The city of Shenzhen is big ““ very big. For the first time since arriving we were treated with a drive though the inner parts of the city. As was expected of China, everywhere you turn you see high rise buildings going up and many of them stretch towards the heavens in a manner you won‘t ever see in Africa.
Then, we enter Huawei‘s HQ campus. Located right outside the CDB, you find the main campus in a completely man-made gardened park. When the campus was being created the CEO wanted the designers to make it look extremely natural, with lakes between forests, interspersed between the cacophony of buildings which include the finance, R&D and management departments, and some of the data centres.
Thereafter we are taken to the Reliability Labs. This is where Huawei test all new smartphone prototypes that have come out of R&D, right before they are approved for the assembly lines. There are machines that test every single component on the newly developed smartphones.
There are machines that do several drop tests onto a concrete slab ““ from every angle imaginable you could potentially drop your phone. Not only are devices dropped, they are in fact slammed into the ground with force. In the demonstrations you get that gnawing feeling every time a dear smartphone hits the floor, only for it to be picked up and slammed into the ground again at a different angle.
Unfortunately, as you can imagine, cameras aren‘t allowed in many of these areas. The majority of the machines used are proprietary to Huawei and are a tightly kept secret.
That is only the beginning of barrage of tests, however. Every port is tested over and over again. The charging port, for example, if tested 50,000 times with a machine that inserts and pulls out a charging cable repeatedly. You will never charge a phone that many times, but Huawei insist the device should be able to handle it. The power and volume buttons are tested with a similar amount of presses and the screen‘s keyboard is pounded for hours without end to make sure the software can also keep up.
The phones are also thrown into a tumble dryer of sorts. A tub with multiple compartments, each filled with different everyday items you‘ll find in pant pockets, handbags etc. A phone is then thrown into this tub and it starts to turn, being tumbled through coins and other small metal objects, small rocks and pebbles and other items usually harmful to a smartphone‘s well-being. Once again, you would never wish anyone‘s smartphone to go through such an ordeal, but it seems they can (albeit with a couple of bumps and bruises).
We were also treated with a tour of a main data centre (Huawei is a leader in the telecoms industry, not only a handset manufacturer) and also a command centre. It looked like a scene out of a Hollywood movie, with us looking down onto the control floor. It really felt like a NASA control room, with massive screens up above showing a summary of current goings-on throughout Huawei‘s businesses.
It was an extraordinary experience being taken through these facilities. To see the inner workings of such a large tech company is unforgettable.
Stay tuned for some extra coverage of the trip.
Follow Theunis on Twitter: @Theunis_BWB
