Chair Project

Types of wood, Seasoning and Finishing.

Assignment 1: "I should never have purchased"

Sony Xperia Play

My phone contract was coming to an end and it was time for an upgrade. Admittedly, I was upgrading from a Nokia so anything would be better, or so I thought...

Earlier that year I attended “Gadget Show Live” at the NEC. Where a vast array of high end tech manufactures come together in one big hall to show off their latest upcoming products. The notorious technology tycoon, Sony, had a rather unusually large stand as they were showcasing their all new Xperia Play, the “revolutionary” step in mobile gaming technology by incorporating a slide out PSP style gamepad into a standard Sony smart phone. I was amazed by the concept and sure enough a few months later, made the purchase.

The faults were immediately noticeable from the first start-up of the handset. Upon unpacking the phone from its box I noticed the horrific button placement. The power button was situated below the level of the casing, making it very fiddly to awaken the phone. Then there was the issue of where the volume buttons were positioned, rather oddly, in the middle of the side of the phone, exactly where your palm rests whilst holding the handset. Causing the slightest change in grip to alter the volume, occasionally to max, giving you a rather unwelcomed shock whilst listening to music through the provided headphones (which were also crap).

Button placement aside, there were other faults too. The PSP panel didn’t quite line up with the main phone body, and the sliding mechanism was quite loose. This made the phone very uncomfortable to hold as the edges of the product were noticeable, and not “seamless” as the product description described. Furthermore every time the sliding joint moved, the phone detected this movement and launched the mediocre media screen, which was to graphically intensive for the under specified Xperia to handle, Causing it to glitch and inevitable, crash. The result of the crash called for a reboot of the phone which seemed to take longer than necessary.

All of these faults seemed to be linked to a lack of market research, poor quality control and assurance checks and lastly subpar manufacturing processes resulting in misaligned parts.  

The conventional plug and the new design plug are made from ABS (Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene), a very common thermoplastic. This material is suited to the role of a plug as it has the following properties:

•          It has high impact resistance so it can withstand the knocks delivered from common use.
•          Is a very good electrical insulator to protect the user from shock.
•          It is also recyclable as it is a thermoplastic. This is a very important factor as the amount of plugs produced is so large, if they were un-recyclable the impact on the environment would be significantly greater.

The manufacturing process used to mould these plugs is injection moulding. This is where a thermoplastic is heated into a liquid state and then forced into a split mould at high pressure using a hydraulic press. The advantages of this are that any faulty items can be put straight back into the hopper, and re-moulded. Also any shavings or waste product can be put back in so the process has minimal waste. Also the moulds can be used hundreds of times before they need replacing. The only disadvantage is that the split moulds are very expensive to replace once worn down.

The plug could have been redesigned as there were flaws with the old, traditional design. The primary flaw in the old design was that the plug could not be easily stored, and very often took up a large proportion of the packaging. Another flaw with the traditional design is extension cords were very large and two plugs could not be compacted into a small space, taking more materials to produce extension leads and moreover, not as convenient for the user. The new design eliminates these issues by the folding design making storage and packaging simple. And the clever folding design allows multiple plugs to be connected into the same area as one traditional plug, saving on materials and rendering them more usable and convenient for the user.