I suspect the Otterbox would make it ginormous.
These are so pointless. A phone can hit a hundred different ways. On the side, corner, back, and screen will all produce vastly different results.
Also it's only one device. Realistically, one would want to test with at last 10 different devices in order to get a good idea of how durable they all are. I don't know if they're pointless, but they're definitely not very scientific.
scientific or not, thats a tough phone
I have no doubt that Samsung made some design changes on the Note II after seeing the GS3 drop test videos.After going back and watching their other video, it looks like the S3 just had worse luck as it landed on the front of the device, which is what caused it to crack. The Note 2 didn't appear to ever land like this, so it didn't have that problem. Honestly it just seems like the luck of the draw (or drop ) whether or not it's going to break.
Also, why are they only dropping the phone sideways?
All drop tests should be with the screen of the phone facing both upward (or) downward, horizontally. That would pretty much guarantee that the phone lands on back/battery cover (or) also the on the screen face down, and not land on the edges.
That's true.Probably because the phone will almost never land like that. In those natural drop tests, the device never directly lands flat. It'll almost always land mostly on the side, but it's just a matter of at what angle. Really, they should just determine how to get the phone to hit at fairly precise angles from various heights to see how it holds up.
That's true.
But isn't it reasonable to assume that if the phone(and the screen) survives landing face down and also face up(in case the fat bezels protect the screen when it lands face down in the prior test), then it's very likely it will survive if it lands vertically or hits the pavement on one side of it's 4 edges?
They should turn the phone on after a drop. How do we know it works?
I have no doubt that Samsung made some design changes on the Note II after seeing the GS3 drop test videos.
Yep, I'm sure Samsung made some design changes after watching some youtube videos. It saved them a lot of money from having to do any R&D themselves. I'm sure Samsung wouldn't spend any of their money doing drop tests themselves.
I thought they had the phone on and stated that it still functions properly. Maybe that was on the gs3 test vs iPhone 5.
A simple contraption would make drop test more accurate. we can test how well a whole car handles damage. How would a phone be any different