Technology & IT | Sunday 26 March, 2017 5:50 am |

Huawei succeeded in occupying a leading position in global ranking, particularly in the European Union and the United States of America in terms of research and development spending which leads to offering innovative high-quality products with unparalleled and highly sought features in Smartphones and watches category with its investments reaching to $ 37 billion over the last 10 years (until the end of 2015).

In this regard, Gene Jiao, president for Huawei Middle East and Africa Consumer Business Group said: “There are more than 79,000 employees working in R & D across 16 centers, 36 joint research centers and 45 training centers worldwide.”

"Huawei invests 10% of its annual revenue in R & D and in 2015 the company invested $9.2 billion in researching and developing technologies thus entering the global top 50 companies list for patent applications. It is also on the top 10 list for patent filing in the United States and it occupies the eighth rank in the European Union for R & D spending in 2016,” he added.

The results of the company's R & D investments were reflected in its recently launched smartphones, including the high performing cameras in P9, P9 Plus, Mate 9 and the newest smartphones P10 and P10 Plus launched recently in Barcelona, ​​and set to be launched in the Saudi market in the beginning of April. Huawei collaborated with the German company Leica, the leader in manufacturing professional lenses. Huawei has also established a new research and development center, “Max Berek Innovation” in Wetzlar, Germany that is jointly operated with Leica. The two companies will collaborate in technological research to develop improved cameras with high-quality image.

 

Moreover, research and development resulted in the high-performance battery in Mate 9 and the P10, as well as battery temperature and current control technologies during charging smartphones that protect the device besides the supercharge technology that charges full battery in two hours. In addition, creating MateBook tablet that targets business men was the result of the company’s unwavering R&D efforts. The tablet has gained popularity in many countries including the United States. The company also is developing its own Kirin processor for mobile devices with ultra-high performance, low power consumption and less heat.

With Huawei, it’s not only about innovation, the company also examines battery endurance when charging for extended period of time by putting these batteries in special ovens heated to below 100 degrees Celsius and charging continuously for 20 days without interruption to check if the battery and charger are working safely. These standards are being adopted by Huawei even before the increasing battery explosion incidents in some smartphones manufactured by other companies. The company also examines the phone's ability to endure falling from a height of half meter and one meter, where the device is placed in machine rising in the air, and then falls at a very high speed to a position that’s very close to the ground then it is left to continue falling to a hard stone ground. Experts repeat this experiment twice for each side of the phone (6 sides), and twice for each of the four corners of the phone from a height of half meter. Then the process is repeated from the height of one meter. The phones manufactured by Huawei can withstand scratches caused by the metal pieces and keys in the user's pocket, and cosmetics containers and keys in women's bags when the phone is in it. The device and these items are placed in a large sealed container, then the container will revolve like a wheel for long hours, and eventually the device will be checked for screen resistance and phone structure for scratches and breaks.

The standards of Huawei’s tests exceed the mandatory quality standards in Europe and the United States. The devices are subject to mechanical strength tests. Each device must pass a 70kg hardware stress test in addition to environmental durability where each device undergoes a 72-hour solar radiation test, 48 hours of hot and cold shift tests (between 75 and -50 degrees), 8 hours of salt spray tests, damp heat test, vibration test in addition to lifecycle reliability checks where the device undergoes 800,000 touch screen taps using robots with leather peripherals resembling human fingers, 200,000 key touches (operating keys and volume keys), and 10,000 USB interface plug endurance tests where the plug and the charger are checked to ensure they are still intact and operating after this process.

The company is also performing the charging cable plug bend test where it will be bent by 180 degrees to the right and 180 degrees to the left by connecting the cable to a weight of 200 grams, to ensure that the material that protects the junction that combines inner wires with the metal port will not separate. Huawei experts also expose the phone's camera elements to extremely high temperatures (of about 110 ° C) and then reduce temp to 50 ° C by introducing water vapor in large quantities inside the oven and repeating the process for extended periods. Then they check for steam condensation inside the elements of the camera in addition to testing the endurance of the glue used to install the camera in extreme temperatures conditions to ensure that the rapid response of the lens focus feature is not affected.

The company carries out additional rigorous tests that are not carried out by other companies, including overseas roaming to ensure they are 4G ready in addition to various requirements for operating phones in global telecom companies' networks, especially phones manufactured especially for telecom companies (US telecommunications companies) using specialized computers that conduct a series of experiments and testing on phones in an environment isolated from the outside world networks and simulate the environment of the telecommunications companies targeted by Huawei’s services