Inside the secretive labs where Apple's torturers put iPhones to the test
Most of us have, at some point, dropped a phone. Sometimes it hits at just the wrong angle, or on just the wrong surface, and shatters. Other times, it's miraculously unscathed, either because of sheer luck or because of the way it's been designed.
In Sunnyvale, California, inside an unmarked and nondescript building, a team of engineers drops more devices each day than you hopefully will in your entire life. The building is home to Apple's durability labs – among many similar facilities around the world – where phones and other products are thrown, dunked, sprayed, submerged, humidified, salted, buffeted, shaken and dismantled. Not only to test their durability and qualify for certifications, but to guide design decisions from the earliest development stages to help the final devices survive the dangers of the outside world.
When I visit, the staff are friendly and eager to discuss their meticulous and scientific brand of tech torture (though Apple has not allowed me to quote them). They also give the impression of lab workers who aren't used to visitors. Their work is largely out of the public eye, even more so than some of the work at the nearby main Apple campus in Cupertino.
Something that becomes immediately apparent is that, while Apple wants to simulate real-world scenarios, it can't just have its workers drop an iPhone down the stairs or slip an iPad into a soapy bath. The incidents have to be consistent and replicable, so any damage can be understood and mitigated, meaning there's an awful lot of science involved. And robots.
But the first area I find is largely robot-free. Here, devices are subjected to simulated worst-case environmental conditions. A massive walk-in cupboard has new iMacs operating in 90 per cent humidity, at 40 degrees. A month in there can simulate years of muggy real-world exposure.
Elsewhere, iPhones are being soaked in a high-density salt mist, or withstanding a vortex of artificial sand, designed to simulate the particulate matter of the Arizona desert. A UV chamber simulates the long-term effect of the sun on devices. Sure, you could just put them outside, but the chamber can impart many years worth of rays in just 50 hours. When Apple introduces a punchy new colour or sparkly new finish for one of its devices, it's one that's put up with this kind of punishment and come through fine. Other potential finishes may not be so lucky.
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It's not all about making sure the devices stay nice on the outside, though. They're tested thoroughly to ensure 100 per cent functionality after their ordeals, and autopsied to check for corrosion or dust ingress. The tests are developed against real-world data indicating the worst likely cases of what could happen to a consumer's device. Part of that comes from analysing damaged products that are sent in for repair or recycling, but a lot also comes from devices in the wild, with anonymised data including the amount of sunlight hitting the sensors and other analytics. When you set up an Apple product and it asks whether you want to send the company data to help improve its products, this is some of the stuff it's talking about.
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