Regardless of a glossy design, Apple’s merchandise boast spectacular sturdiness. And now, for the primary time ever, the corporate offered a glance into certainly one of its 200 sturdiness labs, the place it rigorously exams its merchandise.
Apple conducts a number of forms of testing on its gadgets, together with environmental, liquid, drop, and vibration.
Rigorous testing entails various excessive situations
Apple not often ever gives an inside look into its testing labs to the media. In late 2023, it gave the press a sneak peek into its Apple silicon lab. This time round, the corporate offered the Counterpoint Analysis workforce with a tour of its sturdiness lab.
As a part of its environmental testing, Apple creates the “worst-case” eventualities in its labs for its gadgets. These exams cowl a various vary of maximum situations, protecting in thoughts the vast availability of Apple merchandise.
This consists of “salt publicity exams working for so long as 100 hours, excessive mild depth publicity, and publicity to mud from the Arizona desert to investigate what occurs when tremendous sand particles enter the iPhone’s audio system or the charging port.” For the AirPods, Apple even creates synthetic sweat and earwax for testing.
iPhones and Apple Watch carry an IP68 score, making them mud and waterproof. Apple has a particular IPX chamber to simulate difficult rain and water situations for testing mud and water ingress safety. As a part of this, the corporate topics its gadgets to high-pressure water from a distance and even places them in a pressurized tank to simulate depth.
Moreover, the gadgets are additionally uncovered to on a regular basis liquid gadgets, like sunscreens, juices, and sodas.
Apple exams at the least 10,000 iPhones earlier than launch
For drop testing and to simulate various eventualities, Apple has developed a specialised robotic. It drops gadgets from completely different angles and on completely different surfaces — like granite, asphalt, and particle boards — to evaluate the affect of every fall. Plus, Apple engineers analyze each drop by a particular app.
Lastly, there’s a vibration chamber, the place Apple places its gadgets by completely different vibrating frequencies to evaluate their affect. Lots of them simulate a real-world situation, like being on a bike, to make sure there’s no undesirable harm. The corporate even places the Imaginative and prescient Professional by the vibration exams.
Impressively, the report highlights that Apple exams its merchandise at scale, placing at the least 10,000 iPhones by these chambers earlier than launch.