Interesting read about how Verizon tests the mobile phones they offer... Can you hear me now?

"Verizon Wireless today unveiled its expanded national test lab, designed to ensure that every device used on the company's network meets the highest standards of reliability and provides customers with the best possible wireless experience.

The Verizon Wireless national test lab has set the standard for verifying the company?s handset and data equipment reliability since 1987. The culmination of a year-long construction project, the new 11,000 square foot facility is four times its original size and provides new areas for rigorous hands-on testing, evaluation of new applications and technologies, and confidential collaboration with manufacturers and software vendors. Hundreds of engineers and representatives from the leading manufacturers of wireless equipment and technologies from North America, Europe and Asia pass through its doors every year to meet with members of the 37-member Verizon Wireless test lab team.

Composed of a series of more than a dozen individual laboratories, the facility serves as a product and applications incubator, testing everything from handset durability and voice call quality to data throughput, camera phone picture resolution and on-demand multimedia services. Much of the state-of-the-art testing equipment was designed and standardized by the company?s specially trained test engineers. Each year, testing at the Bedminster facility includes:

# Review of more than 300 manufacturer submissions and some 85 individual devices.
# As many as 100 different tests per device, per submission (Many devices undergo multiple rounds of review.)
# Verification of up to 4.2 million lines of code per device

Many test rooms resemble fortified vaults and are lined with metal screening to shield devices from external live radio waves, keeping unwanted signals out and test signals in. A life-like test mannequin head and torso, known as ?Mr. Head,? sits in a soundproof booth and is outfitted with $5,000 ears that funnel sound just like human ears to test handset microphone volume and clarity. Additional testing extends beyond the walls of the Bedminster lab to the field where engineers test devices in real-life situations across Verizon Wireless? national footprint as well as in Europe and Asia.

Verizon Wireless? systematic approach to testing hardware also is applied in Walnut Creek, CA, in a facility dedicated to testing wireless software applications such as games, over-the-air music downloads and GPS-based services. Another lab in Southlake, TX, verifies software and hardware compatibilities on a simulated Verizon Wireless network. The labs are just a part of the company?s $40 billion investment in its nationwide network since 2000."

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