Environmental Specifications for Consumer Devices

Most folks who know me know all too well my predilection for a degree of ruggedness in electronic equipment which I select. It's not that I actually buy that many "rugged" devices -- the markup for this "feature" (which used to be standard) has become too high for my liking in most cases -- but rather, it is that I am ever so good at destroying things.

I have probably broken more laptops and cellphones than the average granola-and-yogurt-eating Californian has had hot breakfasts, and whether it is dunking them, bending them, smashing them, overheating them or just plain wearing out the connectors, I can safely say that I have been there and done that. At one point several years ago, I took to carrying my cellphone inside a waterproof case that floated and with which one could swim, but it required removal to recharge every time, and then Nextel came out with their "water-resistant" model, which actually worked OK in the shower, so long as you didn't put it under the stream. Of course, vendors' definitions of water resistance vary widely. Heck, waterproof doesn't mean much of anything without a decent IPX rating (6's and 7's) to go with it.

On a side note, last time I got a new laptop I sacrified the ability to use it in the arctic or in my bathtub or on a sunny beach day with a drizzle in the offing... in return for price and performance. I got another Thinkpad for about one quarter the cost of a much slower and lower resolution Itronix Gobook. After all, IBM's onsite repair contract mitigates the effects of most accidents, and I can manage to make do without a laptop in all the usual places, like, umm, the arctic, my bathtub, the beach, the truck, or even just the back deck. It would be jolly nice, sure, but it's hardly the end of the world to have to go find some shelter before (carefully) pulling out the laptop.

OK, so where am I going with this post? Am I planning to lament the fact that equipment of yesteryear was often much better... old radio equipment with drop-proof alloy cases that would scratch and dent before they would crack or shatter, mil-spec keyboards, circuit boards with integrated circuits attached with actual flow-soldered thru-hole pins, and with everything conformally coated in epoxy resin, and connectors that were designed for multiple insertion cycles and which could be left connected or disconnected without compromising the casing's integrity? In a word, no.

No, I am just amazed. And flabbergasted. And wondering how much gear I should have to carry in my armpits and crotch. It's one thing when a hard drive bearing gets too cold and seizes, or a battery gets too cold and loses ampacity. These things are understandable technical hurdles and you get what you pay for. Roll on the hydrogen fuel cells or whatever. But for the love of God, when you pay for a device whose very nature is to work in the boonies and backwoods, which is sold and advertised as being rugged, and which does not involve any hard disks whatsoever, you might reasonably expect that it would perform to specification.

To the point, then: I have a Motorola 9505a satellite phone for use on the Iridium network. Last winter I was plagued by problems with the LCD display screen on it, which loses all contrast in its pixels when it gets even a little bit cold. I needed the phone too much to send it back, but figured that while it's still in warranty and before the winter rolls around again, I finally had time to address the problem. I checked the spec and, lo and behold, http://www.iridium.com/products/product.php?linx=0001 claims an operating range of -10 Celsius to +55 Celsius. Hardly ideal, I thought when I bought it, but I figured that below that the battery would start to give up and so accepted it as being fair enough, and determined to keep it inside my jacket until I needed it.

So what's the problem again? Well, it's the LCD screen that goes with the cold, well before the battery ever does. Expose it to modest cold -- for example, so that you can hold it to your ear in the winter and use it -- and within a minute or two you can no longer see anything on the display, kinda important when you need to see call progress detail, figure out what the beep meant, see if you're still connected, or type in and/or redial a number. How cold, you ask? Oh, sure, I'm in New Hampshire, where it can easily get to -40 Fahrenheit. But I am not talking about that. I am talking about when it's merely around freezing.

So, says I, it is probably just my phone. I have a bad display module. It's a one-off. I'll get it repaired. How wrong I was. The truth is far worse.

It appears that Motorola's warranty service only applies if the phone doesn't actually power up and allow you to make phone calls in the very best of conditions, with a good quality signal in a nice room temperature ambient. If the phone doesn't actually perform to their published specifications, that's not a warranty issue. No sirree. You might think about suing them for failure to perform, but there's nothing they will actually do for you. Apparently not being able to see anything on the display does not constitute an "operating problem".

So is it true? Have we humans really not yet learned to build a display capable of surviving a little cold? Goodness me no, my several Garmin GPS units and even my everyday Motorola cellphone, which collectively cost less than the Iridium phone, all survive just fine and can show me a nicely contrasting image when similarly freezing. But when building a super-expensive ruggedized satellite phone specified and designed for use in places where cellphones can't or won't, why oh why would anyone spend an extra dollar on a decent display?

Moral of the story: never trust specifications without knowing how (and of course when, where, why, and by whom) they were tested. Is the great thing about the various mil-specs or IP ratings the fact that, for example, they present a better definition of a water spray (pressure/direction/volume/time) than that implied by "rainproof", for example? Hell no, it's the fact that they require that the specifications end up being tested. Maybe not independent testing, but even having a QA lab in the same company is far better than some design engineer licking his pencil, fingering his calculator, and saying "Ho yes. -10 Celsius should work fine."

Second moral: caveat emptor... rugged stuff is no longer for people who need it to perform, it's for people who think they need it or just want it to look cool. Reminds me of the state of play in the watch market decades ago. "Yes, sir, absolutely. This $40 watch is waterproof to 300 metres. Look, it says so right on the face in fancy lettering that your friends can all admire."