An Unprecedented Look At Apple's "Black Labs"

An anonymous reader writes "Apple recently granted ABC Nightline unprecedented access to its secretive 'black labs' where it puts upcoming products through exhaustive testing."

Comments

Re:Hey look, damage reduction!

[Skuld-Chan]

Apple's demo videos seem faked. I have a friend with a Droid X and another with an Eris (I personally have a Nexus One - which is very similar to the Eris) - both of which seem to have negligible signal loss no matter how I hold them (at first using their video as a reference). Eris dropped a whopping 6 db signal when I held both hands around the bottom of the phone - and I have really sweaty hands most of the time. There really is no way to just hold the phone like normal or even abnormal and go from full signal to zero.

The Droid-X actually has two antennas - one at the top and bottom - holding both had similar effect.

I've only been able to handle one iPhone 4 - and just touching the two antennas on the gap for me (again sweaty hands) causes reasonably large signal loss (I really don't know because unlike Android the iPhone doesn't have an actual s-meter buried anywhere it seems).

That's a big claim... faked

[hellfire]

This is not a defense of Apple, but a statement about how large corporations work. I seriously doubt that the videos were completely faked. As with anything, the results can be spun or manipulated, but there has to be a least a shred of truth, or the lawyer attack dogs would be out by now.

Apple basically called out every single smartphone developer and said "you all suck too!" and posted videos to "prove" it. Those companies all responded so far with nothing but the same tired PR statements. If Apple was actually slandering these other phones and faked the results entirely, I'm sure these companies would love to have some extra cash plus a chance to smear one of their biggest competitors.

Now, Apple's video proof is mostly annecdotal since it's one phone and one hand. Yours is too, however. I know people who say they can't make the Apple Antenna issue happen on the iPhone 4, and I see videos on Youtube posted both before and after the iPhone 4 that point out signal loss issues with other smartphones. All of this evidence is, again, annecdotal.

From a scientific standpoint, you have to admit Apple's doing a good job of basically trying to throw a bunch of "proof" out there and making people pick thru it. It stirs in just enough doubt to make everyone stop and think. The hard core haters and fanboys won't change their mind, but this is like election politics, it's not about swaying everyone, just trying to tilt the balance in their favor.