How Samsung Places Its Galaxy Telephones By way of the Wringer

Inside a nondescript constructing on Samsung’s campus in Suwon, South Korea, staff sit in cubicles typing away at their desks. Leaf-shaped awnings dangle overhead to offer some shade from the brilliant workplace lights. However as soon as you permit the primary workplace space and switch a nook, the office begins to look so much totally different.

Tucked away in hallways all through the ground are Samsung’s reliability testing labs. It is the place Samsung tortures its telephones earlier than transport them out to the thousands and thousands of individuals shopping for them around the globe. Robots drop telephones on steel surfaces, water jets pummel cellular gadgets from all instructions, and chambers immerse devices in excessive temperatures.

It is all a part of Samsung’s course of to make sure its telephones can stand up to drops, dunks, excessive climates and different hardships. This kind of testing is vital as a result of telephones are costly and important to every day life, in order that they should be constructed to final.

Samsung is not any stranger to reliability points. It infamously recalled the Galaxy Be aware 7 in 2016 due to overheating points and delayed its first foldable cellphone launch in 2019 after some reviewers skilled damaged screens. Final yr, experiences of batteries swelling inside Samsung telephones surfaced on YouTube. 

CNET and different journalists bought a uncommon glimpse inside Samsung’s lab to see the way it stress exams gadgets. The tour offered a way of how Samsung thinks about sturdiness in terms of telephones — not simply the exams themselves but in addition the sorts of situations Samsung accounts for. That is essential as a result of Samsung ships extra smartphones than another firm worldwide, in response to the newest figures from market analysis agency Worldwide Information Company.

When occupied with whether or not your cellphone is sturdy, the primary thought that probably involves thoughts is whether or not it may possibly survive drops. In line with a 2020 examine from AllState Safety Plans, 140 million Individuals have broken their telephones sooner or later of their lives. 

And Samsung’s facility has loads of machines at work to account for all of the other ways you would possibly throw, crack or shatter your cellphone. It isn’t so simple as simply dropping the system over and over. The exams in Samsung’s lab are designed to judge how telephones react when falling at totally different angles and heights, whereas additionally zeroing in on particular components of the cellphone, just like the display and canopy glass. 

One such evaluation referred to as the tumble take a look at includes placing gadgets in a large rotating rectangular chamber, the place they’re tossed round over and over. This take a look at is supposed to look at how telephones maintain up after being hit from totally different angles.

In one other nook of Samsung’s amenities, I nearly cringed as a metal ball dropped instantly onto the display of a Galaxy Z Fold. For this take a look at, Samsung is measuring how sturdy the show, again glass and inner components of a tool are after enduring affect. 

For much less dramatic tumbles, Samsung has a low drop take a look at. A machine suctions up a tool and drops it from a decrease peak, which is supposed to simulate what the cumulative results of flicking your cellphone throughout the desk may very well be. Though this take a look at would not look as brutal because the others, it reveals that Samsung is considering how minor slip-ups might affect a cellphone’s situation over the long run. 

Foldable telephones require their very own particular testing. I watched as robotic arms opened and closed Galaxy Z Flips and Folds over and over nearly in rhythm. When requested what number of open-and-close cycles these gadgets should undergo to move the take a look at, the member of Samsung’s reliability staff giving the tour merely stated “a number of occasions.” 

The purpose is to know what number of occasions the common individual would fold and unfold their system in a given interval throughout common use, the Samsung worker stated via a translator. Such sturdiness exams are notably essential for foldable telephones. A fast Google search turns up dozens of tales of damaged screens on the Z Flip throughout Reddit, YouTube and Samsung’s group boards. Samsung says the Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip are examined to outlast 200,000 folds, or roughly 5 years of use if unfolded 100 occasions per day. 

After a decade of reviewing tech merchandise, I’ve turn into accustomed to deciphering ingress safety rankings, or the scores that inform you whether or not your cellphone is water or mud resistant. What I have not seen, nonetheless, is strictly what the testing behind these rankings appears to be like like in actual life.

Samsung’s reliability lab has numerous machines to check for various ranges of water resistance. I watched as water jets soaked a Samsung cellphone as a part of the corporate’s testing for the IPX4 score, which ensures that telephones can endure being sprayed with water. In the identical room, a cellphone sat on the backside of a towering water tank to check for extra demanding rankings like IPX8. 

Resistance to drops and dips within the pool stands out as the first situations that come to thoughts when you think about whether or not a smartphone is sturdy. However Samsung has dozens of different exams meant to evaluate extra granular elements of your system as effectively. Robots plug in chargers and press the aspect key repeatedly to check a cellphone’s USB port and buttons. Machines drag the S Pen throughout the Z Fold’s show over and over to ensure strain from the stylus would not affect sturdiness. 

However Samsung’s testing lab is not simply an automatic torture chamber for telephones. The corporate additionally has devoted areas for testing how telephones maintain up in real-world situations. One such space, for instance, is supposed to imitate cafes, park benches and eating places to see how a tool’s cameras carry out in these environments. 

What stood out to me probably the most is the best way Samsung exams whether or not gadgets can stand up to excessive temperatures. The corporate has devoted chambers for immersing gadgets in excessive chilly and extremely humid situations to make sure telephones will perform correctly in climates around the globe. The environmental take a look at chamber appears to be like unassuming steel and glass field from the skin, however the stark temperature shift is instantly jarring when you attain inside. One chamber I noticed was set to minus 20 levels Celsius (minus 4 levels Fahrenheit), though Samsung conducts exams at different decrease temperatures too.

Touring Samsung’s reliability lab gives a glimpse into the corporate’s growth course of and sheds some mild on why new ideas might take so lengthy to graduate to actual merchandise. Each time Samsung provides a brand new element or characteristic — like folding screens, rounded shows or new S Pen slots — the corporate probably has to check how these new components maintain up underneath dire circumstances. Maybe ultimately the wilder ideas Samsung has proven off at CES like versatile sliding shows will make their method to these labs too.