OnePlus 6 Quality Control REVEALED - Epic Factory Tour
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2019-05-06
·
2,364 words · ~11 min read
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we've toured factories before but somehow i've never even been to what is
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arguably the electronics manufacturing capital of the world shenzhen china
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so when oneplus offered to sponsor us behind the scenes for a close-up look at
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their production lines for the oneplus 6 i couldn't resist
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the first line behind me here is completely focused on building the
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screen assembly which includes the OLED panel the digitizer and the glass front
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and the chassis the oneplus 6 uses a sandwich style construction with an
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aluminum mid plate and then a separate glass back plate this first station here
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after earpiece speaker grille installation is dedicated just to
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inspecting the chassis that are shipped here from foxconn by the way don't be
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surprised if you buy from someone like oneplus and some of the components come
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from foxconn their factories make pretty much everything but it's down to oneplus
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to control the quality of the user experience so this guy right here is
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checking every single unit to ensure
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that it meets their standard and he's really picky so
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a tiny imperfection like this
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which is very hard for us to even capture with an 8k camera will result in
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this unit being sent back for a refund
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now the defect rate for a part like this is around 0.3 percent meaning that it's not
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a huge issue on the surface but think about it if a phone requires let's say
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six major components and each of them is bad 0.3 percent of the time then even if
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everything else goes perfectly oneplus could end up building 2 out of every 100
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of their phones with some kind of imperfection
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totally unacceptable next the chassis and the display assembly get fed into
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opposite sides of the glue applicator machine right here it uses machine
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vision to precisely align them then it applies a special glue and then they get
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left in a compression device for three hours while the glue cures
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once these get opened up the excess glue gets scraped away at this station here
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then the usb port and the vibration motor go in after which
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wait hold on a minute
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two more glue scraping stations okay so oneplus is currently at a stage
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of production called pvt that actually means that every single
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phone you see here today is going to end up recycled at some point
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and they will produce anywhere from hundreds to even thousands of phones
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during pvt in an effort to get things streamlined before they go to mass
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production and so as part of this process they found out that there was a
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15 chance that glue would seep out again
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at this stage right here so in the future they might be able to
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eliminate these stations this whole thing is a constantly evolving process
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from here the assembled displays and chassis get
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run through a series of test patterns to ensure some basic functionality so under
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this station we find yet again more trays full of rejected parts with
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flaws both big and very very small
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finally some protective covers get applied and
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the whole thing gets carted off to storage
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uh can i have one thank you
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here we're getting our first look at the rear panel as the rear camera covers and
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the fingerprint sensor get placed now the fingerprint sensor is going to be
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exposed to the user so it gets precisely
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aligned by machine before being pressed
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into place now this next station here is another
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great example of the growing panes that you go through with a new device
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you see this little sticker pad here they had to add this to the rear cover
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because a taller portion of the pcb rubs here now they can probably revise
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this sort of thing in the future so this sticker might not be necessary forever
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but for now some extra protection seemed prudent the back cover is now ready and
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it's actually going to jump across the line where we'll pick up with it later
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on batteries get checked here and then they too get passed across the u-shaped
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production line leading us to the beating heart and the pretty face of
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every modern flagship phone the main board excuse me
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complete with snapdragon 845 processor
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and the rear camera which in this case
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is a dual 16 plus 20 megapixel affair
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the completed chassis and the display from before those actually join us here
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now it's time for some rapid fire component installation it's it's
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basically like building a little tiny pc
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so we've got ambient sensor placement the front camera then
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at a single station right here in goes
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the earpiece speaker the headphone jack
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and a daughter board then after that we've got
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wait really
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four people it takes four people to install and
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cable manage two dinky little rf cables
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well actually yes it does because of the importance of this step
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these connectors in here are very fragile and the placement and management
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of these wires is imperative to the functionality of the phone
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after the ribbon cables go in for the daughter board right behind me this
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protective cover right here for it goes in almost entirely automatically now
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precise alignment here is critical because even though oneplus doesn't
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advertise it the bottom of the phone by
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the main loudspeaker here actually has similar waterproofing to other flagship
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devices this has apparently been true since the five so
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it doesn't mean that oneplus is going to warranty you if the water damage sticker
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turns red when you send it in but it is nice to have that little bit
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of peace of mind this station here is all about identifying process and supply
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chain issues every major component of the phone has a
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qr code that gets scanned into their system here and then stored on board the
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phone so that oneplus can quickly track failures in the field back to the
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component supplier assembly line and
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even the qc staff that let it through
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then we get a quick power on test to ensure
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that base functionality looks okay
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followed by the motherboard cover which goes on in a similar fashion to the
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daughter board cover remember how i promised batteries would
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be joining us from across the aisle here they are so they go into the phone here
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followed by another computerized inspection machine
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where my main man here is rocking the
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world's greatest footwear and this
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trippy machine that aligns the back panel with the front and then places it
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on
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these two pressers here and then this little roller doodad
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ensure that the back panel is fully adhered and then the finished phones get
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a final visual check to ensure that
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everything is bueno this also includes a little
