

If they knew about the issue, why didn't they insulate the antenna to begin with?

Because it wouldn't have helped. Here, read what a REAL antenna expert has to say about "insulation" and GHz-band antenna design. Here's another post after he DID get to do a little informal testing.

BTW, he DID say that, after doing some more extensive tests, the "bumpers" pretty much made the problem disappear.

Hint: Next time try to have some REAL FACTS before you start with your UNINFORMED hate-fest.

Re:PR Glitter

[BasilBrush]

Apple is a 'design/marketing' company, not an 'engineering' company.

What complete bollocks. Apple has many engineering teams, who create all their products in house. They do great design, great engineering, and great marketing. It's not an either/or.

Re:Suddenly, an anechoic chamber appears

[macs4all]

Don't need thirty years. AppleTV is a flop.

Wish I had a "flop" like this!

Re:Cool photos, Standard RF Testing Chamber

[Lars T.]

Yaeh, I know, this is Slashdot, so we are going to have trolls like you who will drop off their load on anything remotely about Apple. So go ahead, poop your brains out. You still can't change facts though.

Re:Mind the gap

[Lars T.]

So what is the rate of dropped calls? And would your CrackBerry even have receptions where those calls were dropped?

Re:Who's in denial?

[Lars T.]

It's a well known fact that the RDF works best on guys like you - you are completely detached from reality.

Re:Mind the gap

[Lars T.]

http://crackberry.com/poll-can-you-replicated-apples-reported-bold-9700-antenna-issues-your-device-i-cant 14% is a fucking lot for problem that doesn't exist.