HONOR Terminal Reliability Laboratory
The laboratory covers an area of nearly 6,000 square meters. Its main business is mobile phone hardware reliability testing, covering various scenarios in which users use mobile phones daily. Through a series of growth experiments, it improves the overall reliability capabilities of the products. The test project settings include tests of mechanical reliability, environmental adaptability, and protection reliability.
Mechanical Strength and Durability Test Area
The stiffness of the entire mobile phone, the strength of the headphone/USB and other interfaces, and the life test of the buttons are all conducted here. Our earphone, USB interface, and button durability tests cover the user’s service life of more than 2 years, and the number of tests reaches tens of thousands or even millions of times. There is also a sitting pressure test that simulates users putting their mobile phones in denim pants pockets, as well as a twist test in game scenarios to ensure the reliability of normal use by users.
Protection Reliability Test Area
This includes waterproofing, dustproofing, salt spray corrosion resistance, etc., to cover various scenarios in daily life. This is a rain testing machine that supports different levels of waterproof testing from IPX2 to IPX6, simulating some scenarios in which products may encounter water in daily life to improve the waterproofing capabilities of the product. This is a sand and dust test chamber for users to evaluate the impact of dust on products to ensure the normal use of mobile phones in daily life environments. Here is the salt spray test chamber. This test is mainly to test the product’s ability to resist salt spray corrosion to ensure that it will not fail due to device corrosion within a certain period. The two buckets next to it are used for higher-level waterproof tests such as IPX8 and 5ATM.
Mechanical Impact Test Area
This is where mobile phone directional drops, roller tests, and low-height micro-drop tests are all conducted. What you see here is the roller test. There are 0.5m rollers and 1m rollers, respectively, simulating multiple drop scenarios of users in different falling postures. The number of tests has reached more than 500 times. The next one is the 1m directional drop test, with six sides and four corners. It was dropped 50 times in total, and the test ground was covered with a cement floor, granite, sandpaper, etc. Simulates the scenarios in which the user handholds the device and falls, including 1.0 m, 1.2 m, and 1.5 m. Let our testers demonstrate the testing process. The last one is the micro-drop test machine. The test height is generally 10cm or 20cm. It simulates the scenario where the user throws the mobile phone on the table many times when using the mobile phone. It has been tested nearly 5,000 times in total. Through the coverage of these drop tests at different heights, it drives design improvements, and improves the anti-fall quality of the product.
Detection Area (Before-and-after Reliability) Test Area
All prototypes undergoing reliability testing will be tested in this area before and after the test to test the functions and performance of RF, audio, camera, display touch, baseband, and other modules, to determine the impact of reliability testing on these modules. This testing equipment integrates the capabilities of the functional testing equipment and performance testing equipment of the production line, and is connected through the assembly line to achieve fully automated testing, and, at the same time, can meet the testing needs of different products in the research and development stage. At the same time, we also use AGV robots to connect the test environment introduced earlier to this automated inspection assembly line to further create a fully automated reliability test laboratory and improve test efficiency.
Environmental Reliability Laboratory
All environmental reliability tests of the complete machine/single unit, including high and low temperature cycles, temperature shock, high temperature and high humidity, and other test items, are conducted in this area, covering audio, radio frequency, and other components of mobile phone products, and display module units and the complete mobile phone, through conventional temperature and humidity aging to evaluate the medium and long-term service life of the product; through extreme tests such as double 85, temperature cycle TTF, etc., to stimulate design risks and drive product quality improvement.
By introducing advanced equipment in the industry, regionally deploying experimental test environments, building a test environment for product reliability, simulating various usage scenarios for users, and ensuring that users have more reliable product performance, we make Honor products more secure to use.
Failure Analysis Laboratory
The lab covers a total area of about 800 square meters. The main purpose is to analyze the failure modes, failure mechanisms, and root causes of failed samples in the research and development stage, and propose improvement plans in design, technology, and manufacturing processes. The laboratory has the ability to analyze structures and materials from macroscopic (phones, devices) to microscopic (micron/nanoscale). It is equivalent to a hospital and medical center for devices, chips, modules in the field of mobile phone R&D, analyzing the essence of problems in the research and development process, and proposing solutions. There are several areas in this laboratory.
1. Reception Area—where to “feel the pulse” of samples through various electrical testing equipment. Currently, signal testing of a single 90nm BCD transistor can be completed.
2. Section Analysis Area—By performing cutting, grinding, polishing, and other operations on the sample, a preliminary analysis and judgment can be made on the target area of the sample cross section.
3. Non-destructive Analysis Area—which is similar to the principle of chest X-rays in hospitals. Without affecting the function and operating condition of the sample or destroying the failure site, X-ray, ultrasonic, and other technologies are used to detect samples.
4. Material Analysis Area—we can use an electron microscope to analyze nanoscale materials and components and observe the most microscopic causes of failure. CP and FIB can also perform low-stress micron-level cutting and sample processing, similar to “minimally invasive surgery.”