I Went Inside Apple’s Labs to See How Apple Watch Connectivity Is Tested
Entering the padded safe had the impression of entering a sort of gate. The sterile white room was lined with arrows of shredded pyramid foam and in the shape of a pyramid; A crossing between a recording studio and a sort of torture chamber straight out of the Château d’Elsa from the film Frozen. I lowered my phone: no bars. Basically Apple’s test laboratories, I was officially out of the grid.
I have reviewed smart watches for almost a decade, but I never stopped once to ask myself how connectivity really works on the Apple Watch. I saw him pass in a transparent way between my phone and Wi-Fi, paying things without suspicion of cell signal and mapping my shopping even when I forget my phone at home. I took for granted how this network of invisible connections works behind the scenes, and according to Apple, it is a lot by design.
From Wi-Fi and GPS to Bluetooth and GNSS, and now 5G and satellite connectivity on the Apple Watch Ultra 3, a constant flow of wireless signals between and out of the watch, which makes it vibrate. Antennas and equipment must be woven transparently into the very fabric of the device from the first design phase – out of sight and out of the mind – then tested in real world scenarios to ensure that nothing interferes with the signals entering or out of your arm).
By opening its laboratory doors, Apple seemed determined to shed light on the rigorous test process which consists in bringing a product like Apple Watch on the market. As the best -selling smartwatch in the world, the company has positioned the Apple Watch as an industry standard, which means that each signal must operate exactly as expected. This type of test is not only quality control; This is how Apple repels the limits of what can adapt to such a small device, especially when competitors like Samsung and Google get closer to its features and market share.
After obtaining a rare overview inside the connectivity test laboratories where Apple constraint tests signal the performance, I do not think that I can never wear an Apple watch without thinking about the carefully choreographed sequence of design and product tests that make this connectivity possible.
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Test the performance of the antenna in an anechoic radio room
Apple does a large part of its connectivity tests in dedicated installations near its head office in Cupertino, California. Our tour started in one of these indescribable buildings, normally prohibited from the public, while we are traveling a maze of black partitions that I imagine envelop the hundreds of other tests that we have not been allowed to see. We arrived at what seemed to be a padded safe the size of a bathroom lined with blue foam tips like a slightly threatening cabin.
Inside the anechoic chamber, Apple tests the performance of the antenna using an Apple Watch Series 11 series mounted on an arm simulation.
This is what Apple calls an anechoic radio room: an entirely radio environment that blocks external signals. In the center was an Apple Watch 11 series on a black arm’s shape, imitating how the human body could interfere with the signals. A rotary black antenna ring surrounded the bedroom, measuring the extent to the watch antennas sent signals through different cellular and Wi-Fi strips. Once sealed, the room is designed to remove any external interference.
Apple uses this room to test everything, from prototypes of watches under early construction to models ready for production, refined antenna performance for each band and cellular region and validating each watch that comes out of the production line.
The Apple Watch Series 11 and Ultra 3 also use a new antenna diversity algorithm, which starts to combine the two antennas of the watch system when the signal becomes low, increasing connectivity while retaining power.
Adding the human variable
But a rubber prototype does not quite make a perfect replacement for the rest of our bodies filled with meat, which can often create interference for the radio signals entering and leaving our watch. In the next laboratory for this. More deeply in the maze of scores, we came across another slightly larger safe. The austere white walls contrasts strongly with the darker atmosphere of the previous room. This one did not have prototypes of dismembered members inside because it was supposed to house real humans, testing how the body itself can affect the antenna signals.
Adding to the atmosphere of the torture room (maybe I watch too many films) was a modern chair in the middle of the white century with a bright red cushion that seemed strangely moved (or perhaps perfectly adapted) in this hospital type environment. I was assured that real tests last only a few minutes (so it’s not a torture room). But I was always hesitant when I sat on the swivel chair to give it a literal whirlwind, the arrows of white foam hanging on me like ice cubes. After all this accumulation, the chair turned surprisingly slow and nothing like the experience of the Disneyland tea cup that I imagined in my head.
Engineers use this room to study a real human body connectivity on the Apple Watch.
Rotation allows Apple engineers to map the way the human body blocks or deforms the signal from different angles. This is particularly important for the Apple Watch Ultra 3 and its new satellite connection, which relies on a directional antenna designed to connect to orbit satellites in orbit at 800 miles above the earth at 15,000 MPH.
Outside the room, the engineers monitor the signal intensity that the watch receives via a (simulated) thermal card from the resistance of the signal emanating from the screen when the tester runs.
Get out of the grid: GNSS room
The final room, nestled in the basement, was the largest of the three. As soon as I entered the massive room, I looked at the cell bars on my phone start to fall until they disappear completely when I reached the center. It was the global simulation room of the navigation satellite system of 15 by 15 meters, which can encourage to think that it is anywhere in the world. Today, I was transported somewhere to the bottom of the Denali National Park in Alaska.
This room can encourage the Apple Watch watch by thinking that it is anywhere in the world (even out of the grid) to test the precision of the location with satellite connectivity.
It lacked the foam ice walls of the other two bedrooms, but was in the place bordered by black arrows protruding from the floor and surrounded by huge circular antenna rings stacked towards the ceiling.
In the middle, an Apple Watch Ultra 3 was seated on a black support with simulation arm, showing the exact inventive point out of network on a card. The part can recreate the exact satellite geometry of any place on earth, allowing Apple to test the precision of the watch can identify your position. This type of precision is essential for emergency SOs via satellite, but it also allows non -urgent features such as sharing your location via find my when you are out of the grid.
The invisible magic that makes everything work
According to Apple engineers, this test process is a delicate dance of creation, rupture, iteration and reteste, which can take a year. Each step pushes the limits of what can adapt to the inside of the slim and curved body of an Apple Watch Series 11 without compromising its design or life of the battery. Apple would never say it squarely, but I couldn’t help imagining that somewhere behind these black partitions, they already put prototypes from the following two generations of Apple Watch through their rhythms.
And now, after seeing the length that Apple goes behind, I know that I will feel a little more confident the next time I am not out of the grid, knowing that somewhere in a laboratory hidden in Cupertino, Apple engineers have already tested for this exact place.
