All drop-tests should be done this way: iPhone 6s vs Samsung Galaxy S7 to the death (Video)

9 to 5 Mac ^ | May 26, 2016 | By Ben LoveJoy

[Swordmaker]

Actually, that’s NOT how to do a drop test. Drop tests are done per IEC 60065, 60068, or 60312. It utilizes a specific piece of equipment that allows a controlled, random orientation drop of a specific height (typically 0.5m, 0.8m, or 1.0m) to a 3mm thick steel plate backed with 19mm of 9 layer void-free plywood, and it’s repeated at regular intervals (2, 3, or 5 seconds between drops) for at least 500 drops.

Excuse me, but that is not a real world test. Tell me. How does this piece of equipment successfully execute 500 repeated tests randomly oriented at 2 second intervals and inspect the results between each drop for any rational examination of the results of the drop? It can't. A user does NOT repeatedly drop the same phone 500 time every 2, 3, or 5 seconds. A user in the real world drops it once and hopes it still works after hitting a concrete surface similar to that concrete block. (frankly, I would have made the concrete surface even larger to allow the phones to bounce a couple of times on the same surface to replicate a real world scenario even more.) The real world seldom is covered by an obviously arbitrary 3mm sheet of steel backed by an equally arbitrary piece of plywood bought at the nearest lumber yard by the guy who made the test rig and specced it to meet what he bought!

Looking at various drop testers for sale to the industry, the one used in the YouTube video is built according to the same design as the ones I see for sale, until you get to the ones designed for repeated "drum based" tests which can do Zero to 9,999 tests at up to 10 "drops" per minute and require computer sensors to evaluate results in between "drops." All of the ones before the drum based testing were designed to hold the phones in a particular orientation before being released in a controlled manner, the same way as the test rig in the YouTube in the article. I would say that is pretty scientific for the test as designed.

Could the have done repeated tests to average results? Sure. But their budget is not huge to allow such destructive testing multiple samples of multiple hundred dollar phones. You want to fund it?

[Swordmaker]

I came, I saw the video, I saw the results, and another uber-ingorant flame war. I used to love tech threads on FR back when there where intellectuals hanging around. Not anymore, sadly. Why don’t you ban a couple of these knuckle-dragging tech arguers?

Alas, that is beyond my meager abilities, my FRiend.

[Swordmaker]

In these tests, both come out about equal...

True story.

When I was managing a gun shop back in the mid 70s we had a gunsmith that was huge. He stood about 6'8" tall and probably weighed in at about 400Lbs. . . most of it muscle. He thought nothing of going down into the basement test range to test 10 gauge shotguns he was working on by merely holding on to the stockless tang of the gun and firing it. Let's call him John. . . that was his name.

John made himself a short barreled .458 Winchester Magnum rifle that weighed only about 3.25 pounds by removing every bit of excess weight — just for fun. He had a standing offer that you could pay him $25 to try and shoot it. If you could shoot the gun three times in an hour, you could have it! He let me try it once. . . and I am not a small man. I shot it just once and my shoulder was so badly bruised I couldn't shoot anything else for two months! I thought I had dislocated my shoulder, even though I had put on my shooting jacket, and extra padding! My shoulder was black, blue, red and yellow for months. John kept that rifle for years until he grew bored with the game and remade the action into a real hunting rifle for a client.

Nothing fazed him.

One day, one of my clerks was manning the gunsmithing desk. A guy came in demanding to talk to a gunsmith. This is generally against policy as a gunsmith who is jawing is not earning any money. The clerks are experts and can generally handle most problems and write up a repair order or even a custom work order without involving the gunsmith except for really specialized jobs. This guy was REALLY demanding. Nothing short of talking to the gunsmith would do. So the clerk called our giant out. . .

"I want you to fix muh gun." the guy announced. "It ain't working right!" He lays a no-name .45 Auto down on the counter.

"You could have told him that, you didn't need to talk to me," John said.

"These guys are just dumb grunts! They don't know nuthin', They's too stupid to tell you what I want," the guy declares. "When I wants something done, I go to the guy who's gonna do it." "What's wrong with your gun?" John is not happy. If you know him, you can tell. By this time I've joined the group at the gunsmith desk and I'm about to tell the guy to get out, we don't need his business if he's going to insult our employees..

"Here, I'll show you." The guy picks up his gun, points the gun toward the counter, pulls the slide back, and you can just see a glint of brass as he lets go!

BANG!

Everybody in the shop, except John, jumped! The round goes into the wooden counter, through a catalog or two, out the back, right down between John's legs and into the floor. There are shouts and screams. . . smoke, cordite. Echoes of the shot are still bouncing around the shop when I notice some people are picking themselves up off the floor. Only John and the total idiot haven't moved.

