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This an advertisement for their RF phone cases. In the article the premise is refuted.

jolmg 7y ago
> This an advertisement for their RF phone cases This is on ieee.org. The article mentioned this[1] other test by the Chicago Tribune. This isn't purely an advertisement though it serves that purpose a bit. It's disputed because they only tested 2 iPhones. > There are reasons to take the results with a grain of salt, however. McCaughey clarified that Penumbra supplied RF Exposure Labs with one iPhone 7 and one iPhone 11 Pro for the tests—phones the company had purchased off the shelf. He attributed not testing more phones to the cost of purchasing multiple iPhones This is also important: > More notably, when the FCC conducted a follow-up investigation after the Tribune published its story, the agency did not find evidence that any of the phones exceeded SAR limits. That said, while the Tribune and Penumbra both used off-the-shelf phones, the FCC largely tested phones supplied by the manufacturers, including Apple. It raises the question whether Apple and others supplied the FCC with phones that are different from what they sell. [1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-cell-phone-radiation-testing-20190821-72qgu4nzlfda5kyuhteiieh4da-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-cell-phone-...
- zitterbewegung 7y ago
  This story isn’t strictly a submarine story but pg has stated a PR agency is a great marketing investment . I also saw at least a dozen articles that were similar using DuckDuckGo. http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
- swiley 7y ago
  A lot of these smartphones go through imperical tests in an anechoic chamber managed by a third party lab to see if they’re bellow the allowed levels in each band. That sounds hackish but (IMO) isn’t the end of the world. What weirds me out is that they’ll send them to these third party labs and repeatedly test some small number (possibly one) of devices until it’s right up against what’s allowed. That feels less than scientific and probably wrong although I’m not sure what I’d change.
  - xondono 7y ago
    The main problem with all this kind of testing is how little precision there is. “Double the energy limit” sounds a lot, but for a lot of these labs that’s inside of the error range of their equipment.
  - TaylorAlexander 7y ago
    I’m sure Apple has their own test chambers.
  - deftnerd 7y ago
    The "conspiracy" portion of my brain makes me wonder if it's possible that Apple phones have lower power levels if the location services determines that the phone is in a location with a known anechoic chamber. There can't be that many of them. Such behavior has already been shown by automobile manufacturers during the "diesel-gate" incidents.
    - swiley 7y ago
      You don’t have to do that, usually you’ll run special test firmware on the device and say that this behaves appropriately (I’ve done this for other companies) Remember that this is fundamentally a legal/social thing that involves engineering/science and not the other way around.
      - jjoonathan 7y ago
        Right, you're supposed to test to the worst case and you get to define "worst case." Cheating would be as simple as defining a favorable "worst case." Before the tin-foil crowd calls regulators stupid, I'd like to point out that in the absence of cheating this allows hardware engineers to do a better job & design a system that is robust to software shenanigans. That's a nice thing. Maybe we cannot have nice things, but if so, let's prove it rather than presuppose it. I'd estimate the likelihood of cheating by looking to see if people are choosing phones on the basis of EIRP the way they choose cars based on MPG. I don't see that happening, so I estimate that the likelihood of cheating is low, and would vote to keep the cooperative model around.
- oefrha 7y ago
  > the FCC largely tested phones supplied by the manufacturers, including Apple. That weasel word “largely” isn’t helpful. They either only tested supplied phones, which may raise suspicions; or they also tested phones sourced from other channels, however insignificantly, suggesting problems with the third-party tests, or they would have noticed the anomaly. “Largely” ostensibly points to the latter, but it could also mean “we don’t know”.
FireBeyond 7y ago
The premise isn't refuted at all. The IEEE calls out things to be aware of, on both sides of the coin, and says as with all things, take limited sample tests with a grain of salt.
apodysophilia 7y ago
The relevant quote: > Penumbra was conducting the test, which also included testing an iPhone 7, to study its Alara phone cases, which the company says are designed to reduce RF exposure in a person