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wipe down in most cases so uh
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that's it we're done right
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so why is this video over well do you guys remember how i promised
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that over a hundred people would touch one of these before it left the factory
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this is only like 70ish so after software gets loaded every device gets a
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special code entered into its numpad to enter testing mode and then goes through
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a shockingly thorough qa screening process
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so at stage one they test the flash with this little black box here then they
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record a video while the phone is sitting in a mechanical shaker to ensure
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that its image stabilization is working as expected
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stage two has testers snapping a photo for comparison against a reference image
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that is stored in the qa software and then stage three
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actually lifts up the phone against this little
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metal barrier here to ensure that the proximity sensor is working as intended
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stage four checks auto focus on both cameras by moving the phone back and
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forth from a target while stage five screens for dead pixels on the camera
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sensor or dust under the cover at stage
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six every phone goes into a little mini rf chamber for gps and wi-fi testing and
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then at stage seven antenna operation is
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verified but we are far from done
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so oneplus actually started pre-installing screen protectors on
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their phones to protect against shipping breakage on the oneplus x a few years
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ago and this has continued ever since so
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this goes on right here then we gotta move over to the other
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side of the line this guy's not just chilling and listening to music he's actually making
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sure that the headphone jack when it's plugged in or unplugged behaves
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correctly and then his partner here is making sure that the RGB indicator led
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and stream brightness control are functioning normally
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the microphone and speaker are both tested in here to ensure that they need
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spec this apparently has the highest failure rate on finished devices at
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about one in a thousand and if the speaker is misaligned or really if the
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device fails any of these tests it will get sent for disassembly for them to try
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again all right almost done here just five more stations
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so here both the selfie and the rear camera get checked again this time by a
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human for any weirdness that the automated tests might have missed a fun
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story oneplus actually ran into some customer complaints people thought that
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their phones were refurbished because they had the pictures these guys were
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taking in the factory on them uh no it's fine they just forgot to wipe them
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no big deal moving right over here the g sensor gets
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checked by this trippy little rotating table and nfc functionality is verified
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both normal functionality and high speed
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dash charging functionality are checked here
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and then this machine uses infrared depth sensing to ensure
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that the curvature of the back of the phone is to spec
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bringing us finally to one more visual inspection and wipe
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down before the finished phones are placed in protective sleeves and
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prepared to be sent to packaging so each one of these just to give you
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guys some idea of the volume here each one of these contains about 50
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phones completely ready to go
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oh i don't know where i got this from the environmental stress room
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presumably that's what that says i have no way of knowing is not as impressive to look at but it's
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really important so they've got a number of different chambers in here ones that
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are designed to rapidly increase and decrease temperature from 75 all the way
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to -40 for up to a week at a time ones
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that are designed to deliver very high temperatures at 95 humidity for up to
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500 hours at a time and they've got this raindrop test which isn't actually
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running right now but we can open it up they would expect a phone
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under this shower for a hundred hours to
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function normally after a few days of dry out time
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dang but it's not as outright impressive as
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room number two where they do one meter 1.5 meter and
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1.8 meter drop tests
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onto a slab of marble with a keyway
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technician checking the phone's functionality
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after each fall so they do each side of the phone two
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times and they accept
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10 cracked screens but they expect the
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entire rest of the phone's functionality including the camera to remain
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unimpacted so to speak by this type of torture i
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mean that seems reasonable enough to me i mean most people would have to be like
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walking around like this with a phone on their head to drop it from 1.8 meters
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all the time and that one isn't even the most
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strenuous test in this room this tumbler
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right here check this out
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oh you hear that this guy drops up to four phones
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one meter in any orientation
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a total of 150
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times now oneplus does expect some
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aesthetic damage here but once again more than ten percent
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cracked screens means it is back to the
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drawing board
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oh that's hard to listen to
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we saved the best for last this is the
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endurance lab so in room one we found
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all kinds of treats this guy right here
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can press on the usbc and headphone jacks and remove and insert cables 10
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000 times after that stress test the phone will be
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taken out disassembled and inspected for structural damage that could be
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reinforced in future designs this guy right here
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is a mechanical butt that puts 25 kilograms of pressure onto
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the top of the phone a thousand times this is for careless
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people who keep their phone in their back pocket
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this one right over here this one's actually kind of depressing
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this is the 10 centimeter drop tester it works in conjunction with the edge
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tester that's over there to pick up and drop each phone
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10 000 times from the back 10 000 times from the front then another
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2 000 times on each edge for a total of 28
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000 miner drops they expect the phones to survive this
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kind of treatment it's actually kind of cathartic to watch
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so that's pretty much it a huge thank you to oneplus for sponsoring us out
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here to take a look at the behind the scenes production of the oneplus 6 and a
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big thank you to you for watching if you guys dislike this video you know where
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that button is but if you liked it hit like get subscribed and maybe consider
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checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description also link down there is our
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merch store which has cool shirts like this one as well as our community forum
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which you should totally join
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oh i forgot
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much better