"SEE!" says the idiot. "That's what it does!" as he lays the gun back down on the now holed desk. "I want you to make it stop doing that!"

John calmly steps forward and picks up the .45 and equally calmly drops the magazine, which is, thankfully empty. He then clears the gun, which is, also thankfully empty, and leaves it locked back. John's face is very dark. . . he then puts the magazine back in, releases the slide and looks at the guy.

"Let me get this straight," John says in a low voice. "You want me to make this gun stop doing that? Is that right? You don't want this gun to ever do that again, Right? I want to be clear on what you want."

"Damn Straight! I want that gun to never do that again! It could kill someone!" The totally oblivious guy splutters. "Why'n you think I brought that in here? Are you stupid or something? Or don't you know what's wrong?"

"Oh, I know what's wrong. Just making sure you don't want it to do that again is all." There's a silence in the shop other than between the of them. John looks around at all the people listening in.

"I done tol' you." The idiot says, getting mad. "How much will it cost, and how long will it take?"

John thought for a few seconds and says "Fifty bucks, in advance," and held out his hand. "I'll take care of it right now, it'll only take a couple of minutes."

The guy got out the money, paid John, which John watched him count out in silence, John then wrote out a receipt for $50 which I saw said "Make .45 ACP gun, s.n. XXXXX, not do that anymore", had him sign it, gave it to the idiot, and then he turned around and walked back into the gunsmith shop. I followed John in, really curious what he was going to do.

John proceeded to put the gun, magazine and all, into our big hydraulic press and cycled it. I don't know what the capacity of that press was, but when it was done, that no-name .45 auto was about half as thick as it had been when it was operational. John turned around and walked back out to the holed desk. He handed the flattened hulk of the gun to the idiot.

"If won't do that any more."

[Shanghai Dan]

Uh, excuse me? Go check IEC 60065/68/312 and learn for yourself. It calls for this kind of test, and the dimensions of the box and materials used therein are defined by the standard as well. As well as the rotation rate and number of drops.

You’re WAY out of your element if you claim this is not a real-world test. This is specifically defined to be as CLOSE to real-world as you can get, and give as much coverage of the real-world as possible.

If you think you know better than hundreds of thousands of compliance and test and mechanical fatigue engineers who helped craft IEC 60065/68/312 and use it daily - you’re seriously deluded.

The test you champion is nowhere near realistic, nor is it part of the worldwide standard (yes, that even Apple uses) to drop-test gear. But it makes great grist for the fanbois on all sides!

Let me ask you - have you EVER done any real hardware testing, compliance testing, fatigue testing, reliability testing? Ever? I would wager you never have. And thus you’re speaking from a position of ignorance. Apparently tempered with a bit of ego, too.

Check the standards and educate yourself.

[Shanghai Dan]

It’s why the test is run literally hundreds of times - you cover all the angles. The phone is not “reset” in position before each test, it’s allowed to tumble freely for 500+ falls. That’s a real test.

Dropping in ONE specific orientation is nowhere near realistic, nor is it suitable. And that’s why it’s not an IEC-approved test. And no compliance/test engineer would ever put credence in the results.

[Fresh Wind]

LOL! Great story!

[Swordmaker]

It’s why the test is run literally hundreds of times - you cover all the angles. The phone is not “reset” in position before each test, it’s allowed to tumble freely for 500+ falls. That’s a real test.

What in hell does a 500+ iteration test tell them when a modern glass screened smartphone is essentially destroyed after five drops? Not a damn thing. That is the point we are making. Extreme overkill testing might be used on the metal case or frame, but not on the working device. It might be useful on a device enclosed in an extreme protection case such as an Otter Box or a military spec device, but not when no one in the real world could possibly submit such a device to such abuse.

What can one possibly learn about devices after running a five hundred drop cycle when every device comes out beat to hell with no screen in pieces? That no modern smartphone can survive 500 drop cycles? Gosh, who would'a thunk that? None of the tested devices in the instant test survived a mere ten simple drops in working condition, why would anyone consider running 500?

As I pointed out the real world is NOT covered in a smooth metallic surface but it is a rough and tumble place usually covered by concrete or pavement, which has sharp protruding silica or rock surfaces, which are, if you had thought about it at all, more likely to increase the likelihood of sharper, more concentrated impacts to a single point on the falling device than a flat metal plane.

A real world test accounts for real world conditions that might occur when IN real world conditions, not the pristine, clean room, control everything events in a lab.

[Shanghai Dan]

What in hell does a 500+ iteration test tell them when a modern glass screened smartphone is essentially destroyed after five drops? Not a damn thing.

Then that shows your ignorance. Most phones will, in fact, survive the 500 drop test. It's an INDUSTRY STANDARD. What part of INDUSTRY STANDARD do you not understand? The INDUSTRY part, or the STANDARD part? Perhaps the combination thereof? Too many syllables?

