Designing Phones to Last: The Importance of Testing

One of the most crucial pieces of feedback we provide to the design team is on the design margin of the product, according to Ajay. For instance, we ask, "How many more drops can this phone take? If 90% of users drop their phones a certain number of times a year, how can we build something that survives even more than that?" These decisions are especially important as we build phones to last even longer.

Practical Testing: Rooting the Design Process

While the team could dream up any kind of test, they root their testing in practical scenarios. "We test for things like high altitude — what happens to our phones at 14,000 feet, for instance, because if there’s an unpressurized aircraft that’s transporting our phones, we don’t want them to break," Ajay says. However, testing what would happen if a phone fell out of a plane — for curiosity’s sake — is not a use case that happens often enough to warrant designing an entire product around.

Surviving Outlandish Scenarios

Despite the impracticality of some tests, the practical tests the teams conduct could help our devices survive more outlandish scenarios, if and when they come up. For example, the two Pixel phones survived their time in the snow. The team tests how our devices survive at temperatures ranging from -30ºC (-22ºF) to 75ºC (167ºF), to help see what will happen when you accidentally leave your phone out in the sun on a hot summer’s day, or subject your Pixel to rapid temperature changes when you leave your toasty home for the frigid outdoors in the winter.

Water and Dust Resistance

Similarly, while snow isn’t on the testing docket, the Pixel 6a that Andrew left outside for six months was certified (with an ingress protection rating) for water and dust resistance. "So the phones are relatively sealed from the elements, the snow cover kept them relatively protected, and the charging circuit was most likely disabled, saving the battery," Ajay says. "Our phones aren’t designed for that scenario, but everything else they’re tested and designed for might help them survive."

The Delight of Survival

So, should we all start throwing our phones at walls or leaving them in the wilderness? "I wouldn’t recommend it," Ajay says with a laugh. "We don’t want to let people feel like they can do anything with our products, but it’s amazing to surprise them when something bad does happen, and yet their phone survives. That moment when they pick up their phone and they don’t see a broken display or the camera works — that’s where the delight is."