The most interesting part of Rattner's presentation was his discussion of power harvesting, and how they're looking at ways to incorporate free, renewable energy into personal devices as part of a hybrid power architecture. He thinks that technologies pulling power from light, but also heat, movement (such as rolling a Blackberry trackball), and wireless power transmissions have progressed to the point to where they can make personal devices markedly more efficient.

However, at this point, it's not efficient enough to power a gadget alone, but with a combination of adaptive power, intelligent power management, the traditional battery will last much longer without a charge.

When asked about the possibility of power harvesting from sonic sources, like the supposed piezoelectric phone concept which picks up a charge from talking, Rattner indirectly dismissed it, saying Intel had explored it back in the past, but were not currently researching the technology.

In any case, Rattner thinks it's possible for power harvesting to appear in consumer devices in as little as two years, provided they can prove it works and develop a spec for it. He says it's much easier to push new innovations into the market when they're not directly tied to a processor (those normally take 4-5 years).

Other projects he mentioned as part of Intel's research include servers with hardware-based management to better monitor the drops and increases in needed power, mobile sensors that can be used to monitor air quality on the fly and sensors which can power themselves, reporting back whatever information is needed.

Here's a look at a handful of different tests and what each one tries to accomplish.

Liquids

Nokia places a phone under a bunch of needle-sized water dispensers and then lets it drip all over the phone, which tests for resistance in situations like rain, or splashing from a pool.

The humidity simulation, which tests the durability of phones in up to 95% humidity, is helpful in determining if a phone will hold up in particularly damp areas like South and Central America, where gadgets don't have the longest lifespan.

Nokia also tests how the phone reacts to various liquids, creams and gels (lotions, hand sanitizers, etc...), since stuff like that tends to accidentally spill while sitting in a purse or backpack with the phone.

Sturdiness





Tests for bending and twisting are pretty straight forward and self explanatory. Still, you can't help but cringe to see a phone placed in such an unnatural position. Nokia says when you have your phone in your back pocket and you sit on it, it's susceptible to bending.

One of the cooler stress tests that exists is the Drop test—not only because it uses a giant friggin' machine, but also because they record the drops using a camera that can record 100,000 frames per second, which is 3,000 times faster than the normal video camera. The videos are then analyzed frame by frame, determining the degree to which a device becomes distorted upon impact. Check it out.

When Nokia drops a phone, they drop it from about the height of a shirt pocket onto concrete, since that's a likely scenario for dropped phones. They also attatch a phone under a steel device that pushes down 100 newtons of force.

Wear and Tear

Nokia has a series of wear and tear stress tests, when gauge the phone's ability to take bumps, scratches from daily use. Dust testing involves throwing a handful of phones in a dust filled box and letting everything co-mingle. How much dust gets inside? And do buttons stop working when foreign substances get under the surface? This is where you find out.

They also let phones roll around in a bunch of pieces of hard, pointy plastic to see where it might scratch, scuff or crack under duress. These pieces are like plastic chocolate chips and bite-sized pyramids, and they're pretty sharp. This phone met an unfortunate demise in the name of quality control.

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Other weird tests include rubbing a piece of denim up against a phone to test the effect of friction when the phone rubs up against your clothes and subjection the phone to temperatures ranging between -40 and 185 degrees Fahrenheit; this determines whether or not the phone can survive in the most extreme conditions on earth.

When testing is finished, they have a battery of analytic procedures to determine how well or how poorly a phone held up. This includes analyzing a phone under electron microscopes, 3D X-rays and X-ray Spectroscopes to check for any related damage; possible micron-sized soldering cracks, component failure or any breakdowns in the materials.

As you can see, these tests aren't lightweight by any means, and most of my Nokia phones over the years have been pretty durable. What about yours? [Nokia on Giz]

The quasi-three-dimensional electron crystals were discovered in a device scientists cooled at ultra-low temperatures – roughly 100 times colder than intergalactic space. They then exposed it to the most powerful magnetic fields possible on Earth, which made it “pop” from a 2D electron system to a semi-3D one. It could also help improve transistors, allowing for greater density on a single microchip. Looks like Gordon Moore can rest assure that his law won't be broken for another long while. [Science Blog]

(Note: That's not a picture of the new state of matter, by the way.)