Look - the test you trumpeted here is irrelevant; it's a cherry-picked one-off that doesn't meet INDUSTRY STANDARDS (you know, those things I've been pointing out to you and you seem to want to ignore) nor is it representative of what a phone will typically encounter. That's why 60065/60068/60312 exist.

Go ahead and live in your fantasy world. It's 100% obvious you have zero - ZERO - experience in actual certification or testing of hardware and you refuse to admit it, or even try to learn. Educate yourself before you continue ignorant rantings - and prove you're just a fool with an agenda to push. I tried to give you some insight into reality, but you want your comfortable little make-believe safe space.

But hey, you know better than all other compliance and testing engineers in the world, don't you? You're God's gift to testing and mechanics! Why, the world just doesn't understand that their facts, physics, and millions of empirical results matching theories are inconsequential to your theorizing and ill-conceived statements born and bred in absurdity and ignorance.

[Swordmaker]

Then that shows your ignorance. Most phones will, in fact, survive the 500 drop test. It's an INDUSTRY STANDARD. What part of INDUSTRY STANDARD do you not understand? The INDUSTRY part, or the STANDARD part? Perhaps the combination thereof? Too many syllables?

Please list for us the smartphones that will survive 500 one meter falls onto a metal floor and still be operational with intact screens. PLEASE!

If you want to submit your smartphone to 500 repeated such drops, go ahead. If you think it will survive even five such drops, go ahead and do it. I don't think it will. You are the one claiming that most phones will. I don't believe you. These phones are NOT THAT DURABLE.

You cannot seem to make a post without an insult. You've done it repeatedly in these threads. What IS YOUR PROBLEM?

For your information here are the criteria established by Sony Ericsson for there phone drop testing.

• The drop test system must be able to drop mobile phones that are cuboid shaped with no moving parts. Other phone types like the Jack Knife, Clam Shell or Slide phone models do not have to be included in the project. Mobile phone models that have microphone lids are also excluded from the project. Hence all mobile phones tested during this project were cuboid shaped (M600i, W950i, W960i, P1).
• The drop test system is only required to drop mobile phones using the same pneumatic gripper and gripper extensions. Exchanging gripper extensions is not within the scope of this project. Since the time frame of the project is exceedingly narrow, the ability to drop mobile phone models of different dimension is not prioritized.
• The drop test system shall neither pick up dropped devices nor in any other way examine them. Dropped devices are only to be picked up by Sony Ericsson personnel.
• A mechanical system for free fall drop tests has to be developed. A robot with a pneumatic gripper is to grip the phone, move it to the right height, position, and orientation before releasing it. The drop test equipment has to be manageable from a PC software with the possibility of trimming and saving drop orientations.
• No specific consideration has to be taken to the air flow induced by free fall drop tests affecting the falling mobile phone. The possibility of trimming the drop positions should compensate for the rotation of the mobile phone during a drop.
• The PC software managing the drop test equipment has to fulfill the requirements of Sony Ericsson based on the Test Plan. This includes support for scenarios, projects, trimming and saving drops etc.

Well, gosh, it looks like a similar rig to what was shown in the YouTube.

Here is another article on "realistic drop testing wireless devices" from Bell Laboratories.

DT-202 Drop Tester for smartphones,
cell phones, and mobile gadgets.
SHINYEI TESTING MACHINERY CO.,LTD.

Oh, gee. . . that commercial, engineered, professional drop testing rig made for cellphone and smartphone manufacturers and designers to test the durability of their designs and products looks almost exactly like the one used in the YouTube video presented in this thread. I can post more from other test instrument manufacturers. I can also post more scientific and engineering papers on how to do real world drop tests. What you were posting were about testing component tests for shock durability, such as the ability of a solder joint or internal connectors to withstand repeated jolts and such and still maintain their integrity. YOU LOSER!

[Mark17]

Keep up the good work bro.

[Shanghai Dan]

My problem is that you continue to ignore actual, published standards and cling to your belief that it must be something else that is done.

I’ve published the standards. You’ve claimed they are no good. The onus is on you to show your position; I’ve got the standards, the world’s body of compliance and test engineers, and every manufacturer out there.

My position is rock solid; yours is ephemeral.

Enjoy!

[Swordmaker]

I’ve published the standards. You’ve claimed they are no good. The onus is on you to show your position; I’ve got the standards, the world’s body of compliance and test engineers, and every manufacturer out there.

If you bothered to read the links I included they ALSO cite STANDARDS. . . which are NOT the standards you cite and these specifically mention these testing rigs are for testing cellular smartphone for those standards. Sorry loser.

