Video: Inside a Lab That Smashes up Smartphones for Science

If you've ever dropped your phone, you know that whether it survives can ride on what kind of case is around the device.

OtterBox, a company that specializes in protective cases, has developed its own testing lab where it puts smartphones and their cases through the wringer. An enormous 3-D printer creates the prototype phones and cases for testing, then each prototype undergoes a minimum of 24 tests.

The company has even designed special machines to recreate extreme conditions, usually culled from user-submitted horror stories, like an hour-long tumble in the dryer and a drop from a two-story building.

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Engineers, however, want to ensure they don't sacrifice the phone's functions for protection

"Really, we're putting a wrapper on someone else's product," said Paul Stagger, engineering manager of Otter Products. "When we do that, we want to make sure that we are not making the way that device performs any less than it would be then when it's the naked device."

To see these tests in action, check out the video below from CNET: