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

This is going to be posted quite a bit.

[Adaeniel]

Apparently, their exhaustive testing doesn't actually include using the product.

Re:This is going to be posted quite a bit.

[mcgrew]

Apparently posting about it doesn't require using the product either.

You must be new here... it doesn't even require reading about the product, let alone using it.

Apple's Black Labs:

[not already in use]

Where Apple tests for flaws in other phones to justify the flaws in their own phones.

For those of us not in the US and Hulu'd up..

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fq6sjH1W7hA

Re:Considering the stink about iPhone4

[nomadic]

Considering the past 20 years of structural design flaws, as well.

ABC.. Disney.. Jobs..

[Dynamoo]

ABC is owned by Disney. Steve Jobs owns 138 million Disney shares or about $4.7bn worth of stock. Anyone else think it odd that Disney is running a puff piece for one of its major shareholders?

Re:ABC.. Disney.. Jobs..

[vlm]

Anyone else think it odd that Disney is running a puff piece for one of its major shareholders?

Somewhere around 5 media companies control about 99% of what the general population sees, hears, reads, and frankly, thinks.

So, if a rich dude invests in a major media company, then pretty much by definition there is about a 1 in 5 chance that a report from a major media outlet will be covering one of their own shareholders.

Its not like we have a free market of numerous equal competitors trying to push commodities in the media world.

Re:Considering the stink about iPhone4

[Philip K Dickhead]

Have you EVER tried to exhaust a Black Lab? I mean, your Golden Retriever may be something to talk about.

But the Lab? They're indefatigable!

Hey look, damage reduction!

[kyz]

I wonder how much it costs to get your damage-limiting press release videos on to national television?

Apple are the brand that never make any mistakes. EXCEPT WHEN THEY DO. But that's because everybody makes mistakes, not just Apple.

It's important to know: all phones are susceptible to the "death grip"... it's just a tiny minor detail, not really worth mentioning, that the iPhone 4 "death grip" is "holding it normally in your left hand".

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).

Re:Hey look, damage reduction!

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

It's more than that: All antennae in the frequency bands used by cellphones will suffer some attenuation if your meaty hands are wrapped around them. You are absorbing a chunk of the radiation. This applies to all brands, and is why many cellphones have an area, or areas, they encourage you not to touch during use. Typically, phones are designed so that you won't tend to hold this part during routine use.

On the iPhone 4, the antenna is external and does not have a dielectric coating. In addition to attenuating the signal with their meaty consumer-hands, the user can actually modify the performance characteristics of the antenna(for the worse); by being conductive enough to count as part of it, or by bridging the two sections.

Apple has, naturally, been doing their best to conflate these two distinct antenna issues. All phones suffer from finger-meat signal attenuation. The iPhone is pretty much the only phone in the industry that has an exposed, externally conductive, antenna. Even the old-school designs with external pull-up antennas generally had those coated with plastic, and the user was hardly encouraged to hold the phone by a flexible extending antenna, rather than by the body.

Re:Hey look, damage reduction!

[Joe U]

There really is no way to just hold the phone like normal or even abnormal and go from full signal to zero.

Sorry, you're wrong, after holding the Eris with both hands, and feet, underwater, on top of a mesa while in a Faraday cage I experienced significant signal loss. While in comparison, I saw absolutely no signal loss after using the new bumper Apple issued (while attached to the 12 ft iTenna, but most iphone users have at least one of them)

Re:Hey look, damage reduction!

[kaiser423]

+1. Mod parent up. I think that the iPhone is a great phone, but as an RF engineer I'm tired of two people conflating the issue. The issue with the iPhone is that some RF engineer lost a fight and there's no conductive coating, so you effectively bridge two antennas if you happen to touch a specific spot. That's a totally different problem from the "my hand is absorbing the radiation and weakly coupling to the antenna" that all phones have.

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.