[Swordmaker]

You have yet to seriously addressed any of the questions I have raised at all. None. Zip. Nada. None. You just make appeals to authority logical errors by referring to your claims about the supposed standard set by someone for drop testing cellular phones which you claim every phone can meet. I’ve challenged you to prove your assertion.

[Shanghai Dan]

Here you go, Huawei testing tumble tests. Are you seriously saying that standards like 60068 are created then NOT USED by the industry? Seriously? Are you going to claim Apple (whose iPhone came in second in your test - bested by HTC) doesn't do testing to published standards, does less testing than Huawei or Nokia? Or Samsung at 1:45?

You're out of your element here... Can't admit you were wrong, can you? Tumble testing is standard, you're just ignorant of the fact. Now you've been educated. Documented proof that tumble testing is standard. Imagine that - using a published reliability standard (IEC 60068) as a standard for testing!

Enjoy!

[Shanghai Dan]

If you bothered to read the links I included they ALSO cite STANDARDS. . . which are NOT the standards you cite and these specifically mention these testing rigs are for testing cellular smartphone for those standards. Sorry loser.

Loser? Really? The two links you provided - one to a PDF where they propose a different test - is specifically NOT a standard. They're proposing something different! The other, the piece of test equipment, specifically references IE60068 - the standard I've been referencing this whole time!

Loser? Far from it. You've provided nothing, I've referenced the actual IEC standards used, and have linked to actual video of the tests and descriptions of the test (tumble test). You've shown nothing but confirmed my statements (the test gear you reference is built to conform to 60068), or are someone trying to push an alternate (and it's not used in the industry).

Far from loser, I've actually shown my work. Can't admit you were wrong, can you?

[Shanghai Dan]

A few more you might like:

Tumble testing cell phones

Verizon tumble testing

Tumble testing is THE STANDARD. Enough said.

[Swordmaker]

Tumble testing is THE STANDARD. Enough said.

From your first linked article, which says the tumble test uses only 100 tumbles, not 500:

"The same dual-height approach is adopted for the more controlled free-drop test. A claw raises the phone inside a transparent tower and then lets it smack down onto a slab of marble. If you consider that a phone has six sides, the phone is dropped at least twice on each of them. Witnessing this in action was one of those moments that forces you to draw breath in fear, although given that the lab assistant offered up his own Huawei phone to be the subject of the procedure, perhaps we should have had more confidence that the testing had proved rigorous enough to guarantee its survival."

Oops! That sounds like a similar test as what was done manually in the YouTube in this article. It certainly is NOT a tumble test you claim is the universal standard. It appears you have hoist yourself on your own petard.

The Environmental Drop Test rig I posted information on yesterday is certified to meet the JIS C 60068-2-31, IEC 60068-2-31 standards for Drop Machines for smartphones, cell phones, and mobile gadgets. That is similar to the testing machine described in the paragraph from your own linked article above.

The Yahoo article does indeed show a Heina "tumbler" drop tester, but then it refers to a more controllable "second machine" which:

". . . drops phones on each of their sides onto a steel plate sitting on top of a concrete slab. Both tests are supposed to ensure that Verizon’s devices can withstand the bumps and bruises of everyday life."

That second machine is obviously an "environmental" drop tester similar to the one I posted a photo of, and the one used in the YouTube in the article, not a tumbler.

You still have not answered a single one of the specific questions I posed.

[Shanghai Dan]

It’s about time you recognize that 60065/60068/60312 are standards for testing. And that tumble testing is the main test used.

About time you came around. Even if you can’t admit you were wrong from the beginning.

[Swordmaker]

It’s about time you recognize that 60065/60068/60312 are standards for testing. And that tumble testing is the main test used.

About time you came around. Even if you can’t admit you were wrong from the beginning.

Excuse me, SD, but YOU are the one who needs to be the one doing the admission here. I have been right all along, not you. I have posted facts and links. You, not so much. You have made assertions without bothering to provide so much as a link until late in the discussion. I have provided links to equipment and studies, documents from manufacturers citing their procedures for drop testing. I have also provided links to manufacturers of drop testing equipment for smartphones identical in almost every specific to the equipment used in the YouTube citing the standards the equipment is designed to meet. You, again, not so much.

I have also hoist you on your own petard when you finally DID provide links by showing you that your own links INCLUDED the very same tests using the equipment you've been denigrating all along in favor of your claimed sole tumble testing approach. Sorry, you are just plain wrong that only tumble testing is used for drop testing in the industry per the standards.

I have not disagreed that your listed code numbers are not standards for testing, just questioned exactly WHAT they are standards FOR testing. . . And how they are used, what they are testing for, and how each iteration of the test is evaluated. You have not provided a single answer to those questions. You've ignored them and thrown insults.

[Mark17]

It looks like the haters gotta hate. I like the stuff I have, and quite frankly, I could care less what anyone thinks about it. 😀