> This an advertisement for their RF phone cases This is on ieee.org. The article mentioned this[1] other test by the Chicago Tribune. This isn't purely an advertisement though it serves that purpose a bit. It's disputed because they only tested 2 iPhones. > There are reasons to take the results with a grain of salt, however. McCaughey clarified that Penumbra supplied RF Exposure Labs with one iPhone 7 and one iPhone 11 Pro for the tests—phones the company had purchased off the shelf. He attributed not testing more phones to the cost of purchasing multiple iPhones This is also important: > More notably, when the FCC conducted a follow-up investigation after the Tribune published its story, the agency did not find evidence that any of the phones exceeded SAR limits. That said, while the Tribune and Penumbra both used off-the-shelf phones, the FCC largely tested phones supplied by the manufacturers, including Apple. It raises the question whether Apple and others supplied the FCC with phones that are different from what they sell. [1] https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-cell-phone-radiation-testing-20190821-72qgu4nzlfda5kyuhteiieh4da-story.html https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-cell-phone-...

zitterbewegung 7y ago
This story isn’t strictly a submarine story but pg has stated a PR agency is a great marketing investment . I also saw at least a dozen articles that were similar using DuckDuckGo. http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html
swiley 7y ago
A lot of these smartphones go through imperical tests in an anechoic chamber managed by a third party lab to see if they’re bellow the allowed levels in each band. That sounds hackish but (IMO) isn’t the end of the world. What weirds me out is that they’ll send them to these third party labs and repeatedly test some small number (possibly one) of devices until it’s right up against what’s allowed. That feels less than scientific and probably wrong although I’m not sure what I’d change.
- xondono 7y ago
  The main problem with all this kind of testing is how little precision there is. “Double the energy limit” sounds a lot, but for a lot of these labs that’s inside of the error range of their equipment.
- TaylorAlexander 7y ago
  I’m sure Apple has their own test chambers.
- deftnerd 7y ago
  The "conspiracy" portion of my brain makes me wonder if it's possible that Apple phones have lower power levels if the location services determines that the phone is in a location with a known anechoic chamber. There can't be that many of them. Such behavior has already been shown by automobile manufacturers during the "diesel-gate" incidents.
  - swiley 7y ago
    You don’t have to do that, usually you’ll run special test firmware on the device and say that this behaves appropriately (I’ve done this for other companies) Remember that this is fundamentally a legal/social thing that involves engineering/science and not the other way around.
    - jjoonathan 7y ago
      Right, you're supposed to test to the worst case and you get to define "worst case." Cheating would be as simple as defining a favorable "worst case." Before the tin-foil crowd calls regulators stupid, I'd like to point out that in the absence of cheating this allows hardware engineers to do a better job & design a system that is robust to software shenanigans. That's a nice thing. Maybe we cannot have nice things, but if so, let's prove it rather than presuppose it. I'd estimate the likelihood of cheating by looking to see if people are choosing phones on the basis of EIRP the way they choose cars based on MPG. I don't see that happening, so I estimate that the likelihood of cheating is low, and would vote to keep the cooperative model around.
oefrha 7y ago
> the FCC largely tested phones supplied by the manufacturers, including Apple. That weasel word “largely” isn’t helpful. They either only tested supplied phones, which may raise suspicions; or they also tested phones sourced from other channels, however insignificantly, suggesting problems with the third-party tests, or they would have noticed the anomaly. “Largely” ostensibly points to the latter, but it could also mean “we don’t know”.

FireBeyond 7y ago

The premise isn't refuted at all. The IEEE calls out things to be aware of, on both sides of the coin, and says as with all things, take limited sample tests with a grain of salt.

apodysophilia 7y ago

The relevant quote: > Penumbra was conducting the test, which also included testing an iPhone 7, to study its Alara phone cases, which the company says are designed to reduce RF exposure in a person